Star Wars: Episode 9 - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

10 January 2020

I'll cover three things in this review: my thoughts of the film; my thoughts on the series/franchise; and my thoughts on movies in general. Sorry this'll be a little long but it's a good moment to talk about this with the end of something as institutionalized as Star Wars.

The film. The Rise of Skywalker had a lot to live up to. As a series that started 42 years before it ended, it had three separate lives in the trilogy blocks that appeared, and with those rebirths had different generations of audiences giving praise or criticism. So if your expectations were for a great film, I'm surprised you'd think that. With my reviews of the last two films - The Force Awakens (2015, 8/10) and The Last Jedi (2017, 6/10) - I didn't expect it to get past a 6/10 simply because I've never seen a Star Wars Trilogy that ended strong.

I think my disappointment with this film was that it was built on a foundation of potential, but at its end you realize it never really delivered anything satifying. New actors were introduced but they always seemed hollow or distant; character growth was minimal. I do think Adam Driver's career got the biggest benefit from Star Wars, while others solid like Oscar Issac were tragically underused.

To compare to the original trilogy further, this trilogy is similar to the original, but if you focused the lens on Luke instead of Han. Rey was the focal point in this story, and all this "Jedi Good, Sith Bad" dialog gets really heavy-handed after a while. That's why the humor/romance was helpful in the original trilogy, and there was very little in this film. All in all, this was an epic tale that wasn't really, was more grim/somber than it needed to be, and played out more as a who's who walk down memory lane as the main story closes.

The series/franchise. To be fair though, I think the franchise itself remains strong, if Disney figures out how to use it. I think Rogue One (2016, 9/10) is the way of the future for Star Wars, letting new stories appear with new characters to appreciate will supply a next level of world-building that is needed for the franchise (I don't need a movie just so I can witness Han making the Kessel Run, for instance). The Mandelorian series sounds like a step in the right direction (except for the baby yoda thing - why). Personally I think extending a story is tantamount to keeping someone on life support, and should be exercised with extreme caution (which neither Disney nor the movie industry do very well).

The cinema. Now that Star Wars has closure I'm hoping audiences won't have as much more of an appetite for these episodic epic tales (others being: LotR, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Avengers). I find them generally lowering the quality of film simply because they stretch characters and stories past their limit. It works in pulp comics and novels, but I think it's a death knell for actors - between getting typecast or producing quantity rather than quality works. Episodic films have a place, but they're best when it's planned and there's a fresh story to tell.

So to close: The Rise of Skywalker ended vanilla, and made the latest trilogy feel like an extended epilogue. It was nice to get some closure on some of these things, I suppose... but I've also heard that a lot of the books for Star Wars (the Extended Universe, now declared non-canon) are out there, and have better stories. 5/10