Title: Not that long ago, in a theater near you…
Titles: Tangent 1985 Presents (or sans “Presents” if you prefer). Episodes VII, VIII, & IX. Death by Trilogy.
Opening Crawl: THE FORCE AWAKENS rekindled our love for that galaxy far, far away, returning STAR WARS to its roots, but this was not to last. In a daring feat, THE LAST JEDI challenged all we had taken for granted.
Turmoil engulfed the Internet. With a FANBASE fractured worse than in the aftermath of the PREQUELS, all hope for peace lay in the hands of THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.
“Somehow, Palpatine returned.” These three words would spell certain doom for the highly-anticipated final chapter of the divisive STAR WARS SEQUEL TRILOGY…
TILT DOWN to whatever you want, really. Just enough time for my narration to begin.
So… this didn’t really work, did it? And I don’t just mean The Rise of Skywalker, though it most certainly does not work; I mean the whole thing. I mean the whole trilogy. And since The Rise of Skywalker went in the direction it went, and ended the way it ended, bringing every one of us crashing down right along with it like so much Super Star Destroyer, I guess I’m talking about the entire saga, too.
Because, apparently, that was the plan. Or, at the very least, that’s what became the plan at exactly five minutes ‘til the eleventh hour when panic of a level hitherto undreamt of permeated every office at Lucasfilm, and the largely-online teeth-gnashing of the loudest and grossest corner of the fandom coerced Disney into calling what basically amounts to a $275 million audible, resulting in a convoluted 142 minutes of sound and fury designed to serve not only as the conclusion to the Sequel Trilogy but, surreptitiously, to the Star Wars saga as a whole.
Nine films suddenly, ineffectually, tethered by two-plus hours of mostly unrelated footage. I say “unrelated” because a staggering amount of that footage isn’t dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand. All-caps Twitter rants and mile-long Reddit threads to the contrary notwithstanding, The Last Jedi is an incredibly respectful follow-up to The Force Awakens. It cares about the storylines introduced in the previous episode, continuing them each along unpredictable and fascinating new trajectories, but The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t do that. It fails to follow either, instead electing to all but wipe the slate clean and start over, abandoning close to everything established by the previous two films.
C-3PO’s line, “How rude!” from The Empire Strikes Back
Yeah, Threepio. It was! The Rise of Skywalker shows more interest in introducing new storylines than resolving old ones, and while that’s not the biggest problem facing the film, it is definitely one of them, but we’ll get into all of that and soon. Serving as both the narrative and thematic culmination of three generations of films is a daunting enough task when you do have the luxury of time and vision, but Skywalker was short on both. The ill-conceived attempt to do it on a whim sans either was to court disaster, outright. It should be noted that writer/director JJ Abrams has gone on record, stating the return of Emperor Palpatine was in the cards all along, dating all the way back to The Force Awakens, but I’m afraid I just don’t buy that; I don’t believe him.
Darth Vader’s line, “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” from A New Hope
I don’t buy it because nowhere anywhere in Star Wars – Episode VII: The Force Awakens is there one single frame of film to indicate this is the road we’re on. There is literally nothing in that movie that can be used as evidence to support his claim. It’s like this. When the killer is revealed at the end of a good mystery, you should be able to reread that mystery, picking up all the clues placed along the way. When properly done, the identity of the killer should come as a surprise, but a surprise that makes sense based on the information you’ve been given.
It’s not enough to just have your culprit be a character who’s never been seen and only mentioned once in the space of two feature-length films. This isn’t Scream 2. That’s not how you write a mystery, and it’s definitely not how you construct the resolution to forty-two years of films. But we’ll come back to that, too. Because it’s something that’s also become a problem lately, that being creators of every stripe rewriting history in an effort to fill gaps, save face, quell dissent, or whatever else in their shoddy work happens to need fixing that week.
Lando’s line, “They told me they fixed it. I trusted them to fix it. It’s not my fault!”
I’m going to talk about The Rise of Skywalker, but more than that, I’m going to talk about it in the greater context of the whole. Its place both in the Sequel Trilogy and the saga at large, because I think the mistake here is simply that this should not have been a trilogy. “Blasphemy!” I can already hear you say. “The Star Wars films have always been trilogies!” Yes, that’s true. Rogue One and Solo aside, the core, numbered saga episodes have only ever played out in three parts, but why? And I mean that with all sincerity. Why? Where is it written that Stars Wars films can only come in threes?
George Lucas’s infamous, “It’s like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.”
As I record this, Clone Wars’ seventh and final season has just concluded, and Season Two of The Mandalorian is on its way. The proliferation of streaming services has pushed the way we tell stories into a new frontier, and for all my love of it, the trilogy format is antiquated. Perhaps the time has come where we needn’t feel so dependent on it anymore. The world wouldn’t have burned down with the announcement of Episode X!
Trailer title card w/ swelling score for Star Wars – Episode X: The Resurrection of Jar-Jar followed by Obi-Wan’s, “I have a bad feeling about this,” from The Phantom Menace
How amazing would it have felt to be sitting in the theater on opening night and have The Rise of Skywalker end on an unexpected cliffhanger, learning only then another chapter was in store? That’s a shot heard ‘round the world! Everyone would be talking about it. The hype would have been immeasurable. It very well could have gone that way, and I’ll tell you how we would’ve done it if it had, but in order to do that, we’re first going to have to look at The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, how effectively they function as both lead-ins to The Rise of Skywalker, as works on their own, and how they would potentially service chapters beyond Episode IX, but since it would be reckless to dive into those waters without the proper context, we have to start here first:
Cue Nowhere Man by The Beatles
Title: Free Reign and Goodwill
Understanding the ostensibly unavoidable outcome of the Star Wars sequels becomes less puzzling when you delve into the filmography of one Jeffrey Jacob Abrams. Everyone’s more or less familiar with his mystery box-laden, box office record-breaking, studio-backed blockbusters by this point, but before he was JJ “Give me more lens flares and shake that camera” Abrams, he was simply Jeffrey Abrams, and behind the writer’s desk of such schmaltzy, melodramatic early 90s star vehicles as Regarding Henry and Forever Young, to say nothing of the harmlessly forgettable Trading Places knockoff Taking Care of Business and that heinous Danny Glover/Joe Pesci mishap Gone Fishin’.
Luke’s line, “What a piece of junk!” from A New Hope
Yeah, it wasn’t great. Abrams went on the helm all four seasons of the Golden Globe-winning WB drama Felicity, which I won’t get into here because Patrick Willems already covered the show and what shape The Rise of Skywalker might take because of it in exhaustive detail, so if you haven’t yet, do check that out; it’s a real treat. Following the success of Felicity, Abrams created the Jennifer Garner-led spy series Alias, a show that managed to run five whole seasons despite only being interesting for two, and from there created and contributed to ABC’s Lost by sticking around just long enough to dig so many holes showrunners like Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse would be climbing out of them for the remainder of its run, which in retrospect, should have been a signal to all of us of things to come.
Yoda’s line, “Impossible to see, the future is,” from Attack of the Clones
While he deserves credit for course-correcting the then-faltering Mission: Impossible film franchise in his directorial debut and giving a post-X-Files world something to sink its fangs into with Fringe, the cracks in the façade were, sadly, already forming. Abrams’ action-packed and not-at-all like Star Trek Star Trek reboot and its absurd follow-up Into Darkness introduced a new generation of fans to the crew of the USS Enterprise, but instead of boldly going where no one had gone before, they merely went where they’d already been, managing only to remind us how much better it was the first time.
C-3PO’s line, “Here we go again,” from Return of the Jedi
They were exciting, yes, gorgeously shot, and that’s probably one of the most attractive casts I’ve ever seen, but for all the free reign and goodwill setting them in an alternate timeline earned him, Abrams’ slavish devotion to OG Trek clipped the reboot’s wings, severely stunting the franchise’s growth. And while that didn’t prove enough to keep the series from taking flight, it did kneecap the films shortly after they left the gate.
Though it preceded Star Trek Into Darkness by two years, the pre-Stranger Things, 80s-era Spielberg/Donner/Zemeckis homage/tribute/replica known as Super 8 probably should have been all the proof we needed that, at this point at least, Abrams was a filmmaker more concerned with emulating the inspirations of his youth than exploring them. He had a talent for beginnings but seemed to possess a near-compulsive aversion to coming up with endings, having abandoned every show he worked on save for Felicity early in its run. This unironically made him the perfect choice to helm the opening chapter in the first new Star Wars trilogy in ten years… and the last person in Hollywood who should have been entrusted with its conclusion. So let’s get into that.
