Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Review: STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

by Rob DiCristino
The Skywalker Saga ends with a buffet of empty calories. And that’s fine.

Spoilers ahead? I honestly don’t know. Probably!

“That’s how they win. They make us think we’re alone,” says Kerri Russell’s Zorri Bliss. The underworld badass is trying to convince her old flame, Poe Dameron (Oscar Issac), not to give up, not to give into the overwhelming power of the nigh-unstoppable First Order. And she’s right: the characters in The Rise of Skywalker succeed by sticking together. Keeping it simple. Playing to their strengths. After the layered, challenging, and self-examining Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, it seems J.J. Abrams and company were resolved to walk the same path: No surprises. No new ideas. Nothing that might cause discord among the Star Wars faithful. In crafting a satisfying ending to arguably the most loved and enduring cinematic franchise of all time, Disney decided to play the hits, and to play them loud. There is absolutely nothing original or experimental about The Rise of Skywalker. It goes exactly the way you think it will. Whether or not that’s an asset or a detriment is entirely up to you.
Picking up sometime after The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker begins with urgent news: The long-dormant Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has returned from the dead! Buried deep below an undisclosed location on an uncharted planet, the legendary Sith master is broadcasting a message of terror across the galaxy. While General Leia and her Resistance forces (including Dameron and John Boyega’s Finn) scramble to fight a war shorthanded, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) tracks Palpatine’s signal in hopes of cutting the dark lord down before he can rise to challenge his newfound power. Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) continues her Jedi training (in a sequence that seems to be aimed directly at the character’s Mary Sue-ing detractors). Though she’s determined to carry on the legacy of the Jedi and her master, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Rey soon becomes overwhelmed by the feeling that a dark force is swelling inside of her.

Though it rides on rails familiar to even the most casual Star Wars fan, it has to be said that the first hour of The Rise of Skywalker is an exceedingly slick and unrelenting attack on our senses. Characters run and yell and chase and shoot and blast through hyperspace so fast for so long that you would be forgiven for forgetting to breathe. It’s fun! Finn and Poe trade barbs! C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) makes obtuse statements! Rey does Jedi backflips and sort of flirts with Poe! A re-helmeted Kylo Ren drives his angry lightsaber through friend and foe alike! In true Abrams fashion, the film feels determined not to let us think about any one thing for too long. “How did this get there?” “Why don’t they try this, instead?” “What about this thing, over here?” Doesn’t matter! We’re moving on! None of that naval-gazing, cerebral Last Jedi shit here, folks, we promise! If Abrams’ The Force Awakens was a carbon-copy of the original Star Wars, consider The Rise of Skywalker his riff on Return of the Jedi. Again, Return of the Jedi is good, and that may be exactly what you want from a Star Wars movie! That’s completely fine.
You know what isn’t fine? The utter failure of tenacity and ambition that drove Abrams and his writing team to retcon and/or flat-out bail on nearly all of the most interesting and provocative elements of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. Ren’s helmet — destroyed in The Last Jedi so that Adam Driver could more readily convey his character’s state of conflict — is fixed. Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber — split in two in The Last Jedi, a visual metaphor for the Force’s ultimate rejection of binary ideologies — is reassembled without so much as a comment. Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico — a character whose arc examined the truly egalitarian nature of the Force — is shelved, limited to about three scenes total. Worst of all — Yup, you guessed it — Rey’s backstory is retconned. And if that wasn’t irritating enough, it’s only after The Rise of Skywalker reaches its climax that it becomes clear it was done so for absolutely No Functional Narrative Reason At All. There’s no point to it. The film works without that twist. Its only purpose is to satiate fans who are terrified of any and all ambiguity.
And that pisses me off. It pisses me off that The Rise of Skywalker has nothing interesting to say about the Force, the Jedi, the Sith, or Star Wars, in general. It pisses me off that every conceivable fan theory or shiptease is given screentime. It pisses me off that two beloved Star Wars characters are given measured, impactful demises that end up being nothing more than empty shock moments with zero emotional or narrative consequences. And look, The Rise of Skywalker is a fine movie. It’s well made. It has a few really great moments (one in particular pays off the Rey/Ren Force telepathy in a stand-up-and-cheer fashion). Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) flies the goddamned Millennium Falcon and Carrie Fisher gets a decent (if unavoidably rushed) sendoff. It is exactly what most mainstream Star Wars fans want to see. And maybe it’s shame on me for hoping that a multinational corporate giant would take another creative risk after The Last Jedi. But I was hopeful. Now, like Poe facing an onslaught of First Order starships, I just feel alone.

14 comments:

  1. Dammit. I reeeeally wish I was seeing Cats tomorrow instead of this.

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  2. This is everything I worried about when Terrio and Abrams were announced as the writers. Well, its sure to at least have a lot of fun moments, at least.

