Best of 2023: I Finally Got Around to Seeing Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker and Holy Crap, It is TERRIBLE!
If you had told the eight year old me in 1984 that thirty five years later Star Wars would be, with the possible exception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the biggest thing in pop culture, with prequels and sequels and spin-offs and live-action television shows and animated television shows all sprawling out into eternity I would probably have believed you.
For as long as I can remember, people have been been passionate about Star Wars. You could, and I definitely would argue that many fans are actually too passionate about it, to the point where their enthusiasm has curdled into toxicity.
At that point I would just have been impressed by new Star Wars movies of any kind, as sixteen long years separated the mostly satisfying ending that was 1983’s Return of the Jedi from the widely reviled new beginning of 1999’s The Phantom Menace.
The nine films in the Star Wars series stretch from New Hollywood and the early days of the Carter administration all the way to the end of the Trump era and nearly to the pandemic and COVID.
The geniuses behind these movies (and I am using the phrase “genius” both ironically and non-ironically, confusingly enough) theoretically had forty long years to get things right and ensure that one of the most beloved, lucrative, popular, important and influential sagas in American history and American pop culture did not end on a down note, with a crushing anti-climax so poorly received that it attracted grudging apologists and contrarians rather than frothing-at-the-mouth super-fans.
If you’d told the eight year old me that despite Star Wars dominating pop culture and being a multi-tentacled, enduring industry onto itself the ninth and final film in the series would be received with such a shrug that even someone who has been writing about pop culture for twenty-six years like myself would have no interest in seeing it I would have found that harder to buy. But that’s just what happened.
If I were an energy vampire like Colin Robinson in What We Do in the Shadows I would hang around theaters during Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s opening weekend and luxuriate in the disappointment and anger the film inspired. I’d get off on seeing people walk out of the theater from a movie they’d been looking forward to for DECADES and delight in the sad, sour faces of the underwhelmed and apoplectic.
.2019’s Rise of Skywalker tried so desperately to please everyone, but particularly sexist, bigoted fanboys apoplectic that Rian Johnson had the unmitigated gall to make a Star Wars movie with an Asian-American in a central role, that it seemingly pleased no one. In the end it doesn’t matter, really, whether Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker turned a profit or not. The buzz was so bad and the film so poor that it’s hard to see it as anything other than an all-time flop, creatively and otherwise.
Rise of Skywalker stops just short of having Rose Tico, the mechanic Kelly Marie Tran played in The Last Jedi to the boiling hot rage of incels and online woman-haters everywhere say, in a robotic monotone, that she needs to return to her home planet, followed by a title card informing us that she died on the way.
The ninth and perhaps worse Star Wars movie is a work of calculation and cowardice. It panders on a historic level by giving us newish characters who act just like our favorites from the original series, and just in case even a single fanboy feels un-pandered to, it brings back our favorites from the original trilogy as well, sometimes as Force Ghosts and sometimes in ways that very extravagantly don’t make sense.
J.J Abrams was hired to co-write and direct Rise of Skywalker because he is a solid commercial director. The problem is that Abrams has delivered a clattering calamity that feels more like a commercial for the franchise than an actual film.
The problems begin with a line of dialogue so notorious that I thought about doing a My World of Flops entry on it alone.
I’m referring, of course, to the wonderful/horrible moment early in the film when Oscar Isaac’s Han Solo, I mean Poe Dameron, tells his fellow Resistance fighters with all the conviction the acclaimed thespian can muster, “Somehow, Palpatine returned.”
If you freeze-frame the scene you can actually spot the exact moment when Isaac’s soul dies. Look closely and you can see Isaac regretting every concession to the mainstream that led to that particular bit of dialogue.
Mark Hamill had more dignity in the episode of The Simpsons where he plays himself doing a dinner theater version of Guys and Dolls in costume as Luke Skywalker than Isaac does here.
That’s right: I’ve dropped three Simpsons references in the first thousand words of this essay alone. I’m using one deathless pop culture institution that has gotten worse over time to critique another deathless pop culture institution that ended on one of pop culture’s biggest disappointments.
How did Palpatine return? Through the magic of space wizardry. Before they called him Darth Sidious. After Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker they’re going to start calling him Darth Ridiculous.