Anakin’s line, “This is where the fun begins,” from Revenge of the Sith
Cue Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads
Title: The Return of Star Wars
The Force Awakens is the seventh installment in the Star Wars saga and the opening chapter in the Sequel Trilogy, sometimes called the Disney Star Wars Trilogy or the You Ruined My Childhood Trilogy. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll be referring to it and them as the Sequels here because that second one is a mouthful and that third one is stupid. Nobody ruined your childhood. Oh my God, get a hobby. The Sequels didn’t ruin your childhood any more than Michael Bay’s Transformers ruined mine. Because like the Force itself, Transformers: The Movie will be with me. Always.
Rodimus Prime’s line, “Till all are one!” from Transformers: The Movie
The Force Awakens was directed by JJ Abrams, who shares writing credits with legendary Empire Strikes Back scribe Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt of such modest successes as Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine. And it’s pretty good. It’s solid. It’s also a shameless rehash of A New Hope. I know. It’s been said. And I’m sorry, but it is. And while I have watched more videos and read more think-pieces to the contrary than I am presently able to number, despite your best efforts, not one of you out there has succeeded in convincing me otherwise.
Jabba’s line, “Your mind powers will not work on me, boy,” from Return of the Jedi
Nearly every beat of Episode IV is replicated somewhere in VII, down to many of the characters themselves. (Use plus and equals signs for each of the following, i.e. Rey=Luke/Poe=Luke+Han, etc.) Rey is this movie’s Luke, Ren is Vader. BB-8 is R2-D2 (BB-8’s “thumbs up” blowtorch), Poe is Luke and Han. Finn is… C-3PO… and Luke, I guess. I don’t know. They don’t all work. Let’s see. Hux is Tarkin, albeit decidedly less cool (Hux’s sad face). Snoke is the Emperor before there even was an Emperor. Leia is Leia, and Han is… Well, who is Han?
Ben Kenobi’s line, “He’s me,” from A New Hope
Yeah, basically. You got your droid carrying plans, you got your desert planet, your cantina, your Death Star, your ridiculously brutal exhibition of intergalactic military force, your unceremonious demise of a mentor figure, your trench run… so much hugging – It’s all there. Don’t get me wrong; the movie works like gangbusters. It’s funny and fast-paced, the characters are instantly likable, the dialogue is punchy…
Poe’s line, “Who talks first? Do I talk first?” followed by Finn’s, “Got a boyfriend? A cute boyfriend?” Rey’s, “No. No. The one I’m pointing to!” then Ren’s, “The droid… stole a freighter?” and finally Han’s, “That’s not how the Force works! Oh, really, you’re cold?”
…and it looks great, but it’s okay to admit that all we really got here was a new chassis on the same engine. It’s still running nines after all these years, so sure, why not reuse it? And I get it. I do. That was the whole idea. That was the plan. Nobody was tricked. Nobody was lied to. The Force Awakens is like a pretty good cover of a great song, but I fear you will never be able to sell me on the idea that the only way forward… was back. Especially now that we know how all of this ends.
Palpatine’s line, “Only now, at the end, do you understand,” from Return of the Jedi
All I’m saying is, I think another writer could have done everything The Force Awakens does and more without needing to go back to the well. And here’s the thing: I’m not upset with the movie at all. It gave us plenty. It gave us Rey, a scrappy scavenger from a desert world who is better at flying and fixing the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo…
Palpatine’s line, “What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?” from Robot Chicken
…which was enough to plunge certain corners of the Internet into a catatonic state. Always fun. It gave us Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia, trained by Luke Skywalker. And the great irony there is, he’s the legacy character, the one born from greatness and steeped in lore. Were this any other series, he’d have the words “Chosen One” tattooed across his chest! The one who should, by all rights, be this trilogy’s hero turned to the Dark Side! Even better? He wars with his own good nature, tempted by the Light Side of the Force, a franchise first. You couldn’t ask for a better emotional and thematic setup. But they rode that off the rails ‘cause we can’t have nice things.
C-3PO’s line, “You, watch your language!” from A New Hope
There’s Finn, who holds the honor of breaking the Internet before a single word in the first trailer for this film is even uttered. A Stormtrooper who resists his programming, defects to the Resistance, and turns against the only family he ever had. No way should that have been easy for him. But it was. It’s the kind of story that aches to be told and told well. It’s a travesty nothing comes of it. And then there’s Poe Dameron, a hotshot Rebel pilot with no history who was clearly supposed to die in the First Act because when he makes his heroic return at the battle on Takodana, no one behind the wheel ever comes up with anything more for him to do than blow up all the things the plot demands blow up. Sadly, not the most compelling character arc I’ve come across.
Don’t misunderstand. The Force Awakens did its job. It did its job to the tune of the third highest grossing film in history and remains the best performing Star Wars film to date. It gets the ball rolling in grand fashion even if it is often filled with just… the most nonsense that, when it isn’t actively squandering the film’s strongest ideas, serves no purpose beyond padding out its runtime. Captain Phasma is wasted, which does not change. A lot of what transpires on Takodana doesn’t add up to much. We don’t learn enough about Han and Kylo Ren’s relationship to properly sell the emotional impact of their fateful confrontation on the catwalk. And that Rathtar scene? What is that even for?
So much time is given to that scene; I honestly thought the climax was going to be Han and the Resistance sneaking Rathtars onto Starkiller Base to set them loose on the First Order, which, admittedly, would have been more imaginative than just another trench run. Why does Maz Kanata have Luke’s old lightsaber and presumably his hand?
Maz Kanata’s line, “A good question. For another time,” from The Force Awakens
Obviously not. To be honest, I don’t care how she got it. I also don’t care that this particular question isn’t answered by either of the following two chapters. It’s irrelevant to me. No explanation for how it got there would have been worth the time spent to tell me because Maz Kanata isn’t important. She has almost nothing to do with the story at large. No, I’m more concerned with things like Finn’s utterly wasted potential.
I’m going to go ahead and say this: It was a mistake showing us that First Order Stormtroopers are people. Not droids. Not clones. Feeling, thinking, human people. Because every time you cheer when one of our heroes blasts one of them to Kingdom Come, all I can think is, “Wow. Look at that child soldier, abducted from their home, indoctrinated against their will, and sent out to kill for a cause they had no choice in fighting for that you just gunned down!” And to have Finn, himself an unwilling product of that same war machine, so eager to cut short the lives of his brothers and sisters, the lives of the only people he’s ever known…? How no one floated the idea of Finn returning to the First Order to incite and lead a Stormtrooper uprising blows my mind!
Finn’s line, “I’m a big deal in the Resistance,” from The Force Awakens
If The Rise of Skywalker had been three films instead of one, this is easily the first storyline I would have pushed for. You made a mistake, one that kinda blemishes the entire trilogy. It was easy to dismiss that stunning loss of life in the laser battles and fighter clashes of the Original Trilogy because, back there and back then, those were faceless, evil men in service of a diabolical aim. They’re Space Nazis. Kill ‘em all! But that’s not the case here. Those aren’t soldiers anymore. Those are slaves beneath those helmets, and your apparent disinterest in engaging with that facet of the story is disappointing.
Kenobi’s line, “Wait a minute. How did this happen? We’re smarter than this,” and Anakin’s reply, “Apparently not,” from Revenge of the Sith
There are some of you floating around out there who like to defend the Prequels by saying there’s nothing wrong with them that wasn’t already wrong with the Original Trilogy, and while I don’t agree with that assessment, for the purposes of this video, I can meet you halfway. I don’t like to nitpick, and I have no patience for Monday Morning Quarterbacks, so what I will not do here is call out the Sequels for anything the Originals also did that didn’t bother me then. I will extend them that courtesy.
What do I mean by that? I mean, I don’t mind that I don’t know where Snoke came from or how he came to lead the First Order. When the Emperor appeared proper in Return of the Jedi, we were never told anything about him, either, because it didn’t matter. It wasn’t important. Did I wonder why Rey was more skilled than Luke? No! You know why? Because she grew up without parents on a planet where the only two occupations appear to be scavenger and guy who exploits the labor of scavengers.
Unkar Plutt’s line, “What you’ve brought me today is worth one-quarter portion.”
She was forced to survive on her own, the only way she knew how, and she was forced to do it for years. She wasn’t moisture farming with her aunt and uncle who were clearly trying to keep her as far out of harm’s way as humanly possible. Did it bother me I didn’t know how Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side? I didn’t know how it happened to Darth Vader until George Lucas decided to tell me, poorly, twenty years later. And I never even asked for that. How does something the size of Starkiller Base get built without anyone noticing? Hey, what’s that over there? Oh, look! It’s a second Death Star eight times larger than the first somehow secretly constructed in a fraction of the time!