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  3. Despite the hubbub I think TLJ will be remembered as the high point of this trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back, if you will).

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    1. I think it will be pretty equally split among all three films. I don't think TLJ has any hope of being considered the best by more than half of the fans, the half that already loved it.

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  4. Crap!...just not feeling the need to rush out and see this flic..I really liked "Rogue One" and digging "Mando"...so sorry that no one had a plan or a map for this New series..missed op

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    1. If Russ Meyer directed The Mandolorian, do you think it would be called "Mando Topless!" or "The Mondo-lorian"?

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  5. I felt like Disney was in a difficult spot. They desperately hoped this movie could reunite the fanbase. But instead of pleasing everyone, it seems to have pleased few. But I'm one of the few.

    VIII was so jarring to me. It was an entertaining movie, but a bad Star Wars movie, with lots of choices that just didn't make any sense. I think IX did its best to make VIII make sense. And I think overall, it worked. It's not a perfect film by any means. And not all of the "retconning" works. But it was enough for me.

    VIII has improved quite a bit for me now that I know where all those plot threads are going. I think IX did an amazing job wrapping things up, overall.

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  6. By no means do I think this movie is perfect. It has flaws. For example, I thought the opening crawl language started awkwardly with, “The dead speak!” However, I thought the movie was very good and had some nice emotional resonance. There are a few points I disagree with in this review. However, I will only address one. Regarding the subject of retconning, it’s a broad descriptor encompassing several types of narrative adjustments (addition, subtraction, contradiction). And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, or even a weird thing (like the disappearance of Chuck Cunningham from “Happy Days”). For example, the idea of Marvel’s Captain America being a World War II superhero who in 1945 fell into frozen suspended animation for decades, only to be then revived in present day (originally the early 1960s, but placed later and later as storytelling required), was a retcon. Captain America comics originally continued after WWII into the early 1950s, then discontinued. But when Stan Lee wanted to bring the character back for the Avengers in the early 1960s, he didn’t want to bring the character back as a middle-aged man, likely past his prime. So Stan Lee came up with the suspended animation idea most people today are familiar with, and explained that the Captain America still in action during the few years after WWII was an imposter.

    In “The Rise of Skywalker”, the type of retcon for Rey’s back story is in the nature of addition rather than contradiction. Kylo Ren told Rey one version of her family history in Episode 8, and another, more-contextualized version in Episode 9. A few things about this. First, what Kylo Ren told Rey in Episode 8 shouldn’t have been assumed to be the establishment of fact. Characters can lie, or shade the truth. Kylo Ren was an unreliable source. Episode 8 never showed the audience that what Ren said was the truth, properly contextualized. Second, even in light of what Ren tells Rey in Episode 9, if we take another look at what Ren had previously told Rey, everything he said may well have been true, but deceptively cast in the most unfavorable light. Even the part about Rey’s parents selling her for drinking money. The “drinking money” descriptor could have been Ren’s misleading characterization of “a small amount of money”. So most of the audience assumes that Rey’s parents were basically a Star Wars version of Harry Potter’s muggle relatives. But the movies never showed us that to establish that. As for why Ren changes his approach to filling Rey in on her family back story between the two encounters, maybe he received new information in the interim. Or maybe, he initially thought the best way to win her to his side was to tell her she had no history worth tying herself to. When that didn’t work, maybe he thought he’d try the “it’s in your blood” approach. The earlier approach had the benefit for Ren of not discounting Rey’s power, but also not letting on that her lineage might be more powerful than his.

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    1. Thanks for the comment! I appreciate the time it took to write it, so I’d like to respond. I consider Rey’s lineage reveal a “retcon” and not a matter of “a certain point of view” because it contradicts the text of The Last Jedi. The way I read it, Rey learns that she is “no one” not in her conversation with Kylo Ren (who, I agree, could be lying to/testing her and is clearly using their shared knowledge of her origins as recruitment leverage [“You’re no one, but not to me”]), but in the cave mirror scene. Asking, “Show me my parents,” she only sees herself. This is part of a larger lesson from Luke about the hubris of Jedi who assume they have powers due to special lineage or some kind of elevated cultural efficacy. It doesn’t matter who Rey is. It’s part of the film’s larger egalitarian message about the nature of the Force. Contrary to people saying it “left JJ with nothing to work with,” I believe TLJ opened the universe wider than any other installment. That’s what makes the Palpatine reveal such a frustrating and direct contradiction. It makes the universe tiny again. What Ren knew and when doesn’t really matter. What matters is the emotional truth conveyed to the audience and how it interacts with the themes of the film as a whole. TLJ was entirely centered around this idea. There are a thousand reasons why the Palpatine reveal was bad, but this is the one that bothered me the most. And look, this kind of backpedaling is in line with a lot of what Lucas did throughout the original trilogy! It’s not out of line, and I don’t think JJ is a bad filmmaker (just a bad storyteller), but it is disappointing to me, personally.

