Bringing the Saga to a Close: The Rise of Skywalker Review

For the first time on the Cameraman blog, I am reviewing a new release. And this is not just any new release, but the final chapter in the biggest movie series of them all.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, directed by J. J. Abrams, aims to bring the 42-year saga of the Skywalker family to its conclusion. With Rise of Skywalker’s release, the main Star Wars franchise now consists of nine movies constituting three distinct trilogies (and this is not accounting for several spin-off movies such as Rogue One and Solo).

Appropriately for a multi-generational saga, Star Wars has now been the object of fan adoration for multiple generations and has also been the object of endless fan controversy and vituperation. Controversy especially surrounded the most recent Star Wars movie prior to Rise of Skywalker, The Last Jedi (2017), directed by Rian Johnson. The Last Jedi contained plot points and themes that broke, sometimes dramatically, with previous entries in the franchise, most notably the first movie in the current trilogy, the Abrams-directed The Force Awakens (2015). Johnson’s movie was a hit among critics, but bitterly disappointed a great many fans, partly because of how different it was and how dismissive of past continuity.

I go into all these (perhaps tedious) details of the Star Wars franchise’s history to hammer home a couple crucial points. First, Abrams and his fellow writers Chris Terrio (co-screenwriter) and Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow (co-story credits) had an utterly thankless and impossible task before them in trying to give the Skywalker saga a satisfying dramatic resolution. They unsurprisingly do not seem to have succeeded, either, given the generally lukewarm critical reaction and the continued disappointment of at least some fans. Second, discussing The Rise of Skywalker is inevitably going to involve discussing previous franchise entries, so please bear with me as I do so.

As far as my personal reaction, I am a bit of an outlier: I quite liked the movie, and I will explain why below. If I try to be relatively objective, though, I must acknowledge that the Rise of Skywalker is significantly flawed. A large part of the movie’s problems is how it fits or fails to fit into past continuity, especially that of The Last Jedi. Yet given the history of the franchise and fan reaction to it up to this point, such a problem might have been unavoidable.

OK, enough throat clearing. What about the movie worked or did not work for me?

First, let’s deal with the flaws:

Continuity. As indicated, this is probably the sloppiest part of the movie. The Force Awakens set up two elements that seemed likely to play a significant role in future installments: the character of Supreme Leader Snoke, the rather Emperor Palpatine-like ruler of the villainous First Order; and the mystery of who our orphaned protagonist Rey’s real parents were. Fan speculation abounded about both these elements (was Snoke really the mysterious Sith Lord Darth Plagueis? was Rey the granddaughter of Obi-Wan Kenobi?), only to have The Last Jedi throw both elements out the window. Snoke is abruptly killed halfway through The Last Jedi by villain/tortured anti-hero Kylo Ren (aka Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s son), who becomes the new Supreme Leader. Kylo then informs Rey that her parents were people of no importance who just abandoned her. At the time, it seemed as though Rian Johnson was giving a giant middle finger to both The Force Awakens and fan speculation.

Moreover, The Last Jedi tried to complicate Star Wars’ relatively straight-foward moral universe of Light Side vs. Dark Side by introducing greater ambiguity. All our protagonists, not just Rey and her friends Finn and Poe Dameron but also original trilogy hero Luke Skywalker, are shown to be flawed and capable of terrible mistakes that sometimes get people killed. Johnson also developed the series’ social-political setting by introducing a class of galactic arms dealers who profit by selling weapons to both the First Order and our heroes in the Rebellion.

Granted, none of these elements were radically new: both the original and prequel trilogies deal extensively with the flaws of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, and it has long been established that slavery, corruption, and organized crime exist in the Star Wars galaxy. Nevertheless, taken together with the replacement of Snoke with Kylo Ren as the primary antagonist, they suggested that the latest trilogy was moving toward an unconventional, perhaps more downbeat, resolution rather than a grand showdown between Good and Evil.

Well. The Rise of Skywalker wastes little time in throwing much of The Last Jedi out of the window. Snoke is replaced right away as the primary antagonist with another iconic evil figure—indeed, with the ultimate iconic evil figure, Emperor Palpatine, the villain of the previous two trilogies. Palpatine apparently did not die at the end of the Return of the Jedi, or somehow was able to survive beyond death, Voldemort-style, as a kind of diminished, ghost-like figure who has been pulling the strings behind Snoke and the First Order all along. Further, he has secretly built up a massive armada of star destroyers, each armed with planet-annihilating Death Star-style weapons with which to threaten the galaxy. Does any of this make sense? Not really.