If it didn’t bother me then, it doesn’t bother me now. What does bother me about The Force Awakens is that it wastes more time than it should on things that, frankly, do not matter. It’s also curious to me that the one thing it doesn’t crib from A New Hope is that, unlike Episode IV, which has a definitive beginning, middle, and ending, The Force Awakens refuses to resolve its own storyline. Remember, the objective in A New Hope is to get the Death Star plans to the Rebels before it can destroy their base. The objective in The Force Awakens is to find Luke. But imagine if A New Hope had ended here:
Rogue Squadron flying towards the Death Star and SMASH CUT to closing credits
Granted, at the time Star Wars came out, there was no guarantee of a sequel. The Empire Strikes Back was, at that point, anything but a foregone conclusion, so A New Hope had to be its own story. It had to end in such a fashion that everyone could walk away satisfied, and that’s something I think this era of films has forgotten how to do. The Force Awakens isn’t a whole movie. It’s most of one. No one has character arcs, and nothing’s concluded. Not really. It’s all setups without payoffs. It feels more like the pilot to a television show than the start of a multi-million dollar film franchise.
I think what never sat right with me about The Force Awakens is that it has no faith in its audience and, by extension, itself. It doesn’t believe enough in the story it’s telling to trust I’ll come back for the next chapter without it having to resort to unresolved plot threads and unanswered questions, and… I just… wish it thought better of us.
Cue I Could Never Be Your Woman by White Town
Title: An Immunity to the Past
Okay, now we have to address the Rancor in the room. We already did a lengthy review back when this came to Bluray, so I’m going to do my best not to repeat myself here. It’s been two years since we wrote that episode, and while my thoughts on the film haven’t really changed, they have evolved, so if you’d like to compare, and you can wait a minute or two, I’ll try to leave a link in the description.
Han’s line, “It’ll take a few moments to get the coordinates from the navi-computer.”
That said, The Last Jedi is the eighth installment in the Star Wars saga and the middle chapter in the Sequel Trilogy. Written and directed by Rian Johnson of the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-led modern day noir Brick, the taut, time-twisting crowd-pleaser Looper, and the critically-acclaimed, first rate whodunit Knives Out, it picks up seconds after where The Force Awakens left off, grabs the wheel, and immediately takes Star Wars off-road into some of the most daring and untested terrain the franchise has ever known… and if that’s difficult for you to hear, I am sincerely sorry, but it is the truth.
Obi-Wan’s line, “…from a certain point of view,” from The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VIII openly forces you to deal with the fact that things change. It is the first entry in the series that actively challenges the preconceived notions of the audience, and evidently a lot of people do not care for that shit at all, which is a real shame, because The Last Jedi feels like the one episode in this entire trilogy that actually has something to say. It feels like the first entry in the franchise that wants to be about… more.
Anakin’s line, “I want more. And I know I shouldn’t,” from Attack of the Clones
Yes, you should! We should always demand more from the media we consume. Someone who isn’t me, so I can’t take credit for this, said the difference between JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson is that, “Rian Johnson loves Star Wars; JJ Abrams loves the movie Star Wars.” Now, whether or not that’s true or even accurate is immaterial, and in the event that it is, it’s not an insult. It’s not a diss. Star Wars really can be for everyone. It has that power; I’ve seen it do that. It reaches across barriers and proudly wears an appeal that is nothing shy of universal, and the number of other properties capable of that feat you can probably count on one hand.
There is no wrong way to love Star Wars. There is a wrong way to engage with it, such as the scores of brutish dregs who ceaselessly bullied Kelly Marie Tran until she felt no other choice than to leave social media, but there is no wrong way to love it. Because regardless of how you feel about each individual movie, every Star Wars film is somebody’s favorite. We all come to them searching for something different, and the parts that don’t speak to you call out to others.
Maz Kanata’s line, “…it calls to you!” from The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi is hard for a lot of you. It’s work. It hurts to see Luke Skywalker, bona fide Death Star-killing, AT-AT-wrecking, emerald lightsaber-swinging Jedi badass, reduced to a shadow of himself, crushed by the very weight of the flawless image of him that has lived in your head since Return of the Jedi, his own legend. You see yourself in Luke Skywalker because you’re meant to. He’s the hero. He’s literally designed for that purpose. You’ve identified with him for so long now that to suddenly see him broken and shamed somehow feels like a reflection on you, and that’s rough. It is, but…
Kenobi’s line, “You have done that yourself!” from Revenge of the Sith
That’s not the movie’s fault. Rian Johnson didn’t do that to you. Quick tangent. I was surprised by the vitriol leveled at The Last Jedi, particularly Luke’s arc, when Wolverine’s story in James Mangold’s X-Men franchise outlier Logan is so similar. And let’s not kid yourselves. You guys love you some Logan, I know you do, because you won’t stop talking about it. So I’m curious as to how you reconcile the two. Like The Last Jedi, Logan reintroduces us to a Wolverine who is old and embittered, haunted by his past, and stripped of his legendary stature. The film brings him low and then spends its runtime reconstructing that once-untouchable status, only this time making him earn it. It’s just curious to me that you dismiss one while championing the other. Granted, unlike Luke, Wolverine remains a stone-cold killer throughout the events of Logan, but if the willingness and ability to inflict violence on others is the only trait a hero can possess that earns your respect, I’m afraid I have nothing for you.
What happens to Han and Leia is no different than what befalls Luke. It was awful to learn the two of them split, and the only way either knew how to cope with the loss of their son was for her to throw herself into her work to the exclusion of all else and for him to regress to a life of danger and uncertainty he left behind decades ago. Thirty years is a lifetime, and it only gives you whiplash because the last time you saw all of them, they were happy. They were alright. For the first time in a long time, the future for them was bright, and it makes you angry because, unlike them, you’re still back there.
Yoda’s line, “Unexpected this is, and unfortunate,” from Return of the Jedi
When you sat down to watch this on opening night, to some of you, it was still 1983. And when the lights came down, the movie asked you to face the reality that time passes, and to accept that, no matter how hard you want to fight it, you cannot go back.
Nostalgia has become something of a four-letter word, and it need not be. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both address this in different ways, but each way is telling. While the former is beholden to the past, the latter warns of its allure. Nostalgia, well…
Admiral Ackbar’s line, “It’s a trap!” from Return of the Jedi
You can get stuck in it. But whereas The Force Awakens concerns itself primarily with the celebration of the past, The Last Jedi asks us to learn all we can from it and then move forward. I feel like that’s the part that never happens. Some of you don’t want to move on. You don’t want to move ahead. You want Star Wars to stay in a very specific lane, and I’m afraid it’s just too big for that. Rian Johnson gets a lot of grief over the paths he makes these characters walk. He’s been accused of refusing to follow the story threads Abrams set up in The Force Awakens, but that’s tacitly untrue. There is nothing set up in The Force Awakens that does not play out in The Last Jedi. Rey knows her family is never coming back for her long before Kylo Ren reveals to her who they were, or rather, weren’t. Maz Kanata gets her to admit as much before her and Ren’s paths ever cross.
Maz Kanata’s line, “You already know the truth. Whoever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back.” 01:07:11
Followed by Ren’s, “You know the truth. Say it. Say it,” Rey’s tearful, “They were nobody,” and Ren’s, “They were filthy junk traders. They sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.” 01:48:44
I love that both Maz and Ren say the line, “You know the truth.” Because she does. She always knew. Rey may have been lying to herself, but she was never wrong. It’s a powerful moment of incredible growth for her, and The Rise of Skywalker walks it back, ripping up the groundwork laid by both films, and for what? It’s strange to me that The Last Jedi says, in no uncertain terms, you need not come from greatness to be great, but that beautiful idea was rejected to embrace this empty, cynical philosophy that pedigree, that worth, comes only from lineage. Speaking of both growth and lineage, let’s look at Ren. Why does Kylo Ren smash his helmet? What does that moment tell us?
The helmet is a security blanket, a way to feign strength and intimidate, to chase Darth Vader’s ghost, and when he realizes he doesn’t need it anymore, he’s finally able to move past it, to outgrow it, to be more than Vader. Ren has always struggled with his father figures, all three of them. And that lightning bolt Snoke deals him in the throne room? You know it’s not the first. The helmet is a humongous step forward for his character because it begs the question: If I don’t need this, what else don’t I need?
I feel for anybody who had their cards on Snoke being anything beyond a plot device, a way to get from here to there, because all he ever could have done is ruin Ren, and keep him from becoming his own master. The Last Jedi works so hard to break free of all the trappings of the Original Trilogy, not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because we’ve already been there and done that.
