Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

A year after the Battle of Crait, Kylo Ren discovers that, somehow, Emperor Palpatine is still alive. Initially hoping to kill him, Kylo is persuaded to join Palpatine after he sees that the latter has, somehow, by himself, created an entire fleet of Star Destroyers. He also learns that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter, and that Palpatine wants to kill and/or convert her, depending on what scene he’s in. Meanwhile, Rey learns that Palpatine is alive, and so she, Finn and Poe set off to find a dagger, which will help them find a thing, which will lead them to the Emperor. I think. Will they do any of that? Watch the movie to find out.

Welcome to my final film review. After this post, I will no longer be discussing movies or TV shows on this platform. It brings me no joy, and I would rather spend my time creating art than critiquing it. I still love movies, and I still want to make them, but I hate, and I do mean hate, talking about them on the internet, and with other film buffs. It’s stressful and tiring. The conversation always devolves into shouting over things like what actually counts as cinema (thank you, Scorsese and Coppola), what damage movies can or can’t do (thank you, Joker), why kindness and tolerance actually matter, and shouldn’t be written off (thank you, defenders of Dragged Across Concrete), and why making popular movies doesn’t excuse horrible real life behavior (thank you, Polanski, Gibson and Allen apologists). And that’s to say nothing of actual film criticism, which has become increasingly personal and petty. Phrases like “riddle with plot holes,” “cheesy,” and “I don’t think it achieve its full potential” (a euphemism for “this isn’t what I wanted this to be) are banded about so casually nowadays, and it’s beyond frustrating. Just because a work of art isn’t what you imagined it would be, or because it didn’t fulfill certain expectations you had, doesn’t make it bad. There’s nothing wrong with being sincere. And a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required for film viewing. It’s been said before by people like Alexander Pope that bad criticism does more damage than bad art, because criticism lays the grounds from which great art springs. I agree. Artists look to criticism for guidance when creating their own work. And because we’re in a time where criticism, specifically internet and YouTube film criticism, is becoming so much less objective, so much more petty, and so much more, for lack of a better term, mean, we’re likely to get worse films as a result. Future writers will be so terrified of people labeling their work as cheesy, or finding plot holes in it, or demanding that they change their vision to meet specific prerequisites, that they may never want to create anything at all. I know I did. This summer, I almost gave up on a project I’d been working on for five years because of negative responses I got. That’s why I want to cut all ties from film discussion, and focus full-time on film production. And what better way to close out my film discussion career than with a Star Wars review, the very franchise that spawned petty, mean-spirited, attack-heavy film criticism?

To put it bluntly, I didn’t like this movie. And not because, as you’ve no doubt heard, the film differs greatly from The Last Jedi, a picture that longtime readers know I love. I didn’t appreciate how they basically removed Rose as a major character (seriously, she only has 13 lines in the entire movie), gave Rey important relatives, and moved away from the moral complexity of Johnson’s vision in favor of simple, “good vs evil” myth making. I don’t like that, but if you ask me, writing the movie off for such a reason isn’t legitimate criticism. Just because a movie didn’t give you what you wanted or were expecting doesn’t mean it’s bad. Things like choppy editing, poor storytelling, and clunky dialogue make a film bad, and this movie has all three.

It’s genuinely shocking how subpar some of the filmmaking is. In one sequence, for instance, Rey is training with a droid, and it keeps jumping from that to images of Kylo looking at Darth Vader’s helmet, and flashbacks to previous movies. None of the visuals parallel each other at all, either in tone or action, and because the shots are so short, and edited in such rapid succession, I wound up feeling incredibly confused.  And I’m not the only person to say this. A friend of mine actually described the film as looking like it was edited in Windows Moviemaker. The dialogue is also weirdly unnatural sounding. Yes, Star Wars movies have never been famed for super realistic, or even cool-sounding, dialogue. (Anyone remember “I don’t like sand?”). But with the sequel trilogy, you could tell that the filmmakers were trying to make the characters sound like actual humans. They hired Oscar-winning writers like Michael Arndt to punch up the dialogue. And in the first two films, that’s evident. Characters swear, use contractions, and emote. In this film, however, the dialogue almost sounds like it was written by someone who speaks English as a second language, with such lines as “I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna turn you to the Dark Side” actually making the audience in my theater laugh. But by far the weakest part of this entire movie is the storytelling. So much stuff happens, in such rapid succession, that none of the characters get developed, several key questions never get answered, big moments either get ignored or instantly reversed, and motivations drastically shift from scene to scene. To give you an example of what I’m talking about, Palpatine wants to kill Rey in the beginning, but then, an hour later, he wants her to join him. You think Chewbacca dies, and that C-3PO loses his memory, but then, just a few scenes later, you see that Chewy is all right, and that R2D2 has a backup drive full of 3PO’s memories. Several new characters, like a droid with PTSD, Poe’s criminal ex-girlfriend, and a former stormtrooper named Jannah, get introduced, but because the movie is frantically pushing the heroes from one location to another, with barely a moment to breathe, none of them get more than a few lines of expository dialogue.

And yet, even with all that said, I can’t call this a terrible film. Clearly, money, effort and talent was put into this production. The costumes, the sets, the music and the effects are all top-notch. There’s a scene where Rey is climbing through the wreckage of the Death Star, and it made me sit back and go “Wow! That’s an actual, giant set that people built! Bravo, production designers!” And despite the fact that none of the characters were well-developed, you could tell that the actors were having fun playing them. There’s a ton of fan service, if you like that sort of thing. And while I didn’t like the fact that the film never stopped to breathe, I also never felt bored while watching. So between all that, you’ve probably got enough reasons to see the movie. I wouldn’t recommend it, but, hey, I can’t tell you what to do. The only person whose actions I have control over are my own, and from this point on, I’m going to dedicate myself solely to writing and making movies, as opposed to critiquing them. I hope you all enjoyed my reviews, and will like the work that I make in the future.

Happy holidays, and peace to each and every one of you,

Nathan