Meanwhile, Rey’s parents are revealed not to be nobodies but to have a very unusual and important lineage after all. Galactic arms dealers are nowhere to be found in the movie. And if you are looking for a grand showdown between Good and Evil, The Rise of Skywalker delivers in no uncertain terms. In short, Abrams and company appear to be responding to Johnson’s movie with their own middle finger salute.

To be honest, none of this mattered much to my own enjoyment of either The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker. I was never particularly interested in who Snoke was or who Rey’s parents were: either answering these questions or dropping them would have been fine with me. I also could have adapted to the series ending either with a morally ambiguous compromise or a mythic battle between heroes and villains (although I admit my bias was toward the latter). I am also fine with Palpatine’s return, as he is a great villain played with tremendous relish by Ian McDiarmid. I can suspend my disbelief and enjoy his presence, however nonsensical it might be at a plot level. When I add up all these violent zigs and zags of plot and theme, however, the inescapable conclusion is that the movie-makers simply did not have a clear idea of where they were going with the story and were frequently at odds with one another. That overall sloppiness is harder to excuse than any specific contradiction or contrivance.

Overstuffed Cast. Into a series that already has a large cast of characters, The Rise of Skywalker crams still more. We meet General Pryde, an appropriately haughty new First Order officer; Zorii, a soldier of fortune with whom Poe has a complicated past; Jannah, the leader of a team of rebels who, like Finn, are former stormtroopers; yet another cute droid character, D-0; and Beaumont, a rebel played by Dominic Monaghan who has a handful of expository lines and seems to be there just to provide an answer in Fantasy Franchise Trivia. Lando Calrissian also returns, the latest member of the original trilogy cast to play a crucial role in the story.

Not all these character additions are bad. Pryde is an enjoyably hateful secondary villain, Jannah adds to Finn’s backstory and the story’s overall texture by showing us that other stormtroopers have broken free of their training and defied orders, and Lando is always good to see. Nevertheless, the presence of so many other characters in a single movie means that none of them get much screen time or development. Established characters get short-changed, as well. Rebel engineer Rose Tico, who played a prominent role in The Last Jedi, gets only a few short scenes (which disappointed me, as I was one of the relatively few people who liked Rose). The wizened, Yoda-like Maz Kanata gets to comment on the action, but otherwise she doesn’t get to do much either.

Lackluster Beginning. In a sense, the movie hits the ground running. As Palpatine and the First Order prepare their forces; Rey, Finn, and Poe search for Palpatine’s lair; and Kylo searches for Rey, we get chases and fights galore across an array of alien planets. The locations bustle with Star Wars’ customary color and detail, and Abrams comes up with inventive staging of action sequences. An early space chase involving Finn and Poe as well as a later one through desert canyons both come up with creative new variations on these familiar situations. Yet I found myself somewhat bored for roughly the first third to first half of the movie.

The problem is that mere action alone does not make a story interesting, at least for me. I needed an emotional connection to what was happening on screen, and although I liked the characters their actions did not have much emotional weight or significance. They were mainly preoccupied with the mechanics of the plot for the early sections of the Rise of Skywalker. Also, the movie’s fast pace did not leave much room for us to feel the impact of the events—as a wise man observed, emotions take time.

The one exception to the superficial quality of these early passages was the relationship between Rey and Kylo and the inner turmoil both feel. Rey is attracted to the Dark Side of the Force, Kylo is attracted to the Light Side, and both are attracted to each other. They have frequent telepathic conversations (a notable example of the moviemakers building on The Last Jedi rather than subverting it) in which they can interact psychologically and sometimes even physically.

The set-piece where they actually meet face to face for the first time in the movie stands out from the uninvolving scenes around it. We get a long, quiet build-up as Rey prepares to meet Kylo, and we feel the tension and her own anticipation build. After a brief but spectacular clash, Rey and Kylo then duel not with lightsabers but with Force powers: a neat visual expression of their psychological tug-of-war. This leads to a surprise that both seemingly causes a tragic turn of events and reveals something disturbing about Rey’s character. During this scene, I was impressed by the Rise of Skywalker. Such scenes were rare, though—at first.

Those are the movie’s major flaws. Now let’s turn to the good stuff.

Spectacle. The recent sequel trilogy gets far too little credit for being probably the best and most interesting looking of all the Star Wars movies. (NOTE: I owe many of the observations that follow to Patrick Willems’ invaluable video essay The Storytelling Language of Star Wars, which is essential viewing for anyone interested in movie-making in general or Star Wars in particular.)