Added to that, the sudden death of Snoke yanks the redemption-by-sacrifice card off the table, pushing Kylo Ren past the point where Darth Vader could be saved, and places him on his own path. I cannot articulate how disappointing it was that The Rise of Skywalker squanders this. It robs Ren of his evolution, stripping him of drive and will by saddling him with another master. Actually, that’s not true. I can articulate that, and I will, but for now we’ll just call it another wasted opportunity in a movie built out of them.
Cue War (What is it Good For?) by Edwin Starr
Title: Rage Against the Machine
I’m going to talk about Canto Bight for a minute, and I can already feel your eyes rolling through the microphone, but I am not screwing around here. This scene gets better every time I watch it. This one scene constitutes the crux of the movie and easily could have served as the central thesis of the whole trilogy had bolder hearts been behind the wheel. It informs all the other scenes, and if The Rise of Skywalker had taken the bait, the possibilities for where that movie could have gone would have been…
Han’s, “What?” and Luke’s, “Well, more well than you can imagine,” from A New Hope
Let me break it down. The Last Jedi opens with a failed bombing run which illustrates, for the first time in the history of Star Wars, it is no longer enough to simply blow your problems up. It’s the film’s way of saying what we’ve always relied on in the past cannot save us anymore. The world has evolved beyond that; it’s built up an immunity to the past, to the old way of doing things, and our only choice now is change or die.
When DJ helps Finn and Rose escape Canto Bight aboard a stolen starship, they learn there are those with neither conscience nor allegiance who grow fat by selling arms to both sides of the conflict. Both sides. This is an idea that dates all the way back to the Prequels. The clone army commissioned by Darth Sidious couldn’t have been free, and the first Death Star was designed by the Geonosians. They didn’t do it because they thought it’d be fun; they were paid! There have always been war profiteers in Star Wars.
Han’s line, “I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things,” from The Empire Strikes Back
In that regard, the engine of war is a greater danger than any mere Force squabble. The Sith defeated the Jedi so the Rebels could, in turn, collapse the Empire, which only spawned a new conflict between the First Order and the Resistance. It’s never-ending because it’s designed that way. Good or evil, you’re still playing in the arena war built, and the only people cheering in those stands are the ones you paid to put you on the field. They’re your villains! And now we’re going to talk about The Rise of Skywalker because this is the path I wish the trilogy had taken. Because the machine of war is not only more powerful than any Sith Lord, you can’t just fly an X-wing into it and blow it to hell. It’s the common denominator, the idea that links them all. It represents a greater threat than Palpatine and makes for a deeper, more resonant theme to link all three trilogies than just this guy who was dead is back for no reason.
I may never be able to let go of the lightsaber fight in Snoke’s throne room where, for the briefest of moments, Rey and Ren stand back-to-back and literally burn down the last echoes of the old Star Wars model, the old way of doing things.
Cue Breathe by Prodigy
I hoped against hope they might join forces for the next episode. I wanted that so much. I wanted a lot of things. Alright, let’s do this.
Title: Hammer to Fall
The Rise of Skywalker is the ninth installment in the Star Wars saga and the third and final chapter of the Sequel Trilogy. It is directed by JJ Abrams, who stepped back in when producer Kathleen Kennedy released that goddamn Colin Trevorrow over creative differences. It should be noted Trevorrow still shares writing credits with Abrams, as well as Derek Connolly of Jurassic World, and Chris Terrio of the Academy Award for Best Picture-winner Argo and the Annoying Guy Standing Too Close To Me at the Comic Shop Award for Sickest Warehouse Fight-winner Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Not so much a movie as it is an… RPG on steroids, the bulk of the narrative, such as it is, takes place almost a year after the events of The Last Jedi, but in that time…
Poe’s line, “Somehow, Palpatine returned.” 00:15:25
He’s also left the entire universe an ominous voicemail that he’s back and wants all his stuff, and this sudden, preposterous turn of events sets the Resistance to quaking in their boots while across the galaxy, Kylo Ren hunts for the first of, like, four weenies needed to get us to the Third Act, I mean, to Exegol, which is like the Sith Homeworld or something. Here, Palpatine reveals he created Supreme Leader Snoke, the short-lived, scar-faced, gold lame-adorned malefactor responsible for turning Ren to the Dark Side, claiming:
Palpatine’s, “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head.” 00:04:22
Which I imagine is something some people really needed to know, but since I’m not one of them, I could not be less interested in this or his weird Snoke pickling operation. Why would he need more than one? Palpatine summons more ships than have ever appeared in all the Star Wars films combined, each of them armed with their own personal Death Star, and this is a really good place to talk about the Law of Diminishing Returns, which is defined as “the point at which the level of benefits gained becomes less than the energy invested.” Star Wars has, in all fairness, been guilty of this for years.
Darth Vader’s line, “What do you mean?” from A New Hope
I love Return of the Jedi, but the 2nd Death Star does not carry the dramatic heft of the first. And that’s not all. The Prequels, especially Attack of the Clones, manage to make lightsabers less cool because suddenly everybody has one. Like, there’s just a storage room somewhere in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant full of them, and you can just grab three or four whenever you leave on a mission in case you drop one along the way.
Can we do a supercut of every dropped/lost lightsaber in the Prequels?
They used to be rare, unique, something a Jedi made. They had value, and the fact they were used so infrequently made them all the more special. Starkiller Base… somehow manages to be even less dramatic than Death Star II, and I’m sorry to say, strapping a Death Star to the undercarriage of each and every last one of a million Star Destroyers obliterates the stakes. It erases the drama. Bigger does not mean better, and this pathological need to always escalate actually nets the opposite result. If there is no limit to Palpatine’s power, if there are no rules anymore for what is or isn’t possible, why should I care? What does this get you? You’re going to hear me ask that question a lot throughout the remainder of this, and please, be honest with yourselves when I do.
Palpatine made Snoke? Made him? Like a cake? A hideously deformed cake? Does knowing that really give you any satisfaction? Does it somehow ease the sting of this?
Snoke’s face when he takes the lightsaber blade in his side.
When that trailer dropped way back when, I distinctly remember pleading with the cosmos for the Emperor’s return to be a joke because I feared even then the likelihood of his resurrection doing massive and irreparable harm to the drama that played out over the course of the original three films was high. And I wasn’t wrong. More important, I think, than how Emperor Palpatine returned, because that explanation is dumb…
Beaumont’s line, “Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.” 00:15:36
Yeah, because no one’s ever been able to make a clone before. It’s gotta be Sith shenanigans. Plus, I’m unclear on how cloning saves you from a hundred foot high-dive into a Kyber crystal reactor that explodes, then explodes, y’know, some more, before falling hundreds of thousands of miles out of planetary orbit into the ocean. But it does.
Han’s line, “It’s all a bunch of simple tricks and nonsense,” from A New Hope
The “how” is inconsequential. No explanation would have been good because the Emperor’s story is over, and pretending like it’s not by crowbarring him into this is just lazy. The real question isn’t how he came back; it’s why? And the truly disappointing thing is, the answer has fuck-all to do with the story we’ve been watching for two films.
So much of what goes down in The Rise of Skywalker is done in direct response to fan pressure. You know, the same kind that forces animators to break their backs fixing CG hedgehogs and Warner Brothers into pumping millions of dollars into certain cuts of certain movies that probably would be better off left alone and forgotten? Too much of Rise is reactionary. Too much of it is course correction, which is especially frustrating because the course was fine. All they needed to do going into this one was:
Davish Krail’s line, “Stay on target!” from A New Hope
The subject of bowing to fan pressure is one for another day, and this thing is long enough, but nothing will ever change the fact that a better writer would have taken the threads left at the end of The Last Jedi and run wild with them instead of wasting valuable screen-time we don’t have by backtracking. When it’s all said and done, the only question you really have to ask is, “What is this worth? What does this get you?”
In our very first video, we reviewed the awe-inspiring Blade Runner 2049 and briefly discussed the Three Rules of Effective Sequel-making. The Rise of Skywalker breaks all of them, but none more so than the third one, which states: Do not betray the narrative of the previous film. Palpatine’s return was a short-term fix for what Disney and Abrams perceived to be a problem, but in taking this route, they fail to recognize the issues it creates, the most obvious one being: Palpatine’s survival negates Anakin’s sacrifice at the end of Return of the Jedi, in turn invalidating not only his character arc but the thematic throughline of the Original Trilogy and the Prequels. His sacrifice is now worth nothing. Congratulations, guys. You wrecked six movies in two hours. Here’s you medal.
