Cast Iron Chaos RecentChanges
XMLFacebookTwitter

LoginLogoutRegisterContact the WebmasterPayPal Me

Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker

The Rise of Skywalker

I ended up with some really nice loot for Christmas of 2021, several of which I was not expecting at all. I don't think that's ever happened before. One of these was a subscription to Disney+, and so during Christmas evening I finally watched Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And it was…well…not as bad as the worst hardcore fans say it is. But I can only agree with the negative reviews stating it's a hodge-podge mess of a story that attempts to tie everything together, and because it tries to please everyone, it pleases no one.

When I started watching it, I told myself I'd approach it with a fair and open point of view, without pre-supposing how it "ruined Star Wars" any more than the way the fans say The Last Jedi ruined Star Wars. I enjoyed The Last Jedi; some of my closest friends did not. My disappointment with this, I think, is not how it ran roughshod over the cherished myth and fairy tale that had been part of my life since I was ten years old in 1977. Rather, it was poor storytelling and also poor filmmaking. I never considered J.J. Abrams to be the greatest of all movie directors, but I loved his Star Trek reboot. I also loved The Force Awakens, and frankly I still do. I even enjoyed Cloverfield. Abrams knows how to direct action scenes and he has a great visual eye for creating beautiful images. His movies look great, and I don't care that he uses way too much lens flare and darkness. He still knows how to make an enjoyable action movie – even this one. If you want to see how a big-budget special effects Hollywood movie is ruined by poor direction and visuals, including too much lens flare and darkness, watch Justice League: The Snyder Cut. I'll take The Rise of Skywalker over that train wreck.

It's been said that J.J. Abrams' movies follow one formula: "Run And Plot." All of his movies are constant movement, and there isn't a single second where the scene isn't full of movement, either the camera moving, the characters moving, or both. Basically, his stories go like this: The characters run somewhere, talk about the plot, and have an action scene. Then they run somewhere else, talk about the plot, and have an action scene. Then they run somewhere…again and again and again. In The Force Awakens and also Star Trek, this style worked very well; but with The Rise of Skywalker it's cranked up to eleven and rammed down our throats. With at least three major scenes happening in three different places in just the first ten minutes of the movie, I simply couldn't keep up. By the halfway point of the movie we'd visited at least six different areas of the Galaxy, had a big action scene on each one, and moved on to the next one. Combined with some real problems in the story, I just gave up and stopped thinking about it. Instead, I simply watched all the action taking place on the screen, nodded and mumbled "Okay" to myself, and waited for the next action scene…and the next…and the next. And that was disappointing, because this was STAR WARS. I wanted to think about this movie, the way I had enjoyed remembering and pondering all of the other movies that came before it – even The Last Jedi.

But I just couldn't get over some glaring holes in the story that didn't make sense. I'm not talking about how this movie "ruined the Star Wars canon" by bringing Zombie Palpatine back from the dead, or ignoring the so-called "Sith Rule of Two" by not giving him a Darth sidekick, or wondering how Rey and Kylo Ren's mind link allowed them to warp space and time and allow them to reach across the Galaxy to physically grab things from each other. My confusion came from things like "Which planet are we on now?" And, "Kylo Ren, I mean Ben, rejected the Dark Side and threw away his lightsaber, but then somehow Rey has that same lightsaber a minute later?" And then there's "Luke trained Leia to be a Jedi, and we were never told about this until 3/4 of the way through the final movie?" And, "Zombie Palpatine has a million ships with a million planet killers sitting there, and yet he only blows up one planet?" And, "At the very end, the Rebels conjure up a gigantic army of spaceships from out of nowhere to defeat the bad guys?" And, "Zombie Palpatine lives in a gigantic Roman coliseum with thousands and thousands of cheering fans who don't do anything other than sit there, cheer, and die at the end?" And then there's "I spent the entire movie trying to get you to kill me so I can possess your soul. But instead, at the last moment I'm going to drain your life force and bring myself completely back from the dead?"

And then there's this one: Are they really making a desperate battle to destroy the Death Star by hitting its single weakness for the FOURTH FREAKING TIME in this series?

