Star Wars: Episode IX –
The Rise of Skywalker

Release Date: December 20th, 2019
Running Time: 142 minutes
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
Written by: J.J. Abrams & Chris Terrio (Story & Screenplay), Derek Connelly & Colin Trevorrow (Story)
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Naomi Ackie, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams, Billie Lourd, Anthony Daniels

SPOILER ALERT—DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SOME KEY DETAILS

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker is the last movie of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and the ninth and final episode in what has come to be known as The Skywalker Saga—since Disney, the corporate behemoth who owns the franchise, is now going on to make other non-Skywalker-related Star Wars movies. As a lifelong fan who grew up on the original trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker (TRoS) marks the end of an era, so I'd like to discuss it in this context—as the third film of the third trilogy—in relation to the entire series. And then it's time for me to say goodbye to Star Wars.

Growing up in the 1980s I was captivated by Star Wars, the magical tales of strange creatures inspiring my imagination like nothing else. My interest continued with the prequel trilogy, but the three original movies remain my favourites. But since The Walt Disney Company's 2012 purchase of the franchise from creator George Lucas, I haven't been interested in Star Wars like I was for most of my life before. Is it that I'm now simply too old to appreciate what Lucas has always said are foremost movies for kids? Or is it the unwieldy manner in which Disney has navigated the Star Wars universe with The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017), and the likewise problematic standalones Rogue One (2016) and Solo (2018)? Well, the short answer is yes, and yes.

This trilogy never found a secure footing. The first two flicks are overwhelmed with themes of legacy and succession, and riddled with details that don't hold up in the overall narrative. The Force Awakens (TFA) is full of heavy-handed nods to the original trilogy, as a nostalgia-provoking, tribute-paying sequel that's almost more of a remake. And The Last Jedi (TLJ) is a cynical take, upending Star Wars history with irony and snark. Much time is spent pointing to situations and characters from the old movies and appearing to set up foreshadowing accordingly; only to subvert or ignore details expected to be explained later. Some answers come, but most of the time they're full of holes.

Many argue that the prequels never found their footing either. While not without their issues, they're at least united by the vision of one person—George Lucas—and have a cohesive narrative detailing the fall of the Jedi and rise of the Sith. But the sequel trilogy is positioned primarily as a counterpart to the original trilogy, referencing Star Wars history yet desperately trying to build a new legacy of its own. Are the sequel films really about anything different than the originals? A ragtag band of rebels in an against-all-odds fight to overthrow an ultrapowerful fascist military regime run by an evil wizard who commands a supernatural Force. It's the same. Not to say this trilogy doesn't have its own feel and identity, it's just a more insecure, confused identity—like that of Rey herself—messier than the other two trilogies even with their respective flaws.

Going into TRoS I was doubtful the filmmakers could address the trilogy's unresolved questions in any satisfying way. But they give it an honest effort. The opening crawl states that Palpatine, "The Emperor", has resurfaced after having been presumed dead for decades. This is the explanation for Snoke, the Sith, the First Order, and everything else we wondered about? Previews actually disclosed Palpatine's return; a move by Disney to prep the audience for the TRoS storyline by way of its marketing, so they could cover a lot of narrative ground offscreen. But it's still a massive revelation dropped without elaboration, in literally the opening seconds of the movie. Palpatine appears in the first few minutes of screentime and says, "I made Snoke"—opening it up for other inexplicable details to be likewise justified as resulting from clandestine Sith maneuverings.

Palpatine is said to have been pulling the strings, in the shadows, from the very beginning. For years he's been secretly overseeing construction of the largest battleship fleet ever assembled, called "The Final Order", which he's about to unleash on the galaxy. The ships are equipped with planet-destroying weaponry—some version of Death Star is in every sequel movie, and it's gotten old. A rebel attributes Palpatine's return to: "Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew." The implication is that Palpatine foresaw the future and cloned himself before his death by Vader's hand in Return of the Jedi (1983)—which completely negates the magnitude of Anakin's self-sacrificial act. So why did Palpatine scream as he fell down the reactor shaft? Just part of the masquerade? This movie in fact suggests that events throughout all 9 episodes have been Palpatine's long con—that he alone is, and always was, thee Sith. But the official backstory remains vague.