Maz Kanata’s line, “…this is for you.” 02:07:45
There’s also the added ick factor that comes when you remember Revenge of the Sith heavily implies Palpatine created Anakin, which would mean Rey and Kylo Ren are now related, and that’s just not a good look for a trilogy that’s been playing around with the romantic tension between them…
Leia kissing Luke from The Empire Strikes Back
…but I guess that part’s pretty on brand for Star Wars, so whatever. I’m just going to go through these, so make yourself a drink or something. This is going to take a second.
The first thing I really want to talk about is light speed skipping. So, Poe and Finn take Chewie and the Falcon to an ice asteroid where an ally of theirs has some valuable intel from a Resistance spy in the First Order, but when Tie Fighters from the newly… summoned, I guess is the word I’ll use, Final Order come after them, they launch into what could have been one of the most memorable action sequences in the movie, leaping haphazardly from one destination to the next to shake them.
It’s such a cool idea. So cool, in fact, that it’s the kind of scene that could easily have been the climax to another episode, a nail-biting, all-or-nothing, last ditch effort to escape the Final Order. This movie doesn’t know how to build to anything. It doesn’t know how to make a moment. Every scene plays at the same intensity because all it cares about is getting to the next plot point. Not even the next scene, just the next plot point. The next thing that has to happen. If they’d been willing to take their time, let this one breathe, and break it up into more films, this scene could have risen to the ranks of the asteroid field chase from The Empire Strikes Back or even the pod race from The Phantom Menace, but the movie gives you no time to feel the tension, fear the danger, or appreciate the skill this must require from Poe. This should not have been a trilogy.
And while my hatred over Palpatine’s return may burn at galactic temperatures, I’m not going to discard everything this movie wants to do. I’m not going to cheat. I’m going to show you how it could have been done using story threads already in play.
Anakin’s line, “You will try,” from Revenge of the Sith
Rian Johnson gets admonished for splitting up the core team of Rey, Finn, and Poe in The Last Jedi, but they had already gone their separate ways by the end of The Force Awakens, so what you’re really upset about is that Johnson didn’t bring them all back together again. And because that never happened, The Rise of Skywalker subjects us to scene after forced scene of quippy, overlapping dialogue in the hope it can trick us into believing these people have all known each other for more than an hour, but you cannot fake camaraderie. It’s not enough to tell us they’re friends. Their relationships have to be built. Their banter has to be earned. This should not have been a trilogy!
Lando’s line, “All right! All right! All right!” from The Empire Strikes Back
Rey, who’s been honing her skills under the tutelage of Jedi Master Leia since the last we saw her, gets the gang ready to travel to Pasaana in search of another MacGuffin that will help them find Exegol and Palpatine, but before they go, the movie gives Rose Tico the finger by making her stay behind. And here’s all I have to say about that:
Anakin’s line, “Yippee!” from The Phantom Menace
No! You’re the writer, man. In fact, you’re the writer, the director, and the producer. You know what’s less craven than writing Rose out of the movie? Writing a storyline for her that you like, that you want to tell. You have all the power in this production there is. You control the narrative yet scene after scene you capitulate to bad faith criticism for the pleasure of trolls when all you had to do was give her a story worth telling full of moments worth cheering for. It’s degrading that Rose is given nothing to do in this film, and anyone who had a hand in that decision should be ashamed of themselves.
Yoda’s line, “How embarrassing!” from Attack of the Clones
While Rey and the gang are on their way to Pasaana, Kylo Ren has his helmet reconstructed by an ape, officially making the colossal strides he took in The Last Jedi meaningless, and this is as good a place as any to talk about how much of a complete waste of a fantastic idea the Knights of Ren are. Now there are some big, loud missed opportunities in this trilogy, but the Knights of Ren might be the biggest and the loudest. Stick around. I’ll voice my thoughts on them at the end. But back to Rey and the boys.
While on Pasaana, we’re briefly reunited with Lando Calrissian whom Abrams uses to once again try to make us believe Luke wasn’t secluding himself on Ahch-To all that time as The Last Jedi indicated, but was rather galloping across the cosmos in search of Exegol. This is the second of several attempts The Rise of Skywalker makes to sell that particular vintage of snake oil, which again, I imagine makes some people feel better about his arc, but it just rings so hollow each time it’s brought up that it honestly fails to accomplish even that.
Here’s where we learn Rey can use the Force to heal people, which doesn’t bother me because every Star Wars movie introduces a new Force ability… that’s never used again, so I wasn’t shocked; I just didn’t know what it was going to be this time around. Personally, I had time travel on my Force power Bingo card, but you can’t win ‘em all. They find the MacGuffin, a Sith dagger, but immediately lose it when the First Order abducts Chewbacca and Rey, to her horror, Hadokens the ship carrying him …
Ship explosion, Rey screaming, “Chewie!” and Finn’s, “No!” 00:40:54
…killing Chewbacca for exactly… two minutes. That’s not an exaggeration, either. It’s two minutes. He’s dead for two minutes. The movie doesn’t even give you time to grab a tissue before it lets you know he’s fine. And this isn’t even the only time this happens. They do this three more times! They would have done better to keep it a secret until Rey discovers he’s still alive fourteen whole minutes from now. At least that way, we could have been surprised along with her, but this movie seems to pride itself on its inability to properly execute even the most rudimentary of storytelling techniques.
C-3PO’s line, “I’m not much more than an interpreter and not very good at telling stories,” from A New Hope
With the Sith dagger out of reach, Poe takes C-3PO to a black market droidsmith…
C-3PO’s line, “Black market droidsmith?!” 00:43:54
…who is easily the best character in the movie, to extract the inscription on the knife from his memory banks, and if you’re starting to feel like this isn’t so much a story as it is just... a bunch of stuff happening, your instincts wouldn’t be wrong. And even that’s not right because there’s really nothing going on in a lot of these scenes. Most of them aren’t really even scenes. It’s just us looking at stuff while exposition comes at us at a breakneck pace. It’s like being strapped to a chair at a bad buffet! Along the way, BB-8 makes a new friend who doesn’t like to be touched…
DO’s line, “N-n-no, thank you.”
…and Poe runs afoul of his old flame Zorii and it doesn’t really matter. None of this does.
Zorii’s line, “Who are you hanging out with who speaks Sith?” 00:49:14
What do you care? You hate Poe! What is this? Is there a Zorii Bliss Disney+ series slated for release next Fall? Because, for the life of me, I cannot fathom why, given the total tonnage of things already on this movie’s plate and the sheer surfeit of what still needs to be accomplished, anyone would devote this much time to such pointless characters.
Threepio agrees to the procedure, even though it will erase all of his memories, and it’s honestly a kinda beautiful moment when Poe asks what he’s doing, and he replies:
C-3PO’s line, “Taking one last look, sir, at my friends.” 00:50:10
And we’ll ignore for a second that they don’t even like him, but like a lot of stuff in this movie, this is not worth anything! Threepio gets his memory back, I shit you not, forty-five minutes later, and all that did was make me wonder: Did he get all of his memories back? Like the ones he had from everything that went down during the Prequels?
Bail Organa’s line, “Have the protocol droid’s mind wiped,” and Threepio’s response, “What?!” from Revenge of the Sith
I remember that line from the trailer, back when we all still had hope this movie could work. It had a certain finality to it, a sort of promise that we were coming to the end, and sacrifices were going to be made to halt the conflict, but it’s just more snake oil. This is one of the most spineless movies I’ve ever seen, and we’re not even done yet.
While Babu Frik works on Threepio, Zorii gives Poe a portable plot convenience that’ll allow the writers to not have to figure out how to get everyone aboard the First Order ship where Chewie’s being held. They sneak in, kill some more child soldiers along the way, because I’m not going to let that go ever, they free Chewie, get captured, and then get “uncaptured” by General Hux, who reveals he’s the spy…
Hux’s line, “I’m the spy!” 01:02:47
…which is a line that should’ve come with a laugh track. Apparently Hux hates Kylo Ren so much he’s willing to betray the First Order and cost them the war, which actually isn’t a bad idea at all. That’s pretty interesting. I’d love to know more about his motiva –
General Pryde executing Hux. 01:06:16
Oh. Oh, well, alright, then. Nevermind. Rey and Ren have a lightsaber Zoom battle, which is kinda cool, and features that great shot from the trailer of them destroying the pedestal holding Darth Vader’s helmet, a moment I foolishly believed might signal they had finally joined forces and were both working together against the First Order, but nah. Who wants to watch that movie? And for the record, I don’t think Hux would have made a good primary antagonist for this episode. At least, not in his present shape, but I do believe if Rise of Skywalker had been three chapters instead of one he could have been built up over the course of those films and molded to take on that role.
