Star Wars the Rise of Skywalker Spoiler Review
Spoilers for literally all of Star Wars: The Ascension of Skywalker to follow.
The kickoff sign of problem for Star Wars: The Ascension of Skywalker comes with the first sentence of the opening crawl: "The dead speak!"
This is basically a thesis statement for Ascent of Skywalker, which is and then, so much more interested in the franchise'south past than its future. In the most baffling opening text since The Phantom Menace began with a judgement on the taxation of trade routes, nosotros're told that the phonation of Emperor Palpatine—who died all the way back in 1983's Return of the Jedi—has been heard broadcasting "a threat of revenge" across the galaxy. It sounds like the Dark Side version of a podcast.
Even so, I held out a picayune hope. J.J. Abrams is equally much a merry trickster equally he is a film director, and he loves his little twists. The "return" of Palpatine could easily turn out to be some clever scheme by some unknown villain, who hopes gain power by drafting on the reputation of the terrifying emperor.
So, simply a infinitesimal or ii later, Kylo Ren comes confront-to-face with Emperor Palpatine himself—very much alive, thank you—and Rise of Skywalker starts earthworks a pigsty it never finds a way to climb out from.
If yous remember 2017's The Last Jedi, the previous moving picture in this trilogy, you lot might have had some different ideas almost how Episode Ix might go. The Last Jedi ended with several franchise-altering twists: the possibility that there might be a middle basis between the Light and Dark sides of the Force, or the promise of a generation of young Jedi whose names weren't Kenobi or Skywalker.
Forget all that. Rise of Skywalker has no interest in information technology. Instead, J.J. Abrams has turned in a Star Wars movie that is only surprising in how unsurprising it is. Because aye: Emperor Palpatine actually is alive, and information technology only takes a couple of minutes for him to win Kylo Ren to his crusade. How did Palpatine survive his apparent death at the cease of Return of the Jedi? Don't worry about it. Has he really just been sitting around on a never-before-mentioned Sith planet this whole time, telling Snoke what to practise and waiting until… I don't know, until he remembers radio exists? Apparently.
In the meantime, Palpatine has also managed to assemble his own army, complete with what looks like thousands of Star Destroyers. Each of those Destoyers is, somehow, equipped with a Expiry Star-manner cannon powerful enough to destroy a planet. That's just the kickoff of the many half-explained geegaws that will drive the plot frontwards, every bit a Sith dagger leads to a Sith wayfinder leads to a bunch of bullshit that leads to Emperor Palpatine's large goofy chair.
This is equally adept a time as whatsoever to accost the biggest and dumbest retcon in Ascent of Skywalker: The question of Rey's lineage. The subject field was hotly contested at the release of The Force Awakens, and the odds-on favorites were that Rey was either a Skywalker or a Kenobi. The Last Jedi found a clever manner to zigzag effectually all the fan theories: The mysteriously orphaned Rey actually was a nobody, whose parents were random scumbags who sold her off for a quick prepare.
That was clearly intended to be the final answer, and it should have stayed that way—but having originally raised the question in The Strength Awakens, Abrams couldn't resist mucking effectually with the answer. So it'southward soon revealed that Rey's grandfather is actually Emperor Palpatine, and that her "scumbag" parents were actually a noble, loving couple who rejected Palpatine and abandoned Rey to protect her. (If yous want to learn almost Palpatine's family unit, I'm sure a canonical tie-in novel almost his married woman or his son or whatever is already on the way.) Rey's proficiency with the Force wasn't a fluke subsequently all; it was in her claret all along. Her midichlorian count is probably off the charts! Everybody loved midichlorians, right?
Fine, yous might say. Rey is a Palpatine, or a Kenobi, or whatever. I don't care how this fits into the sometime Star Wars movies; I but want to scout the new one. Close up and play the hits. But fifty-fifty with the bar so depression y'all could step right over it, Rise of Skywalker somehow fails to articulate it. At that place are so many aborted storylines and character beats in this movie that experience similar the script was accidentally shredded and taped dorsum together from a dozen different drafts. When the picture opens, Rey and Poe are argue-flirting similar Leia and Han—until the movie decides that never mind, they actually get along fine. Finn walks right upward to the edge of confessing his feelings for Rey and and then merely… doesn't. In that location's a new droid named D-0 who is the victim of abuse from his previous owner, which is weird—but likewise don't worry about it, because he'southward merely a device to move the plot frontwards.