What are Jedi and Sith if not space wizards with magical, poorly defined and flexible powers? Palpatine’s space wizard powers are so great that when he died he merely transferred his magic Jewish space laser powers from his corpse to a hideously scarred clone body. I know that sounds very stupid but according to Neil Lagrasse Tyson that’s actually scientifically sound. Also, Palpatine is Jewish. I don’t like that any more than you do but it’s just a fact. Not all Jews are great. Some are actually pretty terrible, like Bernie Madoff, Jared Kushner and Palpatine.
Why has Palpatine returned? I have no idea beyond the film’s characteristically desperate need to bring back one of the main bad guys from the original films who isn’t Darth Vader.
Hence the return of Palpatine. With Star Wars but particularly Empire Strikes Back, this series elevated serial-style pulp to the level of art. Like Indiana Jones, Star Wars was inspired by the adventure and science fiction serials of the 1930s and 40s.
Palpatine is Ming the Merciless without the pizzazz and moxie. He’s a very old school bad guy who looks like the product of a vampire impregnating a zombie who was then set on fire.
Darth Vader is a great bad guy because he is terrifying and iconic but also because he is a figure of moral ambiguity. He is, after all, a legendary Jedi who turned to the Dark Side and became a formidable figure for pure evil before having a last-minute change of heart.
Palpatine, in sharp contrast, is just an asshole whose magical wizard powers allow him to be the most destructive jackass in the universe. There’s nothing to him. He’s not scary. He’s not iconic. He’s just a lesser Darth Vader, which would be less of a problem if Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren/Ben Solo wasn’t also a lesser Darth Vader, right down to the spooky helmet he fashions for himself. In keeping with the spirit of the film as a whole Kylo’s dumb helmet and voice modulator are just like Darth Vader’s helmet only terrible and wildly derivative. Instead of James Earl Jones’ booming, terrifying voice of total authority we get the guy from Girls doing Auto-Tune.
Even more than The Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker is a remake of Star Wars more than a proper sequel. Only this time Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron is the dashing anti-hero with the rakish charm instead of Han Solo and Rey is the powerful Jedi in training who must save the universe and confront her dark lineage instead of Luke Skywalker.
Yes, Rise of Skywalker is like Star Wars if Star Wars came to a screeching halt every five minutes so that it could go down on its worst, most reactionary audience members and somehow simultaneously wink at the audience and pat themselves and the audience on the back for recognizing some of the most recognizable elements of the films that preceded it.
I will at least give Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker credit for being insultingly simple where previous entries were unnecessarily complicated and convoluted.
The film’s basic set-up is that, somehow, Palpatine returned. And he didn’t return so that he could work on his golf game or get into meditation. No, Palpatine has (somehow) returned in order to rule the universe after creating Snoke to turn Kylo Ren to the Dark Side and command The Final Order, which is a massive aggregation of powerful Sith Star Destroyers on his home base of Exegol, a mysterious Sith planet.
Palpatine wants Kylo to kill Rey and wipe out the threat to his power that she represents so he forms a telekinetic link to ascertain her location. Rey is ostensibly training under Princess Leia Organa, who very disconcertingly and distractingly is played by an actress and icon who died roughly three years before the film was released.
This was accomplished not through the increasingly terrifying horror of AI but rather through unused footage from The Force Awakens. Using deleted scenes from an earlier, much better film is less evil than using computers and newfangled technology to create a zombie Carrie Fisher but it nevertheless yanks you out of a film and a story than never sucks you in in the first place.
It’s not unlike how Harrison Ford reappears in the third act to deliver some fatherly words to his no account son Kylo Ren with an expression that silently but incontrovertibly conveys, “You would not believe how much money I’m getting paid for what is probably one days work with no second takes. I’m getting paid so, so, so much money. More money than you can even imagine. Enough money to literally make a yacht out of the finest marijuana the world has ever known and sail that righteous ship from South America to my home. I’m smiling now just thinking about all that money in a bank account that’s already overflowing.”
So our heroes set off to find a magical doohickey that’s like a space GPS that will lead them to Exegol and Palpatine. They know that the uniquely lazy and obvious McGuffin is on a dagger because they have a mole within Kylo Ren’s organization.
The heroes learn that the spy is General Hux (Domhall Gleason) when, later in the film, he literally yells to the heroes, “I’m the spy!”