Give him control of the First Order and bring Captain Phasma back to serve as his right hand.
Have them be devoted to the destruction of the Resistance and Palpatine’s Final Order because this Hux is finally rid of Ren and would die before letting someone else order him around. All this while the Knights of Ren, who would have felt betrayed and vengeful after Kylo abandoned them to join Rey, hunt him to the ends of the universe.
Let Palpatine be everyone’s foe, and have him and the Final Order run roughshod over the First Order and the Resistance, decimating their forces at every turn until they have no choice left but to end the war by combining their strength to defeat him. All the parts were there, but that’s not what we’re doing. We’re just stuck with this guy.
That shot of him with his hands out, laughing at Yoda from Revenge of the Sith
You have a choice. With more episodes, you have the time to explore not only the story threads in this film but the previous two as well. Abrams would have done well to take a page out of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s playbook. Like Prince Zuko, who undergoes an incredible, well-executed journey toward redemption that lasts two seasons, have Kylo Ren reign over the First Order, give him everything he ever thought he wanted, and have him discover he was wrong, that the power he sought is empty and unfulfilling, a cold comfort, then let him begin the search for true meaning. Let Luke fill the role of General Iroh, guiding Ben back to the Light. Make Hux Ren’s Azula, this dangerous force in his life that plays at being an ally but has designs only on Ren’s destruction.
Let the reveal of Rey’s connection to Palpatine be the catalyst for her descent toward the Dark Side, but really go for it. Take your time to sell it. She wanted so much for so long to be part of the story. Let that knowledge that she is, only not in the way she always hoped, threaten to destroy her. It would have been amazing to watch Ben come back from the Dark while she slipped further away, each passing the other, each recognizing the signs along the way, and knowing only they could save one another.
To make this movie work, however, all the excess has to go. Zorii, Jannah, Poe’s history, C-3PO’s memory – Cut it all. And focus on the few threads that actually mean a damn.
Title: The Final Nail
There’s a lot that doesn’t work in this film. It’s disrespectful of what came before it and it is shamefully misguided, but the biggest problem with it is simply that its heart isn’t in the right place, and nowhere is that more apparent than right here:
Kylo Ren’s line, “You’re his granddaughter. You are a Palpatine.” 01:04:28
So. Let me just say that the mental gymnastics required to get to this place would net you perfect 10s across the board, a gold medal…
Maz Kanata’s line, “…this is for you.”
…and your face on a box of Wheaties, and it is world-class fuckery. And it’s not that it’s dumb; it’s that it’s… so dumb that when I hear it, all I can see is that SpongeBob meme (the “ight imma head out” meme). Yeah, this is where I check out. The thing that aggravates me most with The Rise of Skywalker is that, like a spoiled, petulant child, it doesn’t even attempt to engage with the previous films. The movie is… bratty. An entire universe of possibilities, which was just expanded for you by opening the Force up to all people on every world by The Last Jedi, you’re welcome, and it says, “No. I don’t care about that. Only these few people from this one family in all the galaxy are worth caring about.” I hate… so much… that Ren says:
Kylo Ren’s line, “You don’t just have power. You have his power.” 01:04:22
It’s the fact that he says “his” power. It’s a bone thrown to the vilest fans in the base. The ones who just could not deal with Rey being stronger than Luke. And not even Last Jedi Luke. Empire Luke! The Luke who was still training! It couldn’t just be that she had strength; there had to be an explanation for that strength. It strips The Last Jedi of its message and replaces it with a vacuous shock that’s fleeting. So again, I ask. What does this get you? Is this really better to you? Did anyone out there actually hear that line, sigh in relief, and say, “Oh, thank God! Thank God she’s not just powerful!”?
Obi-Wan’s line, “So uncivilized!” from Revenge of the Sith
When Rey and the gang set off for the forest moon of Endor and the wreckage of Death Star II, we’re introduced to Jannah, another Stormtrooper who defected from the First Order, and while I love that it turns out Finn wasn’t the only one, this is just the most recent story thread that doesn’t go anywhere or add anything.
Here’s a fun game you can all play at home. Go through this movie… and pick out all the characters in this… who could have just been Rose Tico. Rose is a pilot and a mechanic! I dig Babu Frik as much as the next guy, but why not have Rose perform C-3PO’s memory wipe? Why not have Rose be the one to figure out how to get the gang aboard the First Order ship to rescue Chewie? Why not have Rose introduce everyone to a scrappy band of mechanics, engineers, and saboteurs, and lead them against the Final Order at the climax? This movie keeps adding characters it doesn’t need to tell stories that don’t matter while sidelining the ones who’ve already proven their value.
Han’s line, “All of it. It’s all true,” from The Force Awakens
Okay, I’m going to ignore the fact that what the Sith dagger does here makes no kind of sense even by Star Wars standards because that’s not a hill I’m willing to die on.
Qui Gon Jinn’s line, “I can’t fight a war for you,” from The Phantom Menace
Rey finds the remains of Palpatine’s throne room inside the Death Star wreckage and runs afoul of… uh, Sith Rey, I guess, because this movie has been busy trying to sell us on not only a revenge arc over the parents she couldn’t even remember but also this idea teased in The Last Jedi that Rey is so desperate for answers about her past, when offered those answers by the Dark Side, she runs, arms outstretched, to embrace it.
Luke’s line, “You went straight to the Dark. It offered you something you needed. And you didn’t even try to stop yourself.”
The problem, as with most things in this movie, is it’s rushed, underdeveloped. Anger? Hatred? These have never been Rey’s weaknesses, so whenever she utters a line like:
Rey’s line, “He killed my mother. And my father. I’m going to find Palpatine and destroy him.” 01:06:41
It doesn’t ring true. And while I do like that the Emperor’s Theme plays over that moment, I take issue with the score music used in this scene: Give it a listen: (01:14:45 to 01:15:09) Sound familiar? It should. The last time you heard it was here. It’s from Return of the Jedi, and it’s the music that plays when Luke peels off Darth Vader’s mask, finally coming face-to-face with his father for the first time. This scene is about how, through love and compassion, the two of them are able to save one another: Luke from the Emperor and Vader from himself. And it has shit to do with what’s going on in this scene!
This happens a few times in Rise of Skywalker. I’m aware John Williams is pushing ninety, and the rigors of composing two-plus hours of all new music every couple years would be taxing even for a young man but, leitmotif, or the assigning of recurring musical themes to characters, places, and situations, has always played an integral part in the way Star Wars tells its stories. In the words of Lindsay Ellis, “Things mean things, man!” If you’re just going to crib music from other places, might I recommend the Emperor’s Theme, or the score that plays during Luke’s vision in the cave on Dagobah? That, at least, is a scene wherein our hero is confronted by a illusion meant to reveal some truth about themselves. It’s not entirely appropriate here, but at least it shows you tried.
Yoda’s line, “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try,” from The Empire Strikes Back
Sith Rey does at least pull a Bilbo in this scene (01:16:28), and I thought that was fun. While Rey’s busy reenacting that Kermit the Frog meme, Kylo Ren shows up, snags the Sith thingy, breaks it, and they throw down. A lot happens here over the course of the next few minutes, and I realize the untimely passing of Carrie Fisher put Abrams’ back against a narrative wall, but the most vexing decision made in response to that comes when Leia performs what I can only describe as a… Force balance transfer, like at a bank, sacrificing her own life to bring Ben back from the Dark Side, which inadvertently begs the question: You could have done this any time you wanted? Like, you could have done it before you sent Han into Starkiller Base to get Qui Gonned?
Han getting run through by Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens followed immediately by Obi-Wan’s, “Nooooooo!” from The Phantom Menace
It was a tough road, one I don’t envy the filmmakers for having to tread. So, Ben comes back to the Light Side… seconds before Rey deals him a mortal wound. No cause for concern, though. She heals him in short order then steals his car, leaving Finn behind for the hundredth time, and I’m not sure when this happened, exactly; it wasn’t always this way, but Finn’s whole character, his entire identity in this, is just, “Where’s Rey?”
Supercut of every “Rey/Where’s Rey/I gotta find Rey!” Finn utters in the trilogy complete with ticker in the upper corner. They’re probably already compiled on YouTube.
It is upsetting that he has nothing to do in this but chase her, and when he can’t chase her because she’s not there, he looks for her, and when he can’t look for her, he asks people where she is, and when there’s no one to ask, he just stands there and wonders when she’ll be back. That’s not a character; that’s a dog. It’s so weird, but you don’t even really get to dwell on it long because that’s when we find ourselves in this scene.
