Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Is a Cowardly Ending

What a way to go.

The Rise of Skywalker is the internet’s reward for complaining about the ingenuity, progress and power of director Rian Johnson’s previous Star Wars entry, The Last Jedi.

Which is to say: it is an act of cowardice that sees a beloved nine-film saga sputter to a hugely disappointing and unaffecting end. Congratulations, internet. You killed the thing you, ahem, loved.

Directed by J.J. Abrams—who returns having helmed The Force Awakens, the first part of Disney's modern trilogy—this series-ender spends so much time trying to retcon everything Johnson did last time around it forgets to do anything else, like, be imaginative, or make any sense.

It might even be the first time a (non-prequel) Star Wars instalment has been comically bad, as in the scenes with poor, dearly departed Carrie Fisher, whose character General Leia lives on, yet is forced to only spout disconnected lines of dialogue taken from footage cut out of earlier Star Wars pictures. Watching the still-living performers like Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac engage in nonsensical, clearly reverse-engineered conversations with Leia feels like a failed comedy sketch of incredibly bad taste. Digital necromancy should never be so… pointless.

Traditionally, I steer away from relating the plot of the Star Wars sequels in my reviews, because these movies are shrouded in such secrecy, I’d personally hate to be the one to ruin it for you. So, I won’t spoil anything significant, though as viewers of its predecessors probably already assumed, The Rise of Skywalker sees Jedi trainee Rey (Ridley) and the space rebellion, led by Leia and Poe Dameron (Isaac), preparing for their final face-off with the Supreme Leader of the evil First Order, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, still smouldering).

It indeed results in a star war, with ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) leading the charge. However, his love interest from the previous flick, spunky mechanic Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), doesn’t tag along, because she’s got, umm, some very serious mechanic business to finish at the base, and gee, she just can’t find the time to come with, or appear for more than four minutes total, and this definitely has nothing to do with the Russian bots and alt-right twitterers who hounded the actress off social media because she had the audacity to be a) female, b) Asian, and c) in Star Wars, all at the same time. When I called The Rise of Skywalker an act of cowardice, this is partly what I meant. At worst, it kowtows to racists, misogynists and literal bots. At best, it disrespects Johnson, Tran and everyone else inspired by The Last Jedi.

That’s why you shouldn’t believe the claims that this can at least be appreciated as a feat of fan service simply because Abrams (who co-wrote the script with Chris Terrio) pivots away from Johnson’s radical—and actually brilliant—rethinking of the Jedi mythology. It may be punctuated by a few neat cameos and sure, at one point, you briefly see an Ewok, but this is fan service for the bad fans only; the ones who wanted to cheer a very specific hero that didn’t resemble Ridley or Boyega; the ones who couldn’t fathom a romantic relationship between two men or two different races; the ones who despised Luke Skywalker’s arc in the previous film, or the dispatching of Snoke, or the idea that a Jedi could come from anywhere, because it didn’t meet their specific requirements.

To fulfil this insane list of demands, Abrams resurrects Darth Sidious (played by Ian McDiarmid), the big bad from George Lucas’ urtext, instead of following through on the roiling turmoil of Kylo Ren. After all, why build anything or complete a story in bold and fascinating ways when you can bend all logic to appease a small contingent of whingers? Abrams, so concerned with plot reconfiguration, fails to even hit the Star Wars basics, such as provide exciting new settings, or the kind of hair-raising, spine-tingling moments that have traditionally made this series soar (think of the binary sunset in A New Hope, the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, and even the silent hyperdrive-attack in The Last Jedi). It’s a trudge.

Abrams may have been accused of plagiarism with The Force Awakens, yet that was at least a joyous romp that celebrated Star Wars, and allowed Johnson to come in and chart a new path forward. The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t just put that evolution to a halt; it stumbles backwards, ass-first off a cliff. The cast remains top notch, in particular Driver and Ridley—who are put on a real rollercoaster ride of inconsistent emotions here—and the production design, puppeteering and visual effects are out of this world. The craftspeople don’t make this bad. It’s the spiritual rot at its core that makes this feel so dour, empty and unearned. At the end of my Force Awakens review I excitedly wrote: "What comes next and how long do we have to wait?" Now, I’m just glad it’s all over.

2/5

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now in cinemas. Rated M for science fiction violence.

Header Image: Disney