FILM REVIEW: "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" is a magnificent monument to cynicism
PROCEED WITH CAUTION: Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker ahead!
So there’s this YouTube comment on Macy Gray’s “I Try” song. It’s a simple, neat summation of the song that’s 100% accurate: “I don’t know why I like this song so much. It just sounds very sincere I guess”. I’m thinking about this comment, because it can also be easily applied to why Star Wars has not just endured, but thrived, even when it was releasing one bad movie after another.
I love Star Wars. I love Star Wars so much I might sit through Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker one more time.
Hardcore fans have some big opinions on how Disney has handled the third trilogy, known as the Sequel Trilogy. Here is mine, for clarity’s sake: it’s pretty good. The Force Awakens was a zippy and agreeable stealth reboot/sequel. It’s a good time, though not a great movie; it lacks that unique mythic resonance that makes Star Wars, well, Star Wars and the plot coincidences pile up with startling regularity but it delights. The Last Jedi is ambitious and introspective, serving as an honourable coda to the odyssey of Luke Skywalker while adding an interestingly troubled romantic wrinkle between lost soul Jedi-in-training Rey and malevolent-yet-conflicted-about-it Kylo Ren.
So, how fares the final one – the so-called culmination of the Skywalker Saga - The Rise of Skywalker? Well, It’s a Disney World Theme Park Ride. Occasionally, and with obvious strain, it can muster enough gravitas to match a Saturday morning cartoon. It was manufactured to placate a riled up fan base, still sore from the controversial decisions of the last movie, and that’s exactly where its ambition ended.
It’s heartbreaking to admit it, but…The Rise of Skywalker is insincere. It’s stuffed to the gills with callbacks, member berries and references to the preceding 8 Episodes. That’d be cool – great, even – if it sparkled up a substantial story. Sadly, it’s the complete opposite; it’s there to distract from how appallingly thin its plot is. It’d be an act of charity to even call this a plot. More like a series of inelegantly connected mini-quests for mystical doohickeys and thingamajigs that’ll lead to the bad guy who you’ve got to shoot at before he shoots at you. Characters operate on one or two wildly unsophisticated levels here: 1) shouting plot details at one another or 2) shouting reheated platitudes at one another. The camera whooshes by quips and laser bolts and starships with similarly manic energy. All this personality-free busy work fitfully enlivened by an absurd set-piece reminded me of a lesser Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
The most problematic element here is the return of the Emperor. It is the albatross dangling from this movie’s neck. He most definitively died in Return of the Jedi – he was tossed into an abyss and exploded. So, yeah, he’s back, and he has inexplicably ‘magic-ed’ a fleet of a thousand Star Destroyers. Kylo Ren, threatened by his power, attempts to kill him. But the Emperor offers all his resources to Kylo. All he has to do is bring Rey to him so he can turn her to the dark side. I have so many questions that will never be answered because director JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio don’t have the answers, plain and simple. By the way, if you’re still attempting to seduce Star Wars protagonists 40 something years later, you’re a slow learner.
Rey’s journey took on an interesting form in The Last Jedi. You can bet that Rise of Skywalker undoes all that, ultimately making her a bland carbon copy of Luke. Finn and Poe are…uh, present? Because John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are so talented, they can exude charming camaraderie and make things seem more fun than they are. These three leads are not a patch on Han, Luke and Leia, though, not by a damn sight. Speaking of Leia, the late Carrie Fisher is reanimated, thanks to some chillingly convincing digital necromancy. I suppose it’s a nice thing, but it’s hard to shake the feeling her scene partners have to act around her, rather than naturally react to her. She has no memorable lines because she is composed entirely of deleted scenes from another movie. I don’t know what everyone else’s excuse is.
The most damming thing I can say about The Rise of Skywalker is I walked out feeling apathetic about the whole thing. The good things about it, and there are good things for sure, dissolve like cotton candy; you might say it doesn't leave you much to chew on. This reheated dinner is how they decide to end the Skywalker saga? They could've done better - and they did, in 1983.