This scene does not work. And no amount of mental contortion can change that fact. Han isn’t a Force ghost. This isn’t a conversation like the ones we always saw between Luke and Obi-Wan. I’m not trying to be crass, but this is effectively a hallucination. And yes, I get it. Ben knew his father, so I wholly accept that what’s happening now is he’s hearing the things he knows Han would say were he actually standing in front of him, and that is not without its own sense of beauty. Where it goes wrong, however, is here:
Ben’s line, “Dad?” and Han’s reply, “I know.” 01:26:32
Nevermind the Empire callback; I don’t care about that. I care that what this scene says is, “Yes. I killed you. I’ve killed boatloads of people, but it’s okay. I forgive myself.” And that is not how forgiveness works. Ben is giving himself a pass here, a get out of jail free card, and that is just wrong. What will never make sense to me is why this conversation isn’t between Ben and Luke, especially after he promised him he would:
Luke’s line, “See you around, kid,” from The Last Jedi
Leave Harrison Ford, who clearly couldn’t be bothered, judging by the look of him, out of this. This scene didn’t need him. It barely warrants him climbing out of his Cessna to come shoot it. This movie makes more work for itself, and it doesn’t have to. The Last Jedi really did give you everything you needed to both still have this scene and have it make sense, but I guess it’s more fun to throw shade.
Speaking of throwing shade, while Ben’s been talking to himself, Rey returned to Ahch-To with her mind made up to stay there forever. She trashes Ben’s TIE Fighter and when she chucks her lightsaber into the flames, this happens:
Luke’s Force ghost catching the saber, and his line, “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect.” 01:30:56
Now, the consensus here is this is another dig at The Last Jedi, as that single moment sent tectonic shockwaves through portions of the Star Wars fanbase some have yet to fully recover from, but I have a different read on this scene. Hamill’s delivery of that line is so smarmy, so self-deprecating, that this, unlike everything from Rose Tico being written out to Rey’s parentage, doesn’t actually feel like a jab at Last Jedi to me. He gives her the littlest smirk at the end because here’s the thing: Luke was right in The Last Jedi. The stranglehold over the Force long held by the Jedi and their blind, servile fidelity to an arrogant, antiquated ideology caused their own downfall. That much is fact.
Luke failed Ben. He turned his back on his friends, his sister, and the Resistance because that’s what he believed was best for everyone, that he would do more harm by staying. He wasn’t wrong, but the manner in which he chose to deal with all of that was. But that’s the point of The Last Jedi. People seem to forget that Luke returns at the end of that movie and what he does, facing down the First Order alone, inspires the galaxy. He becomes his own legend in the climax, living up to everything everyone believes he is. Not what he is, what people believe he is. And the idea of Luke Skywalker in the minds of allies and foes alike is more powerful than one lightsaber. That’s why he threw it away. It, on its own, couldn’t fix the problem. Force could not save Ben. Rey offers him the lightsaber, offers Luke the trilogy, and he refuses because it’s no longer his story.
He’s poking fun at himself here because it was hubris, and he’s learned, but that’s a lesson he learned before this movie started, so I’m in the minority on this one being some sort of swipe at Last Jedi. Maybe I’m giving Abrams more credit than he deserves here, but if my interpretation of this scene is wrong, that makes him a petty, vindictive child, and I’d really like to believe he’s a better man than that.
Qui Gon Jinn’s line, “I wish that was so,” from The Phantom Menace
What I do have a problem with in this scene is that the Force ghost effects on Luke look like hot garbage, and that creepy CG Leia always gives me the jibblies. Can we please stop using it until the technology no longer makes me feel like I’m staring into the abyss?
Meanwhile, everyone mobilizes to join Rey on Exegol for the last battle with Palpatine and the Final Order, and Poe pumps everyone up by giving this rousing speech:
I had a kind of idea to let Poe’s speech play but inject lines from other famous movie speeches into it: Independence Day, Remember the Titans, Avengers: Endgame, Burton’s Planet of the Apes. It has a line like, “It’s time to fight the monkeys,” but I might be misremembering it, Braveheart, We Are Marshall, Rocky Balboa, etc.
Yeah, it’s alright. It’s no Guile from Street Fighter, but I’m not here to hand out awards.
Maz Kanata’s line, “…this is for—” but cut it off before she finishes this time
Rey goes to confront Palpatine, and the Resistance fleet arrives on Exegol, setting off a massive skirmish that, unfortunately, serves as yet another example of the Law of Diminishing Returns. This is meant to be the space battle to end all space battles, but it falls short because it’s just… nothing new. We have seen this again (Return of the Jedi) and again (The Phantom Menace) and again (Revenge of the Sith), and each time, it gets less compelling. It’s just not as engaging as it should be. All of this should mean more. It should be different from every ship-to-ship battle we’ve seen before, one for the history books, but it just feels the same, like a copy of a copy.
At least there were space horses this time. Palpatine even resorts to his old standby, forcing Rey to watch a firefight she can’t join as her friends get ripped to shreds. In his defense, Snoke did that, too. I guess now we know why.
Cue Duel of the Fates
Title: How to Kill Giants
This is the part where Palpatine reveals his insidious master plan. Rey will strike him down, ‘cause that has been my man’s favorite flavor of ice cream for a minute…
Palpatine’s line, “Strike me down, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.”
…and when she does, all the Sith who ever lived will flow through her, she will sit upon the throne to reign for a thousand years, and here’s a question: What is a Sith Lord?
Mace Windu’s line, “A Sith… Lord?” from Revenge of the Sith
And before you answer, because I know you have an answer, listen to what I’m about to tell you now. I know that you know. As you watched this video, you probably reacted to a number of my gripes and complaints about who people are and why this thing is here or that thing is there, and yes, I’m aware Exegol isn’t the Sith Homeworld, but I’ll bet it riled you up when I said it was, angrily grumbling statements not unlike, “That’s Blank, dumbass, and you’d know that if you’d read Volume Two of Blank, or picked up Issue Seventeen of Blank, or watched Season Four: Episode Six of Blank, or played Blank Blank: Shadow of the Blank for the PS4, which is absolutely my problem.
Star Wars has grown too dependent on the countless novels, video games, comic books, and various animated shows for filling in the gaps in its story that, quite honestly, should have been covered by the films. And I say that as someone who enjoys a fair amount of that supplemental material. A lot of it is inspired work brought to life by talented writers and artists, and while I have no issue whatsoever with looking outside of the movies for more information regarding characters or ships or planets or weapons, the key word there is “supplemental.” The films have an obligation to give the audience what it needs to understand who the players are and what’s going on. I should not have to read a novel, watch 4 episodes of Clone Wars, and sit through 2 hours of Xbox cut scenes before even sitting down in the theater. Eleven Star Wars movies, and I still don’t know what a Sith is because no one in the films has ever cared enough to tell me.
Darth Maul’s line, “At last, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have revenge,” from The Phantom Menace
Revenge for what? What did they do to you? I only ask because this war seems to be what the entire saga is about, it’s allegedly about to end right now, and I have no idea what you’ve been fighting over this whole time. When the first reviews for The Rise of Skywalker hit, Star Wars Official went into overdrive, cranking out new material every couple days with the express intent of filling in the massive gaps this movie leaves open.
Star Wars has reached this very spoiled place where it says and does whatever it wants and then relies on other media to do the legwork to ensure its precious canon remains intact, but canon can be a noose. It can be the edge of the knife. If you are a slave to canon, it does more harm than good. All it can do is choke you. All it can do is keep your world from growing organically. And the worst part is, it’s all subject to change at the drop of a hat, so what is it worth? What does being beholden to it get you?
Kylo Ren’s line, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to,” from The Last Jedi
This is why I wanted to wait until the end to talk about the Knights of Ren, because this scene? This scene hurts. I want you to imagine what this scene would feel like if The Rise of Skywalker had been more than one film, and in that added time we had gotten to know the Knights of Ren. Their names, their personalities, where they came from. All of it. And I looked up their “history” on Wookiepedia – Yeah, that’s really what it’s called – and not surprisingly, it wasn’t helpful. The canon explanation for who and what the Knights of Ren are is insular and incomprehensible to anybody who doesn’t consume Star Wars the way the rest of us process oxygen, so it’s not worth much to me.
But consider what this scene would be like if we knew them. What if they had been students from Luke’s temple, lifelong friends of Ben who joined him when he left? What if they had gone on adventures together when they were young? What if they were like brothers and sisters to him? I say sisters because I honestly don’t know if any of them are women. What if there was one that looked up to him? One that saw himself as his rival? One who was in love with him? What if they shared history? What if Ben cared about the Knights of Ren? How much more does this scene instantly become worth?