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    2. I felt the mirror scene has even more meaning now that she's a Palpatine. Given the new context, it's very similar to Luke's swamp scene (which I also love). The point being, what they truly fear is themselves, because the evil that lies within.

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  7. Great review. Pretty much sums up my feelings, though I think I came away liking the film more than you did. I especially hate that we lost the egalitarian nature of the force that TLJ set up. The last shot of TLJ is one of my favorite moments in all of Star Wars. This idea that anyone can be strong in the force, not just descendants of powerful force users who have like a force trust fund or something. The idea that force-sensitive people can pop up anywhere would also be consistent with the prequels, who gave us this random slave kid of Anakin Skywalker and the idea that the Jedi are constantly scouring the galaxy for children who are strong in the force. It's sad that they got away from that.

    That said, ROS still won me over with its charm and great set pieces, even in the face of a pretty sloppy construction.

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    1. Anakin wasn't random, Palpatine used the dark side to create him in his mother. It was all part of the plan.

      But you're right that you don't need to be a Skywalker or Palpatine to be a force user. I don't think RoS betrays that. Finn is clearly Force sensitive. It was hinted at in TFA but made clear in RoS.

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  8. Thanks for your response to my comment. I hadn’t interpreted the cave mirror scene that way, so I rewatched it. I still have a different interpretation of that scene. Mine is that the cave is similar to the one on Dagobah in Episode 5, of which Yoda tells Luke he will find in there only what he takes with him. Whatever new perspective about herself Rey gains from her cave experience is drawn from her mind and given visual form, with aid of The Force. The cave doesn’t supply answers that the person asking would be in no position to figure out independently. For example, Rey couldn’t ask the cave mirror to show her the most recent strategy meeting involving members of the First Order high command. When Rey asks the cave to show her parents, she’s indirectly asking who she is. But she doesn’t really remember who her parents were, and that information isn’t dispositive of her identity or destiny. On some level, I believe Rey knows this, so the cave ultimately reflects her own image back to her.

    Regarding who in the Star Wars universe can be strong with The Force, I don’t think any Star Wars movie ever implied that it’s only those with a particular family lineage, or that it’s primarily those with an especially Force-sensitive family lineage. Even when Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke or Leia commented that The Force was strong in the Skywalker family, they were primarily referring to Anakin Skywalker and his two children, a three-person bloodline spanning two generations, not a long line of individual Skywalkers over hundreds of years. We know that Anakin Skywalker just came out of the blue in his family line as strong with The Force. I think that the Star Wars movies stand by several notions about The Force, which can all be true: (1) Anyone could be strong with the Force, however, (2) it is a rare thing that any individual is strong with The Force (most individuals will not be Force-sensitive), and (3) it is the case that some families will have clusters of individuals strong with The Force. In other words, anyone could be a movie star, the odds are slim that any individual will be a movie star, and it helps if your parents were Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Ordinarily, I’d be annoyed by the reveal of Rey’s ancestry in Episode 9, because I’m generally annoyed with any movie or TV series which makes hero and villain intertwined by either blood (e.g. 2015’s “Spectre”), or origin (e.g. “You made me.”/”You made me first.” from 1989’s “Batman”). However, I think Episode 9 handled this effectively. I was more annoyed by the fact that the Emperor survived Episode 6, no matter how he figured into the story.

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  9. (@Trey) Regarding your first paragraph, I've seen that assertion here and there, but it's not true. And I mean, that's the word of the official Star Wars "powers that be" on the matter. As far as I can tell, this idea started percolating based in part on Palpatine's conversation with Anakin about Darth Plagueis at Star Wars Cirque du Soleil in Episode 3. Palpatine mentions offhandedly that according to legend, a Sith Lord named Darth Plagueis could use The Force to manipulate the midichlorians to create life. That's basically it, with no clear connection to anything else in Star Wars canon.

    Then, there's a recent comic book series called "Dark Vader: Lord of the Sith", which has the Lucasfilm Story Group stamp of canon approval, which has an illustrated panel of Palpatine behind the pregnant Shmi Skywalker. Add it all up, and a lot of people are running with the premise that Palpatine created Anakin Skywalker. But it ain't so. The creatives behind the comic book have said that the Palpatine/Shmi connection depicted is entirely imagined by Anakin, and that if they'd known ahead of time that people might misinterpret it as fact, they'd have removed it. They've also said, don't assume a character's viewpoint or statements are reliable, especially that character is aligned with The Dark Side of The Force.

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