Star Wars Episode Nine The Rise of Skywalker Review

Most of the time I try to focus on positive aspects of novels and films, giving them credit where they succeeded and trying to begin and end on positive notes. But it’s been about a year since Episode IX came out… and I just want to let the hate flow through me. Spoilers ahoy.

Let’s start with the things that were good and nearly good: the main cast remains so charming. Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and (briefly) Mark Hamill all do their best to make their characters fun and compelling. Special shout-out to Driver who was the most interesting part of the trilogy. Next, the ruins of the Death Star scene felt like classic Star Wars. That was the only part of the movie where I could feel my heart rate speeding up. Credit where it’s due, that was fun to watch. Last, the idea that authoritarian regimes are overthrown not by a small group of rebels/resistance, but by all people rising up to take the power back, as demonstrated by the flotilla of free ships showing up on Exegol. Thematically, I think this was a worthy addition.

Now let’s step over to the Dark Side and focus on the flaws that are specific to this film, not created by the rest of the trilogy: Kylo Ren stops being a threat almost immediately because no matter how many stand-offs with Rey he has, he never wants to harm her or even seems particularly interested in Palpatine’s galactic conquest plan. This brings us to Palpatine. Bringing back the Big Bad of the first six movies might have worked… if it was hinted at in movies VII or VIII, which it wasn’t. So we’re left pulling a villain that has had no part in the plot of the trilogy to this point out of nowhere because the story says Kylo Ren must be redeemed, and that means we need a new villain (setting aside that the film also goes out of its way to waste villains that were perfectly available: Military Maniac Admiral Hux and the Knights of Ren, who, after three movies, do absolutely nothing.) The weird Easter egg hunt for a map to a planet (ship to sword to C3-PO translating the sword to Death Star to Kylo’s Ship to Magic Sith Planet) except… it was on the tiny droid we met an hour and a half ago anyway, so there was literally no point to all of that. Plus, Palpatine’s grand plan just feels big and stupid. Instead of Death Stars or Star Killers it’s a thousand Death Star ships and taking over his granddaughter’s body, because the message that anyone can be a hero that Last Jedi set up apparently was too much to commit to.

 So we have an old (supposedly dead) villain appearing out of nowhere, our villain who’s supposed to be redeemed poses no real threat for most of the film, a time-wasting journey for a map that the characters already possessed, a map plot that Abrams recycled from Episode VII, only making even less sense this time, and a stupid “I’m going to destroy the galaxy” plan that was just background for a moment where Rey kills her weird grandfather she didn’t have any stakes in because her theme music was louder than his. And that’s IGNORING fake-dead Chewie that’s supposed to make Rey feel bad, although she keeps forgetting to, destroying the coolest lightsaber in any of the movies, Finn’s entire character arc nosediving into nothing, and a weird passionless kiss that couldn’t have been what anybody wanted.

There’s a lot I could say about this movie and a lot of things I think would have improved it (in six words: “The Madness of Supreme Leader Ren”), but at the end of the day what haunts me most about the movie isn’t that it’s bad, although it is, it’s that everything the movie does is so easy. We needed a villain that Kylo could turn against, like Vader did. So let’s bring back the guy Vader betrayed in the old movies. We need the audience to feel worried, but also not to feel bad. So we’ll kill off Chewbacca, but only for like seven minutes. We want a big reveal like the old movies had, so we’ll just rip-off the old movies’ twist that the hero is related to the villain. We need for Kylo Ren to become good, but also not get into all the harm he did… so the second he saves Rey, he’ll die (just like in the old movies!) so we don’t have to do any work to redeem him or have the galaxy face the moral complexity of owing its salvation to a man who has done horrible things. And we need to feel like all the movies are connected so we’ll go back to Tatooine… just like in the old movies.

The Star Wars movies aren’t perfect, and it’s easy to debate whose sins really undermined the new trilogy (Abrams for setting the films up with no plan, Johnson for challenging what Abrams started, or just Disney for setting up a trilogy with no clear direction and forcing the movies to come out on such a tight schedule), but at the end of the day, I look back on Episode IX, and it’s the only Star Wars movie that felt so lazy that it took the easiest path at every turn instead of taking a chance on something interesting. This movie couldn’t have possibly pleased everyone, no matter what form the film took. But honestly, I’d rather they had swung big on some ideas they believed in and failed than recycled what was already there and left us with what we got.

1.5 light sabers out of 5. Slightly better than Phantom Menace, but even then, less imaginative.