I think if there’s one idea surrounding Palpatine that exhausts me more than any other, it’s this belief that he can see the future, because it’s obviously not true. When Rey and Ren team up to take him down for good, he’s surprised to find they are:
Palpatine’s line, “A dyad in the Force. 01:52:48
And possess…
And the following line, “A power like life itself.” 01:52:51
At which point he changes his master plan, the one he’s supposedly been concocting since Rey was a child, and decides to suck the life force out of them. While that’s going on, the movie goes for an “On your left” that’s utterly unmerited and carries even less emotional weight than that scene between Han and Ben. And it didn’t have to be this way. A scene like this can definitely work. We know it can. A scene like this can absolutely slay in the theater, but you kinda do need time to properly set it up. Maybe not ten years, but definitely more than two hours. I don’t know these people. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know their place in this war, or what being here cost them, so while this moment isn’t worthless, it is worth less. It should be more powerful than it is.
Rallying all the free systems in the galaxy to fight for this one cause is grand opera; it’s what Leia wanted, it is Star Wars, but you don’t get to just do this without earning it. This moment should move you, but it doesn’t. And it doesn’t because nothing in this movie is sincere. Nothing in this movie comes from a place of heart or warmth or humility. It’s childish and angry and snide. Filmmaking by committee. The soulless, systematic checking of tiny boxes, and nobody gets to go home until we’ve checked them all.
I do love this line, though:
General Pryde’s line, “Where did they get all these fighter craft? They have no navy,” and the Officer’s response, “It’s not a navy, sir, it’s just… people.” 01:55:00
It’s the kind of line that might have meant something if only the time had been given to build a theme out of it. This movie keeps moving the goal posts. I think that’s another reason it’s so difficult to stay invested in. The objective keeps changing.
If I know victory hinges on a torpedo getting fired down a two-meter exhaust port or an attack can’t go forward until a shield generator is down, then I understand what we’re doing and what’s at stake. But the Force dyad thing that turns Palpatine into Super Saiyan God Palpatine comes out of nowhere, and this leads, perhaps, to the issue to top them all, a malignant doubt that manages to not only persist months following my seeing this but metastasize. Rey destroys Palpatine by deflecting his Force lightning back at him, something I thought we had earlier established does not work…
Palpatine’s line, “Power! Unlimited power!” from Revenge of the Sith
…and I don’t love this moment. I know Luke and Rey are two different characters, even though Rise of Skywalker brings her arc parallel to his own despite The Last Jedi’s efforts to steer her in a more original direction, but I kinda hate that it’s Luke’s compassion, his cessation of hostility that defeats Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi, but here it’s just sheer brute force. She’s channeling all the Jedi who ever lived, and that’s cool and all, I guess, but all it adds up to is, “I have bigger glowing blue things than you, so I win.”
Cue Your Purpose by Fat Jon from the Samurai Champloo OST
Title: To Live Forever
Abrams and the gang have dug themselves a hole here, because while Palpatine does blow up real good and all, I am struck with a simple reality that cannot be ignored. Why would you ask me to believe for a second that a guy who regularly clones himself, who is immune to lightning, who fell into a reactor that exploded more times than something like that really should, wouldn’t just survive this, too? Yeah, I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but I will never be convinced Palpatine is actually dead, and that is very much your fault, so if he turns up unexpectedly in some damn Star Wars thing twenty years from now, I wouldn’t be too surprised. The Rise of Skywalker has an unhealthy preoccupation with cheating death, with beating the odds, doing the impossible, but in chasing such elusive prey, Abrams and his coconspirators have led Star Wars into territory that may take years of effort and innovation to navigate out of.
Destroying Palpatine kinda… kills Rey a little. Not completely but, y’know, some, which honestly would’ve been fine if they’d left it alone, but Ben’s just not having it. He missed everything because he was down a hole, but he’s back now, and he does that thing where he uses the Force to heal her, but he kinda… sucks at it, I guess, because unlike Rey, when he does it, he just… dies. They’ve been going back and forth with this whole Force healing/resurrection thing like “two teenage lovers trying to see who can make the other hang up the phone first,” but in the end, Rey elects not to bring him back, even though we all know she can. I mean, we’ve seen her do it. Twice. And it obviously costs her nothing to do it, which makes her decision to not even try all the more vexing.
C-3PO’s, “Sometimes I just don’t understand human behavior,” from Empire Strikes Back
Death in Star Wars has always been an interesting thing. Some go peacefully when they die, transforming into the Force (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Luke) to become ghosts capable of guiding the living in their trials and perils. Other times, they die, and they’re just… dead. Like, on the floor (Count Dooku). On the cold, hard floor (Qui Gon Jinn). And some other times, people who absolutely should be dead come back whenever and wherever the hell they want to (Darth Maul cut in half then at the end of Solo, Boba Fett in The Mandalorian, Season Two, Palpatine) with no real rhyme or reason behind it. You never really know which one it’s going to be anymore.
Death in Star Wars used to feel definitive, but it doesn’t anymore. With the advent of Force resurrection, that era is now clearly over, and that is a “genie back in the bottle” kinda situation. Meaning, you’re never going to be able to do that. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Star Trek Into Darkness. The Rise of Skywalker has done worse than kill Star Wars; it’s killed death, and I don’t know how you come back from that.
Cue Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp
Title: Across the Stars
I understand why Abrams wanted to close the door here. It makes sense on paper, at least. The journey ends where it all began, forming a perfect bookend to the saga.
George Lucas’s line, “It’s like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.”
Yep. Got it. Thank you. Except no. Not really. Luke hated living here so much that he swore he’d never come back, and when he did come back, he was so mad about it he masterminded an incident probably now taught to schoolchildren on Tatooine as the Sarlacc Massacre. Lest we forget, this is the place where his aunt and uncle were incinerated in the doorway of their home. And if you think Luke hated this sun-parched litter pan of a planet, Leia was actually enslaved here. She’s not even from this part of the galaxy. Neither of these characters have any good memories associated with this planet. Why would you bring them here? This is – This is like if I died and you buried me under my high school!
I can’t say I’m in love with Rey taking the Skywalker name. If she had to take anyone’s name, I would have preferred it be Organa, but truth be told, I don’t care for that either because Rey doesn’t need a last name. I wish Finn and Poe were here with her in this last shot. She searched for her family for three films, never realizing they were right there with her all along, and that may be too sentimental for a modern audience, but this all started when Luke looked to that horizon, alone, with no place in the universe. I would have liked very much to see it end with Rey on that same horizon, found.
I don’t hate this movie, though I feel like it wants me to. I do recall someone asking me what I thought of it on my way out of the theater, and my response to them, which was:
Han Solo’s line, “I feel terrible,” from The Empire Strikes Back
It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s not even the worst thing I’ve seen lately, but it is a flawed production that would have greatly benefitted from a lot more backbone, the courage to tune out the endless barrage of bad faith arguments leveled against its predecessor, and casting off the rusted shackles of the trilogy format. Let Palpatine come back if you absolutely must, but for the love of Yoda, have a damn plan.
I think it’s obvious at this point there was never really one in place. At least, not one anybody was required to adhere to. If they had taken a page out of Harry Potter’s playbook or even classic Star Trek, and just treated the episodes like separate but connecting tales in an ongoing adventure, taking as much time as wanted to tell as many stories as needed, everyone would have been happier with the outcome.
I’m not sure what’s next for Star Wars. Personally, I could do with a break. But let’s be honest. Those are words I’ve heard myself say before. I didn’t need more movies after Return of the Jedi, but I was thrilled to have them. And while the Prequels weren’t exactly my cup of blue milk, I was delighted to see a whole new generation of fans grow up alongside them, taking the next leg in this relay across the stars.
Star Wars will always be there in one form or another. I don’t know if we’ll ever see these characters again, but I know this isn’t goodbye. I only hope the next time we do this, whosoever earns the great and terrible, occasionally thankless charge of carrying this legacy forward, is able to hear their heart through all the noise that drowned this trilogy and will no doubt be waiting, starved and eager to try it again. I hope they listen to the past while also looking to the future, taking much-needed lessons from the former to inspire and shape the latter, because don’t ever let anyone tell you different. It has always been possible to do both.
Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed today’s episode, hit that subscribe button, leave a comment, and give us a like. Ring that bell so you never miss an update, and follow Tangent 1985 on Twitter for more. I’m M. Glenn Gore, and I’ll see you next time.
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