The rebels seek the Sith wayfinder—an ancient compass that points the way to Palpatine's lair on Exegol, a secret world in the galaxy's "unknown regions". Like Luke's Jedi hideout on distant planet Ahch-To, Sith also have a safehouse. But if these guys really don't want to be found then why leave clues, like the Ahch-To map and the Sith wayfinders? Palpatine says luring Rey to Exegol was his plan all along—then why make it hard to find? Only two wayfinders exist, and Kylo obtains one of them at the film's outset. Rey has Luke's notebook detailing his search for the other wayfinder years earlier, and embarks on a mission to retrieve it. This main storyline is established in the first 15 minutes, with no buildup. But given how much information is required to make sense of all that's happened in the previous movies, it's perhaps necessary that writer-director J.J. Abrams took this approach. So the adventure is instantly underway, with high-speed action and dense story exposition that doesn't let up its nonstop pace for at least the first 60 minutes of the 142-minute runtime. Jam-packed with spaceship battles, chases, and plot twists galore, TRoS feels like it's rushing to catch up to itself right from its opening scenes.

At the beginning of TRoS, Palpatine tells Kylo that Rey "is not who you think she is". And midway through we get the big reveal: Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter. Her biological father was Palpatine's son. This doesn't gel with what happened before, but TRoS tries to reframe the past as if assuming the audience hasn't been paying attention. In TLJ the mystery of Rey's identity is deflated when Kylo says her parents were nobody and Rey admits knowing it in her heart. But TRoS tries to explain that away when Kylo now tells Rey: "I never lied to you; your parents were no one. They chose to be, to keep you safe." Rey's parents gave her away to conceal her identity, but the son of Palpatine is hardly nobody. So either Kylo didn't know, or he did lie. Leia tells Rey: "Never be afraid of who you are"—that is, the Devil's grandchild. Then why is Rey so good? She's confused about her identity and abilities, but never shows any inclination to cruelty or hatred. If Rey's the descendant of the most evil being in the history of the universe, then why isn't she conflicted with dark side temptations like Anakin and Kylo were? TLJ writer-director Rian Johnson and J.J. Abrams flip-flop on details from movie to movie as if they were never united in one clear direction to begin with.

The Sith metaphor is one of the saga's most compelling elements. As an allegory for true evil, I've long been fascinated with the idea that there are only ever two Sith in existence at one time, a master and an apprentice; which is maybe actually one life form that manifests as a pair. If either Sith is killed, its spirit rejoins its twin-half, until it splits again to reinfect the next apprentice. This is how Sith reproduce, through abuse and trauma. Perhaps Sith are parasitic spirits that feed on fear and guilt, possessing physical beings and making them commit evil acts. And after extermination, it's the same Sith that eventually re-emerges from the unknown realm it had been banished to. So all Sith through history have been the same phantom entity that rematerializes every thousand years, which is perhaps the gestation or regeneration period for Sith after death, as they're said to have previously been extinct for a millennium. In TRoS Palpatine tells Kylo, "I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head," and later tells Rey he is "all the Sith". 

This storyline draws from "The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis", a Sith legend Palpatine recounts to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith (2005), wherein Master Plagueis allegedly learned how to attain immortality. I guess that's all we need to know; Palpatine cheated death because he effectively is Plagueis, engineering it all from beyond the grave, or as a living corpse, or a clone. Or whatever. But there's no mention of the Master-Apprentice Sith partnership, or the significance of Darth Sidious being slain decades prior by his apprentice Darth Vader. The Sith dark side persona is signaled by the title "Darth", a portmanteau of "dark" and "Sith". But Darth Sidious isn't named here. In fact, no one in this trilogy is named Darth. So was Snoke the apprentice, or just a body Sidious was controlling remotely and Kylo is his real apprentice, via Snoke? When did Palpatine come back to life, and how did he covertly amass an army of thousands? TRoS relies on the almighty-evil-villain stereotype to rationalize story discrepancies, but Palpatine's resurrection remains narratively unstable.

The prequels' introduction of the Sith enriched Force mythology that the original trilogy established. But the sequels abandon much of this, cherry-picking details from the previous films to draw from while ignoring other pieces that don't suit its narrative. There's no new information about intriguing concepts from the prequels, such as the thousand-year Sith extinction, The Prophecy of The Chosen One who would bring balance to the Force, the idea of communing with dead Jedi from the Netherworld of the Force, or midi-chlorians—microscopic life forms that exist in everything and apparently generate the Force. The absence of such Jedi-Sith mythology is the most disappointing aspect of the sequel trilogy, as it was the most interesting aspect of the prequel trilogy.