Hux became a mole due to his hatred of Kylo Ren, an incredibly powerful figure who can read minds and control people with his brain and beat enemies up from fifty feet away. Yet he inexplicably feels the need to shout, as loud as he can, that he was the one who betrayed Kylo. Even if Kylo didn’t have incredible magical wizard powers Hux shouted his guilt so loudly that seemingly everyone in the universe could hear him. In an unsurprising development, Hux is killed by Richard E. Grant’s Allegiant General Pryde after he connects the dots and discerns the identity of the mole.
These are the storytelling choices the film makes. Disney undoubtedly re-hired Abrams because they thought he would be a steady hand on the wheel as opposed to the much more talented Rian Johnson or Colin Trevorrow, who worked on an unused screenplay and was slated to direct before The Book of Henry happened.
Suffering through Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker I found myself thinking that they should have let the man who made The Book of Henry and several aggressively mediocre Jurassic Park movies co-write and direct because he somehow seems to have a much better feel for this material.
Instead of a steady hand on the wheel they got someone who was drunkenly doing donuts in a car that’s on fire. If I were a Disney executive my first and only question for Abrams would be, “What is this shit?”
Rise of Skywalker is devoted to “fixing” problems that only exist in the mind of the kind of toxic fans who give ALL fans a bad name, not just Star Wars obsessives. Angry that a strong Asian woman had a major role in The Last Jedi? Don’t worry. She’s barely in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Bummed that, unlike Luke Skywalker, Rey didn’t seem to be related to anyone important? Don’t worry. Now she’s now Palpatine’s granddaughter!
Enraged by The Last Jedi’s fascinating portrayal of Luke Skywalker as a haunted, tormented figure full of darkness and regret as well as life and wisdom? Don’t worry. When Luke returns as a Force Ghost to give Rey a pep talk and his late sister’s lightsaber there is absolutely nothing ambiguous or ambivalent or even complicated about the character. He’s just a great guy and noble Jedi who wants the best for everyone.
Hamill was ferociously engaged in The Last Jedi. He clearly welcomed an opportunity to play the iconic hero as a weird, tragic old man rather than a wholesome hero. It was the acting challenge and role of a lifetime. Here he picks up a paycheck and does Disney’s bidding with a palpable absence of enthusiasm.
The problem isn’t just that, somehow, Palpatine retuned. The problem is that, with the notable exception of Jabba the Hut, Jar Jar Binks and Chewbacca’s family from Star Wars Holiday Special, somehow EVERYONE returned.
The film’s third act reminds me of the hopelessly overstuffed and underwhelming final act of The Flash. It’s fan service a go go as Harrison Ford pops for what I imagine was a VERY well-compensated cameo and then, during Rey’s moment of doubt, she’s visited by the voices of all of the Jedi that come before her.
Remember when Samuel L. Jackson played Mace Windu? No? Yeah, it was kind of an underwhelming character. He is, nevertheless back and in pog form! He’s joined by Anakin Skywalker, Luminara Unduli (can’t have a proper Star Wars movie without whoever the hell that is), Ahsoka Tano, Aayla Secura, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Adi Gallia, Kanan Jarrus and Qui-Gon Jinn.
I don’t know who half those people are, either.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker panders so relentlessly that it brings back characters I had forgotten were in the franchise, like those furry motherfucker the Ewoks.
The only characters they didn’t resurrect are Jar Jar Binks and Jabba the Hutt. I like to think that’s because they’re saving them for a mismatched buddy cop spin-off.
Ah, but Rise of Skywalker saves one of its biggest insults disguised as a gift for last. We close with Rey turning on a lightsaber before a random woman asks, as one does of complete strangers, “Who are you?”
Rey answers “Rey” but that somehow isn’t enough. “Rey, who?” the nosy stranger continues.
Rey then stares dreamily into the distance at the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia looking on, clearly full of nachas at how their protege turned out. “Rey Skywalker” our heroine answers proudly in the final line of the movie and the series.
I don’t know about you but strangers constantly ask my name, then get irritated if I only give my first name. They then demand to know my last name, my middle name, a nickname if I have one and then finally for my home address, a work address and my social security number.
So this final scene is one of many in the film that really ring true to life.
Rise of Skywalker unfortunately proved that you don’t need Jar Jar Binks to make a Star Wars sequel that really stinks.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco
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