While the original trilogy featured model work and set design that are still impressive after 40 years, the camera movement and basic film-making approach was often simple and unremarkable. The prequel trilogy took a similar approach while also frequently employing more muted colors, as well as CGI that could look cartoonish even at the time and looks dated today. The sequel trilogy, by contrast, not only benefits from far more advanced and polished CGI but also draws on a wide range of cinematic tools and techniques to create visual interest and drama: noticeable camera movement; vivid colors and extreme contrasts not only of color but of light and shadow; and the use of visions, memories, and flashbacks to explore characters’ emotions and relationships. All this works in Rise of Skywalker’s favor, as does the movie-makers ability to take familiar situations and tweak them or add some new element that caught my attention.

This leads to several memorable moments and images. I have already mentioned the Kylo/Rey stand-off in the desert (a scene, I note, that also uses contrasting colors effectively: Kylo is in black, Rey in white, against a yellow landscape). Palpatine’s lair is a world seemingly in the middle of a permanent thunderstorm, which allows scenes there to be set in foreboding darkness punctuated by lightning flashes. A crucial telepathic meeting between Kylo and Rey about halfway through the movie cuts back and forth between Kylo on the grungy, snow-covered planet Kijimi and Rey on board a bright, antiseptically white spaceship, the shifting settings jarring the viewer even while the two characters’ movements blend seamlessly. The final action sequence imitates Return of the Jedi’s combination of space battle, ground battle, and personal duel but finds a wholly new type of “ground battle” to present, one that allows for a great tracking shot that shows both ground battle and space battle unfolding simultaneously. Rise of Skywalker also continues the grand Star Wars visual convention of using a lightsaber as a light source—the movie even has a joke about this.

Emotion-Filled Conclusion. Spectacle alone cannot make a movie work, however; as I said, an emotional connection to what is happening on screen is necessary. The lack of such a connection is why the first part of the Rise of Skywalker, while no less visually striking than the rest of the movie, fell relatively flat. The movie’s emotional heart comes into focus in the later passages, however, as Rey, Kylo, and their relationship finally dominates the story.

The watershed moment, both for the story and for me as a viewer, comes during a violent face-off between Rey and Kylo that brings both characters’ torment to the surface. The confrontation also draws in another character in a way that is poignant in multiple ways. Rey and Kylo’s conflict reaches a conclusion that is first shocking and then grace-filled. Then we get a last conversation involving Kylo and an unexpected final character, which ends on a pitch-perfect note.

From that point on, I was hooked. What the Rise of Skywalker was really about was now clear, and I cared about the protagonists and their choices as the movie reached the big showdown with Palpatine. This gave the imaginative visuals and action a new weight and significance, as they served to advance the characters’ personal journeys to their respective destinies.

The two central actors deserve much praise for their work here. Adam Driver brings a surprising amount of subtlety to his role as Kylo, effectively underplaying key moments and emotions. Above all, though, Daisy Ridley shines as Rey. This is ultimately her movie—and arguably her trilogy—and she brings enormous amounts of expressiveness and charisma to Rey that make her both an appealing, vulnerable human and a worthy successor to a thousand generations of Jedi.

Even as I praise the movie’s latter half and climax, however, I imagine an inevitable critical question that could be asked. Does Rise of Skywalker really earn its emotional pay-off or is it just hanging onto the coat-tails of other movies, lifting characters, situations, and story lines from them while relying on nostalgia and our affection for those movies to achieve its impact?

Such a question is ultimately unanswerable. Movie viewing is profoundly subjective, and it is probably most subjective when it comes to movies that are at the center of a long-standing, passionate fan base. What one fan will love another will hate; what one will praise as a fun update or continuation of the series another will condemn as a complete betrayal of everything that made the series great. In the same way, what to one fan is a fitting pay-off is to another just cheap trading on nostalgia. Much depends on each person’s sensibilities, as well as whether that elusive emotional connection is achieved.

All those qualifications being made, however, I will simply offer my own view. Rise of Skywalker is not just a stand-alone movie or even the conclusion of a trilogy. It is the culmination of a multi-generational saga spanning nine movies that cover roughly 60 years within the saga’s internal chronology and have taken over 40 years to make in the real world. With such a history, I think Rise of Skywalker is perfectly entitled and even obligated to draw fully on all the adventures that have come before and all the emotions they inspire in viewers. Certainly I can say that when the climax brought together crucial presences from all the previous Star War movies, this fanboy found it a satisfying resolution.