Everything virtually Ascent of Skywalker feels half-hearted and perfunctory—like Abrams and cowriter Chris Terrio wrote a rushed commencement draft of the script, intending to set up the issues subsequently, and just never got around to information technology. Early on on, there's an incredibly unconvincing fake-out about Chewbacca dying on a spaceship that explodes. The eventual explanation for his survival? He was actually on a different spaceship. The boundaries of the Force seem to exist whatever the screenplay requires at a given moment, from teleporting objects around to healing open up wounds and/or death. There's non a single memorable line of dialogue in the whole movie. (Okay, maybe "They fly at present," just just considering it's spoken three times in the span of about 10 seconds.)
It is no surprise that a Star Wars picture leans heavily on nostalgia; this is, after all, ane of the few Hollywood franchises so obsessed with its own history that it first continued the story by looking backward, not forwards. And the previous movies in this sequel trilogy did successfully brand the old characters feel fresh and vital. It did that, generally, by maxim goodbye to them; from the tragedy of Han Solo'southward decease to Luke Skywalker's rousing redemptive arc, these movies have found ways to give poignant new endings to old Star Wars favorites.
The unique challenge Ascent of Skywalker faces is the unexpected death of Carrie Fisher—and while I don't blame the moving picture for struggling to fit Leia into the story, I also can't say they figured out how to do information technology seamlessly. Leia's scenes—which were cobbled together from unreleased footage from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi—fit uneasily into Rise of Skywalker, equally the movie attempts to retrofit a coherent office for Leia with the limited usable footage they accept.
The rest should have been easier. Star Wars is ane of the rare franchises where a agglomeration of "dead" characters can just evidence upward as Force Ghosts, which does finish up giving Abrams the excuse to insert a new, clunky scene between Rey and Luke Skywalker. (Would yous believe he raises his old X-Fly from the h2o, like that other movie y'all recall?) Somehow, that's withal not plenty; Han Solo, who is not a Jedi and can't be a Force Ghost, appears to Kylo Ren as a "memory" instead, so I approximate Rising of Skywalker'south definition of "memory" is something that never actually happened. The goal of this truly ridiculous scene, as far as I can figure, is to give Kylo Ren an excuse for the whiplash-inducing emotional pivot he makes in this movie, which reopens the redemptive arc that seemed to be closed at the finish of The Last Jedi.
Or I don't know, maybe that whole scene is just there so everybody can clap when Han Solo shows upward. Call up Han Solo? You similar him! He says "I know" in this one and everything. Rising of Skywalker is essentially two and a half hours of scenes that have been opposite-engineered so Star Wars fans can bespeak at the screen and say, "I understood that reference."
Can a Star Wars movie be more interesting than this? Yeah. And a Star Wars picture was more than interesting than this, two years ago, when Rian Johnson made ane. It was also more interesting two years before that, when J.J. Abrams relaunched the franchise with The Force Awakens. That's a big-hearted, thrillingly paced movie that expertly walked the tightrope betwixt the old and the new. Why didn't somebody find a fashion to bring the guy who fabricated that pic back?
Rising of Skywalker does occasionally show a vague interest in Rey, Finn, and Poe, the central trio Abrams introduced in The Force Awakens—by which I mean, I approximate, that there are multiple scenes in which those characters walk and talk and occasionally crack a joke or kill somebody. But you can't say the aforementioned for pretty much anybody else. Anthony Daniels gets the chance to requite C-3PO a moving decease scene—honestly, the but time in this movie I felt annihilation—but for Ascension of Skywalker to walk it back with a lame joke and a organization reboot that brings C-3PO back to normal. New characters Zorri Elation (Keri Russell) and Jannah (Naomie Ackie) are so incompetently introduced and adult that they might as well not exist in the film at all.
