Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker


At last, my long-awaited post on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.  You know you've been on the edge of your seat wondering what I thought of the epic finale to 40+ years of saga!

The picture above is me and my brother, having just finished our first viewing of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (aka, "TROS"). In case you cannot tell from our expressions, we kind of liked it.

So, my brother Sean and his family traveled to Pennsylvania for the holidays. They arrived on December 23rd, late in the evening (after driving all the way from east Texas!). Sean and I made a blood-pact that we would wait to see TROS until we were together over the holiday break. If you're doing the math, that means that we would have to wait about a week after the movie was released before we went to see it. Hence my social media activity on December 20th:


I had to remove myself from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter almost entirely for about a week so that I would not be exposed to any spoilers. And I was successful! All of the spoiler-worthy info in the movie was a surprise for me.

Before I go on - if you haven't seen the film yet you should stop reading now. There will be spoilers if you continue.

[...]

Okay, you're still here so you must have already seen the movie. Onward!

The short version: It. Was. Awesome.

The long version....

From the very opening, I was hooked. Kylo Ren tearing it up on Mustafar (the world where Obi-Wan battled Anakin Skywalker, and where Darth Vader eventually made his home) in search of the Sith Wayfinder was a great entre into the flick. We see Palpatine in the first five minutes of the film, after Ren finds him on Exegol, the Sith planet.

The plot is great; Rey is the granddaughter of Sheev Palpatine (aka, the baddest-baddie in the Galaxy Far, Far Away), and when Kylo Ren reveals this to her she isn't sure if she is good or bad. Add to that, she discovers that she can throw Force Lightning much in the same way that her grandpa-pa can.

She returns to Ach-To to be a hermit in the way that Luke did and - TAH-DAH - Force Ghost Luke comes to visit her. He says that he was wrong in thinking that way and that she shouldn't run from her destiny the way that he did.

We got lots of great scenes with Leia, despite the fact that Carrie Fisher passed away several years ago.

And there was what I thought was a fantastic sub-plot that found Rey and Kylo forming a dyad in the Force. The only way that Palpatine could be defeated was by the two of them joining forces (heh... get it? Joining Forces?).

Before I go any further, I should mention that I am one of those fans (seemingly a minority) that really liked Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi. I thought that scenes like this one were magnificent:



(The most dramatic piece happens at 1:30 in that clip)

When the music (and every other sound) drops out, that grabbed me.

So, I point all of this out to say that as far as criticisms go, I didn't feel as much "art" in The Rise of Skywalker as I did in TLJ. The Last Jedi was a beautiful film. If you were to strip away the Star Wars aspect, it was still, simply put, beautiful. Maybe that's just me.

While seeing a lot of Carrie Fisher on the screen was great, there has been a lot of chatter and (likely deserved) criticism that Rose Tico (ably played by Kelly Marie Tran), who had a central role in TLJ, was seemingly sidelined in TROS. I felt this throughout the movie as well, and only learned afterward that much of Rose's sub-plot had to be left on the cutting room floor due to a decision by the filmmakers:

One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie [Fisher]’s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.

...but it still left me feeling 'blah' in the theater.

Two more criticisms for you, then I'm done.

First, Finn. Throughout the entirety of TROS, Finn tells Rey that he needs to say something to her. By my estimation this happens at least three times. But, by the time that you've finished the 2 hours, 23 minute run time, Finn never resolves that tension. He never ends up talking to her privately. It is definitely inferred that Finn is Force-sensitive, perhaps even strong with the Force. On at least two separate occasions in the film Finn talks about "feeling" things. Like the kind of "feeling" that a Jedi might describe. The viewer is left to wonder if Finn will be Rey's first pupil (that is, if Rey takes up the mantle of the Jedi Order).

And last, The Kiss. Ugh. I don't even know where to begin.

So spoiler: Kylo Ren joins Rey in fighting Palpatine. They win, but at a great cost. As Rey lay on the ground (ostensibly dead), Ben Solo (formerly Kylo Ren) holds her in his arms and uses the powers of the Force (and the dyad connection that he holds with Rey) to heal her and restore life to her body. She awakes, looks into his eyes and says, "Ben!" Then they kiss.

For me, the "relationship" (if you can describe it that way) between Rey and Kylo has been developed to be that of a sibling one, not a romantic one.

My polling results found that folks (4 of 7) agree with me:


Geez. Seven respondents.

Anyway, my alarmingly small follower-base aside, the point stands. When I was in the theater and Rey and Ben kissed in the final minutes of The Rise of Skywalker, I wanted to groan aloud. I restrained myself because, unlike my daughter, I am able to not make noises when watching a movie or television show. But I really wanted to groan.

I've talked with other people who felt similarly, and described it as the "Disney-fication" of Star Wars. While I think that the kiss was both completely unnecessary and cringe-worthy, I think that Disney has done a great job at not "Disney-fying" the Star Wars Universe.

[Side note: next week the Wife and I will be headed to Orlando for a four day getaway and, while we're there, you KNOW that we're going to visit Galaxy's Edge. More to come on that later.]

I wish that J.J. Abrams would have just had Ben and Rey hug and gotten on with it. The kiss seemed forced (HA!), since the only romantic chemistry that I felt on-screen was between Rey and Finn (see my previous complaint about Finn).

BUUUT, I'm focusing on the criticisms. Don't let that fool you into thinking that I didn't like the movie - BECAUSE I DID!

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a great way to end the saga, while leaving enough "what if?" questions lingering to continue to build on the franchise in the same general timeline. I've seen the film twice now (the Wife and I went to see it just after the new year). I'm going to reserve judgment in ranking within the entire saga, but based on my current feelings I think that it's probably in the top five. For me.

How about you? Have you seen the film? What did you think? Did you love Babu Frik as much as I did?



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