There's no romance in the sequels equal to Han and Leia's in the originals, or Anakin and Padmé's in the prequels. As cheesy as that latter relationship is, it at least fulfills the love story element of the space opera genre, which the sequels lack. There are, however, hints at romance that never develops; between Rose and Finn, Rey and Finn, Rey and Poe, and Rey and Kylo. And Finn and Poe alternate between bro-mantic comradery and petty bickering, with undercurrents of competing for Rey's affections. But Kylo/Ben and Rey have the most compelling relationship of the trilogy, full of twists and reversals. Their kiss momentarily foreshadows a future where Rey and Ben—a Palpatine and a Skywalker—might have children together. But ultimately Ben has to die. He redeems himself in the end—like Anakin before him—but he'd already gone too far, killed too many. Adam Driver owns the role of Kylo Ren, but this trilogy's greatest asset is Daisy Ridley as Rey. As believable with the emotional drama as with the physical action, Ridley at once embodies vulnerability, humility, and unparalleled strength as a full-fledged superheroine.

In TRoS, events are too often serendipitous. When Rey and crew crash-land in "the sinking fields" on Pasaana, they fall unharmed into an underground tunnel where they find the clue they seek. Also, Chewbacca doesn't die when stormtroopers take him on a ship that explodes; later it's explained he was simply on a different ship. And in an unnecessary plot twist, General Hux is a rebel spy. Hux was the most evil villain after Ren and Snoke in the previous two films, who reveled in the annihilation of multiple planets…but okay. Other questions remain: how does R2-D2 have the missing piece of the map to Luke's hideout in TFA? R2 is in every one of Episodes I through IX and never has his "memory wiped"—as C-3PO does at the end of Revenge—so why doesn't he ever divulge what he knows about the whole story? TRoS attempts to explain these questions away with one line of dialogue, as C-3PO says "R2's storage units are famously unreliable" when Threepio's memory is about to be erased again and he's asked if R2 has a backup. But apparently R2's backups are intact, because later he restores C-3PO's memory anyway.

TRoS also tries to account for Luke's erratic behaviour in TLJ, as he now tells Rey that fear was holding him back and he was wrong to renounce the Force; another case of attempting to rectify inexplicable components with one line of dialogue. In TFA Han Solo asks Maz Kanata where she got Luke's lightsaber. Maz answers, "A good question, for another time." This would be the time. But no, it's not answered. This is the same saber that was Anakin's, which Obi-Wan acquired after defeating him on Mustafar, then years later gave to Luke, which was presumed lost when Vader severed Luke's hand in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). So how does Maz have the lightsaber some thirty-plus years later? And does TRoS answer the question of how Kylo Ren came to possess Darth Vader's mask? No, not at all. At the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke burns Vader's corpse—armour, helmet, mask, and all—in a funeral pyre on Endor. So how does Ren have the mask decades later?

The sequels introduce a lot of colossal Force powers we've never seen an inkling of in the other trilogies: the Rey-Kylo mind-bridging, Luke's Force-projecting, Rey's wound-healing, Leia's spacewalking, and a bunch of things Palpatine does. In TLJ Snoke says he orchestrated the mind-bridge between Rey and Kylo, but now Snoke's gone and they're mind-bridging like nobody's business. Kylo and Rey have lightsaber battles and pass objects across space, which helps them defeat Palpatine when Rey teleports a lightsaber to Kylo. So Palpatine effectively causes his own demise, having created Snoke who initiated the Rey-Kylo mind-bridge. In TLJ Ghost-Yoda summons lightning to set fire to the Jedi library, and in TRoS Ghost-Luke Force-raises his X-wing from the water. If Jedi ghosts can still command the Force in the physical world, then why don't they show up on Exegol to help Rey? Instead we just hear their voices chattering supportive words, and Rey destroys Palpatine by channeling their spirit. Like Palpatine is all the Sith, apparently Rey is all the Jedi—even though she's descended from the Sith.

