Star Wars: Episode IX— The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
(On Blu-ray, June 2020) I was more critical than most about The Force Awakens and more lenient than many about The Last Jedi, yet nonetheless perilously close to indifference in watching The Rise of Skywalker—If Disney’s stewardship of the series has accomplished one thing so far, it’s to strip away the layer of myth and magic that once surrounded Star Wars movies. They are now mere instalments in a money-making franchise, and expectations about this third entry in the newest mainline series were never going to be met. Expecting the worst does work wonders, though—while this ninth instalment is far from being as good as it could have been and confirms this entire third trilogy as a disappointment, there are a few good moments here and there. At its best, this entry does go back to some of the adventure-filled fun of a small group of friends fighting against overwhelming odds—but it does have to copy entire swatches of previous movies in order to get there, and it’s always skewed by a needlessly darker side that has to do with the heroine, her counterpart and their gigantic good-versus-evil theme. It’s boring when the action cuts away to Rey doing her demigod things—it’s lot more fun to hang out with the mere mortals. While the constant borrowing of Star Wars’ greatest hits does get tiresome, there are a few striking visuals in The Rise of Skywalker—perhaps most notably taking a trip through a fallen Death Star. Still, there are wasted opportunities running through this third film not only for itself, but for barely managing to tie up the threads of the series. Clearly handicapped by a lack of central direction, this trilogy is messy in ways that it shouldn’t be under modern IP stewardship—aborted arcs, abusive retcons of major plot points from the previous film, lack of thematic unity and dumb plotting led by rule of cool at the expense of everything else. One example, and not the most important: I do like Naomi Ackie’s addition to the cast, but her character feels shoehorned here as a last-minute character meant as a foil for Flinn—but then over to Lando because the movie has no clue how to tie things up. The fanservice is blatant (and that’s just the stuff I caught—I suspect that there’s a lot more solely due to unnatural camera moves whenever a few extras show up) but it’s ultimately meaningless because the series will never be as beloved as it once was—if I had my say, I’d drop this third trilogy down the memory well as non-canon and try something not so slavishly aping the first trilogy. Visually, The Rise of Skywalker is admittedly wonderful and stands at the top of what’s possible with SFX—but the story is all over the place and the entire thing simply feels like a waste, even as it generally does better than its immediate predecessors. It took me six months to get to that film after its theatrical release, so indifferent I was to the series at this point… and it’s fair to say that I’m not really all that excited about anything else Star Wars has to offer in the near future.