Worst of all is the treatment of Rose Tico, the about substantial new character Rian Johnson introduced in The Terminal Jedi. Ascent of Skywalker is mostly just frustrating in its laziness and incoherence, merely Abrams's open disinterest in Rose is genuinely galling. Rose, who was such a likable and dynamic presence in The Last Jedi, is essentially a glorified extra here, getting about as much screen fourth dimension as Abrams's quondam Lost buddy Dominic Monaghan (who seems to have been cast in the function of Actor Whose Presence Never Stops Being Incredibly Distracting). As for Rose'due south relationship with Finn… well, like so many things Rise of Skywalker never bothers to address, I gauge we have to assume they had a falling out betwixt the ii movies.
Abrams'southward utter lack of involvement in Rose is the clearest signal of his lack of regard for The Last Jedi as a whole, and Rise of Skywalker stops but curt of retconning that motion picture out of existence. Abrams has been mostly polite about The Last Jedi on the press bout, but this is essentially a mid-franchise reboot designed to jettison annihilation he didn't like most that one. I don't intendance whether y'all liked The Last Jedi or not: It is deeply uncomfortable to watch a feature-length subtweet of it.
Let's wrap this up: Rey eventually goes to Gramps Palpatine, who offers her his large chair while helpfully explaining that killing him would actually only plough Rey to the Dark Side, ensuring the Palpatine legacy would go on to dominate the galaxy. (Palpatine, man: She was probably gonna impale you until you said that! Why couldn't you only play it cool?) Rey turns him down, Kylo Ren shows upwards, and Palpatine grows stronger by sucking ability out of Rey and Kylo'south relationship (?). Rey kills Palpatine past reflecting his lightning back at him with her lightsaber, which is evidently not enough to make her turn to the Dark Side under whatever rules govern Light Side/Night Side stuff. Rey dies. Kylo Ren uses the force to resurrect her (?). Kylo Ren dies. Simply hey, they kiss first, and then big ups to Team Reylo!
And and then the galaxy is saved. The epilogue to Ascent of Skywalker finds Rey returning Luke and Leia's lightsabers to the Lars homestead on Tatooine, where Luke was raised. That's a planet Leia only visited briefly in life, and where she was forced to wear a gilt bikini and chained up to a giant slug. And wait a second—didn't Leia'due south trunk disappear when Kylo Ren died? What's she doing spending her afterlife with her twin brother? Whatsoever. The movie doesn't intendance, and if the screenwriters can't be bothered to remember about this stuff, neither can I.
If Disney can be believed (and they can't), this is the end of information technology all: The culmination of an odd collection of movies, produced over 42 years, which we're all pretending can be understood as a singular and coherent vision called the Skywalker Saga. That was never true, of grade. If George Lucas had the "Skywalker Saga" figured out when he made Star Wars, Luke and Leia wouldn't have kissed each other so much. The prequels wouldn't accept been and then lumpy and messy that they'd eventually require extensive reedits of the original trilogy just to connect. And the new trilogy wouldn't take turned out to be such a foreign Frankenstein's monster of three movies—one good, one great, ane awful—that don't quite fit together.
The final shot of Rise of Skywalker is Rey Skywalker, née Palpatine, standing and staring at those gorgeous twin suns on Tatooine. Information technology'south an image you lot'll recall from the original Star Wars.
And I'll give Ascent of Skywalker this: It's a fitting catastrophe for this moving picture to get out on—a half-baked reference to a meliorate scene from a improve movie, as the character who once represented the futurity of Star Wars stares, boringly and stubbornly, into its past.
A ridiculous end to a once-promising trilogy.
As the movie's second unit director, Mahoney is the showtime woman to helm a Star Wars film.
The director says the end of the Skywalker Saga really feels like an ending, regardless of any Disney+ spin-offs.
Search your feelings. Y'all know information technology to be true.
"I call up it's going to proceed forever."
The just role player to appear in every moving picture in the franchise to date, Daniels is mere days from capping off an iconic run.
Source: https://www.gq.com/story/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-spoilers-review
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