Given how things went down with its two predecessors, it seemed unlikely TRoS could sufficiently tie up loose ends. And that's proven true by Palpatine's casual reappearance; just an all-powerful evil dude who can bring himself back from the dead, control puppets like Snoke, zap a thousand spaceships in the sky with lightning bolts from his fingertips, and suck the life essence out of people to rejuvenate himself. TRoS goes all Marvel-movie-villain with Palpatine at the end; a seemingly unstoppable evil guy hell-bent on ruling the universe—not unlike the supervillain Thanos in The Avengers series. And the wayfinder storyline mirrors the Marvel movie cliché of the superheroes' quest to recover some glowing object that will help them prevent the world's destruction, like The Avengers' infinity stones. Marvel Studios is, like Lucasfilm, a subsidiary of Disney who are cranking out their movies of whatever series through a production-line template, their corporate movie factory lacking the imagination of someone like George Lucas behind the wheel.

Star Wars is such a monumental franchise that in some ways The Rise of Skywalker was doomed from the start, continually at risk of crumbling under the weight of obligation or drowning in its own ambitious flourishes. The damage was already done with TFA and especially TLJ anyway, so all things considered it could've been worse. Like TLJ was all over the place in unraveling Star Wars mythology, TRoS scrambles to put the pieces back together—in note-hitting, crowdpleasing fashion. In the end it's a fairly conventional final chapter, its troubled story propped up by good performances and, as expected, dazzling special effects. Despite the narrative shortcomings, there are still some memorable moments: the Millennium Falcon lightspeed-skipping, the "Aki-Aki Festival of the Ancestors", and a well-executed CGI flashback scene of young Leia and Luke engaging in Jedi lightsaber training. So on a superficial level TRoS is moderately enjoyable—as the blockbuster sci-fi/action flick that it is—with down-to-the-wire suspense and nifty callbacks to the old films. But I'd prefer greater attention to sound storytelling, more myth and metaphor, and less spectacle.

Given Carrie Fisher's sudden passing, Leia's exit is handled adequately. The iconic actress died in December 2016 before TLJ's release, but shot some of her TRoS scenes concurrently with the previous films and other unused footage was repurposed to fill gaps. The other original trilogy characters also show up; Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine—and it's great to have Billy Dee Williams back as Lando Calrissian. Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 round out the regulars, and cameos include Warwick Davis as Wicket the Ewok, Dennis Lawson as Wedge Antilles, and composer John Williams. Others make vocal cameos; we hear the voices of Darth Vader (James Earl Jones), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, and Alec Guinness via archive audio), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), Snoke (Andy Serkis), Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), and Yoda (Frank Oz). So TRoS makes an earnest attempt to wrap up the series, and succeeds—if only barely—in some respects.

When George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, the deal reportedly included his sequel story outlines. But Disney ended up totally disregarding Lucas's notes and went their own way. So he publicly slammed TFA upon its release, joking in an interview that he'd sold his baby to "white slavers". And Mark Hamill criticized Rian Johnson's unflattering portrayal of Luke in TLJ. When the series' creator and its original star both express disapproval, something is wrong. Lucas's sequels might've had issues too, but at least we could've gone down with the ship knowing it was the creator's vision. But with Disney's sequels I don't even know who's responsible—whose vision is it? Kathleen Kennedy's? J.J. Abrams'? Rian Johnson's? Colin Trevorrow was slated to write-direct TRoS until he left over creative conflicts with Disney and was replaced by TFA director Abrams, who shares the screenplay credit here with Chris Terrio—while Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connelly retain a story credit. A lot of hands on it. Was there an overarching story treatment for all three films before shooting started on the first one? And who wrote that? Or they just made it up along the way, from Abrams, to Johnson, then back to Abrams to replace Trevorrow, each one putting their own spin on it and trying to outdo the other.

The sequel films never got to me like the original trilogy did, or even—while to a lesser degree—the prequel trilogy. So, this is the last thing I'll ever write about Star Wars. It is, as they say, what it is. I'll still keep an eye on what Disney does with the franchise (I enjoyed their live action web series The Mandalorian), but I'll never regard it the same as I did up until a few years ago. I know too much. I can't unlearn what I've learned. I acknowledge it's easy to see the flaws of what exists when compared to an imagined ideal, and I ask myself what might've been better. All I conclude is that George Lucas's sequels would've been better simply because he envisioned it from the beginning. Word is he was going to deeply explore the world of the Force; philosophical aspects of Force-Jedi-Sith mythology are among my favourite SW qualities, so I can only lament what might've been. Maybe one day somebody will create an alternate series of Star Wars movies based on Lucas's sequel ideas. Who knows, it could happen. I'm not holding my breath though. Thanks, George.
Rating (out of 5): ★★★
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
May 4th, 2020