Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars is unique among the big blockbuster film franchises, in that the stories are not adapted from comics, books or anything else, but are always written by the films themselves. If fans complain about decisions the story takes, the filmmakers can’t simply say they were just following the source material. When watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker it felt as though the filmmakers worked not just on making a decent movie but also on trying to satisfy multiple fractions of the fanbase who each wanted the story to go a certain way. That’s not the only reason why Rise of Skywalker isn’t as good as the last two instalments, but the film still brings the sequel trilogy to an entertaining and often emotional finish.

The trailers and opening scenes announced that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) would be returning. The Resistance learn of this and that the First Order has grown stronger and will soon be attacking them. To fight back, they need to actually know where their enemy is. So Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) go out on a hunt for clues that can lead them there. Rey shares a connection with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), now a deputy to an Emperor who wants her dead. This instalment is directed by J. J. Abrams, who also directed The Force Awakens and has produced many film and TV series. He co-writes the script with Chris Terrio, whose most successful work was with Argo in 2012.

Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, was apparently meant to have a big role in this episode but Fisher died unexpectedly after the filming of The Last Jedi. She appears in the film through unused footage. If you weren’t aware of this you would find some of the character’s scenes a little odd, but I am not going to mark them down for this. Creating some cohesive scenes with the character while respecting the late actress was clearly a difficult task, and with all that considered they did an excellent job.

In the sequel trilogy, the filmmakers’ focus has been recapturing the feel of the original trilogy and in creating characters that people would remember. And The Rise of Skywalker manages this too. It’s no slouch to putting on a spectacle, but the greatest achievement is that it makes the emotional beats of the story work. This allows us to be entertained in spite of the overstuffed plot, much of it focused on inanimate objects, and scenes that strongly resemble ones we’ve seen in previous films. Yet when it made these types of decisions, they were still generally executed with skill and a clear love of the Star Wars franchise that shines in every scene.

The Last Jedi showed that the Star Wars franchise may very well have unique problems pleasing the crowd. That film was a runaway success at the box office, with critics and with audience surveys like CinemaScore. Yet any online public conversations about that film have been dominated by negative voices. I had never seen this happen before to a film that was by every conventional measure a success. It seems a vocal minority of fans didn’t like certain decisions the story took, for reasons that would not have bothered most viewers and critics.

As I feared, The Rise of Skywalker can feel at times like an apology letter for The Last Jedi, especially because it retcons its predecessor’s main message. And it’s not just with The Last Jedi either. Its whole premise retcons the greatest scene in Return of the Jedi. The fact death gets reversed or partly reversed so frequently here in various ways will undermine our ability to take character deaths seriously in future instalments (and for sure, there will be more).

It feels like a film which lacks an overarching direction like the last two did, but instead is a series of calculations of how to appease the many factions of the Star Wars fanbase. Even though many of these factions are demanding different or even conflicting things, such as how Rey and Kylo Ren’s relationship will conclude. Still, it marches through these decisions with confidence, and Abrams’ direction can’t be faulted. The film looks fantastic, whether it’s in a desert world, an island in a raging sea or a mighty battle in a planet’s high atmosphere.

The actors I have loved throughout the sequel series — Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and others — are all on great form. The conflicted character of Kylo Ren and his connection with Rey continue to be the most intriguing character relationship in the franchise since Luke faced Darth Vader. The Rise of Skywalker does understand that it is the characters that have made the new and old Star Wars popular, far more than alien worlds, space battles and special effects (which are also top-notch).

But it’s hard to ignore the downsides. Maybe this trilogy needed more coordination; The Last Jedi might now be the best of the three as a standalone movie, but it might have also created a situation that a single episode couldn’t easily resolve. A bigger problem is that it felt like it was trying to please so many different factions of the Star Wars fanbase. We have been spoilt. Disney are planning a 3-year rest for the franchise, and I think this will do a lot of good.