Rise of Skywalker – Thoughts on the movie and the Force trilogy

Rise of Skywalker is a failure. It was poorly setup by its predecessors but that reason isnt enough to explain its unworthiness. It has neither heart, nor soul, nor a mind of its own. Its main aim is to deliver an end to the Force Awakens trilogy in a way that just about satisfies all of its main target segments. There is no higher goal. No real interest in its protagonists or even in the universe. It’s packed with set pieces, characters, and plot developments and yet it leaves no impression. It’s dizzyingly kinetic, and full of hectic activity – like a franchise desperately trying to escape a hole its trapped in. A hole that’s been six years in the making.

In 2012 Disney made a hefty investment in the Star Wars universe. Eager to earn back the money they did what a lot of anxious corporates do when faced with tough challenges: they threw money at safe but established talents – JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan. In six months the two wrote the Force Awakens. They were able to do this because they remained faithful to A New Hope. They introduced new characters but for the most part the story was a retread, a soft reboot of a beloved classic. The Force Awakens succeeded – to a degree. It was box office monster and the critics were largely sympathetic towards it but it traded on brand, nostalgia and goodwill to get it over the line rather than good storytelling and memorable scenes. Most regrettably not a single character shone. Where A New Hope had multiple characters who were unique and went on to become iconic, A Force Awakens had none; Kylo Ren, the wannabe Darth Vader, was intriguing, but the others – Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose, Snoke – failed to win hearts. The weight of expectations both from the studio and the audience meant that the movie had to be epic. It had to be big, loud and packed with nostalgia. It had no room for the small stuff. A New Hope was a tale of a farm boy who wants to rescue a princess. A Force Awakens couldn’t afford such innocence. And as a result not a single protagonist in it endeared. But the movie was a hit. And it appeared that the safe and the talented had delivered.

Then came the sequel – The Last Jedi for which another talented director was roped in: Rian Johnson. But unlike JJ Abrams Rian Johnson had no intention of playing it safe. He wanted to be subversive. And so instead of following the template of Empire Strikes Back, which would have been the logical thing to do, he decided to play with the tropes that were fundamental to the franchise. He didn’t like the idea of the chosen one and so he made Rey a nobody. He killed off Snoke, the designated big bad of the series. And he made Luke question the elitist Jedi order. He also made other underwhelming choices: the slow space chase around which the film was wrapped felt insipid, the arc of Poe Dameron, his emergence as a leader felt forced, as did the mission that Rose and Finn went on. And the final battle when Luke’s projection single-handedly battled the First Order felt incongruous with the universe we are familiar with, a universe where the Jedi while powerful isn’t all powerful. Whimsical. If Force Awakens was too pat then Last Jedi was too whimsical. It’s one thing for a creative to take chances but if the chances he takes doesn’t develop the characters, enrich the universe, or further the plot then what purpose does it serve? If there are fundamental difference in the tale the creators of the first and the second installments want to tell then how is the audience expected to make any investment in it?

So The Rise of Skywalker was set up for failure. Unlike Return it had no cliffhangerto resolve in its first act nor any fundamental plot concern to address in its third(will father and son unite?) Apart from the question Who is Rey? it had no real chips to play with. And so was left with the daunting task of generating a conclusion to a trilogy on the backs of ill-developed characters with confused arcs and a non-existent villain. JJ Abrams returned for the Rise, which he co-wrote with Chris Terrio (Argo and BatmanvsSuperman.) Since Last Jedi had received a lot of flak from Star Wars fans – although the critics had embraced it – the two were essentially running a salvage operation. Risks couldn’t be taken. To win back the goodwill Last Jedi had squandered Rise would have to be faithful to the tropes that had made the Star Wars franchise so lovable. It had to be epicer, familiar, larger; if the earlier movies had a hundred Star Destroyer then this one would have a thousand; if the earlier movies had one or two characters from the original trilogy then this one would have them all; Rey wouldn’t be a nobody( a big fuck you to Rian); and Luke (his ghost) would no longer be ambivalent to the Jedi order. Bigger and smoother, machine tooled for the Star Wars community, that’s what JJ Abrams set out to make with Rise of Skywalker but even in this endeavor he has failed.

The main plot development in Skywalker is the return of Palpatine. That’s right the very Palpatine that Darth Vader sacrificed his life to destroy. Palpatine allows Abrams to solve two problems facing Rise: Who is the big bad and who is Rey? For not only is Palpatine revealed to be the evil puppeteer(literally) running the galactical show, he is later also revealed to be Rey’s grandfather. Now that’s a big twist but it doesn’t matter. Why? Because its unloaded onto the viewers with the same frenzy as all the other plot points in the movie. Its played out not so much as a pivotal moment in the story that will set up the grand finale but as an excuse to jostle the viewer from setpiece to setpiece; it does the answer the question Who is Rey? but only in a formal sense. Palpatine has been brought back because he is a familiar figure, and powerful enough to explain Rey’s chosen status. She’s special because he’s special. And so having unburdened itself of the important question the trilogy purported to set-up the movie is free to carry on to the next action sequence. There is no emotional weight to the development as there is no emotional weight to the development of any other plot points. Important characters suffer large setbacks including death, and having their memory erased, but it doesn’t matter because the plot armor makes them whole with the same ease with which Abram sacrificed them in his quest to entertain.

Reversals and mystery boxes are a big part of Abrams narrative repertoire. He likes to intrigue, misdirect. Someone’s dead! Oh not really. That’s how Mission Impossible III begins. Ethan Hunt’s wife is dead! Oh no, not really! Chewie is dead! Oh no, not really. Rey is dead! Oh no, not really. Isn’t this the very definition of anti-climatic? Its all very well to set-up intrigue and deliver emotional gut-punches but if it’s all based on false premises, if it all can be undone with some plot exposition then how can it be any good? His Alias tv-series was full of these twists. No one or nothing was as they seemed. The only thing that mattered was to keep the viewer hooked and draw them along on and on. Lost too had plenty of this. Such cavalier attitude towards characters and narrative premises may work on network TV, where expectations are low, but in the final movie it risks exposing the trilogy to be nothing more than an opportunistic cash grab.

There is nothing organic about the Rise of Skywalker. JJ Abrams hand was forced but even with the bar set low he has come up short. Like a nervous trekker he has stuffed his backpack with so many elements, has tried so hard to cover so many bases that in the end the journey has collapsed under the weight of the very thing that should have sustained it. I am not even going to go into the plot holes in the movie and there are tons of them. To keep the tale bustling along, all kinds of liberties are taken with logic and all kinds of contrivances are forced into the narrative and this further diminishes the experience.

Watching Rise of Skywalker reminded me of Terminator Dark Fate a movie where John Connor one of the principal characters in franchise is killed off without regard. He is sacrificed so that the franchise may veer off in another direction – stale, insipid but alive nevertheless. In Rise, nothing so dramatic occurs, but creative decisions are made in the same off-handed manner. The viewer is hurried along from start to finish, their emotions tugged by manipulative setups, their vision stuffed with overblown spectacle, their minds distracted by yet another plot turn, another twist, another souvenir from a nostalgic past. Nothing matters. Everything is just an excuse to hustle him into the theater and out of it. Like Rey’s destiny the viewer is an inconvenience who must be catered to, which the movie does but only in the most formal sense.