That's why I just turned off my brain and watched the very attractive scenes taking place on the screen, instead of trying to understand it.

I will say Kylo Ren was more ominous, threatening, and dangerous here than he was in The Force Awakens. He had definitely grown up and become a villain on his own, rather than a Darth Vader wanna-be. Never mind that his final sacrifice at the end was telegraphed half an hour or so in advance. I'll give him credit for putting in a believable performance. I'll have to say that as well about the character I liked the least in this series, Poe Dameron. In The Force Awakens Poe was an ego-driven hotshot flyboy, meant to fill the Han Solo role in the final three movies. In The Last Jedi he got his come-uppance and was taught a lesson that being an ego-driven flyboy is dumb. (The fans hated that, but I liked it.) And in The Rise of Skywalker Poe Dameron had finally grown up and was acting more like a mature leader of the Rebellion. So, I'll give him credit for that. But, what happened to Finn's romance with Rose? Was it fan service to give him a new love interest, who happened to be exactly like him: a former Stormtrooper who rebelled and ran away and (yes, I'll say it) was also played by a black actress? (This screams "WOKE" just as much as the quick blink-and-you'll-miss it lesbian kiss at the end.)

I loved Rey in The Force Awakens and also in The Last Jedi because she was different. She wasn't a clone of Luke Skywalker, she was her own character. In The Rise of Skywalker she's certainly accepted her role as heir to the Jedi, though she's a lot more grim and moody here than in the previous two movies. Maybe it's because I had turned off my brain and had given up trying to understand the movie, but I can't say I enjoyed her in this movie. She held her own and I liked watching everything she did, but she was overwhelmed by the sprawling plot of this movie. I liked the idea of her coming from "nowhere" and I grimaced at the idea that she was actually Zombie Palpatine's granddaughter. (Palpatine actually had sex at some point in the saga?) I think my disappointment comes from a theory I had developed after The Last Jedi came out, when the fan reaction to that movie was at its peak.

After The Last Jedi came out, my theory about Rey and Kylo Ren went like this:

The Dark Side of the Force is the enemy of originality, creativity, happiness and light. The Dark Side can't create anything or do anything original. It can only imitate the Light Side of the Force, and it keeps repeating itself over and over and over because it can't create anything new. Based on this theory, it explains why there was only one Sith Lord and his Darth apprentice over the history of the Sith and the Jedi. This theory also explains Snoke: after Palpatine's fall, the Dark Side tried to create another new Sith Lord, but it was only able to come up with something as pathetic as Snoke. It also explains why Zombie Palpatine came back from the dead, because the Dark Side can't create anything new. And it even explains why we had no less than FOUR separate Death Stars in this series, because the Dark Side kept recycling the same idea over and over and over. It wasn't just just poor writing, we could blame the Dark Side.

However, both Rey and Kylo Ren were something new. They weren't simply good and evil, and they were not simply another Jedi and another Sith. They were different. The Last Jedi gave hints of this, as Kylo Ren killed Snoke (who deserved it), and both Rey and Kylo Ren turned in an unexpected direction. I was hoping that in The Rise of Skywalker they would do something different, something no one was expecting – not even the ghosts of Luke and Yoda – and from this they would end the Sith once and for all and bring balance to the Force. I suppose this did happen at the end of 'The Rise of Skywalker', but it was unfortunately in a completely predictable manner. And that, perhaps, was the biggest disappointment of all.

So, this was Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker. It was the end of the Skywalker saga that began in 1977 with Star Wars – not A New Hope, just Star Wars. It took my childhood fantasy of Star Wars and crushed it beneath a behemoth of modern day Hollywood CGI plot holes, in a manner similar to what the Hobbit movies did to The Lord of the Rings. Alas.

Well, I can still re-watch the original Star Wars as many times as I like. I'll always love Star Wars, as it was a part of my life that I've cherished. It was a fairy tale, a fantasy, a legend that I grew up with. And it's certainly not the first legend to be ruined by modern day commercialization. In the end, it's a movie, and I can move on and enjoy something else.