The saga comes to an end as a
disappointing adventure and questions of what could have been. Disney
became so afraid after the meta-cognizant marvel that is The Last Jedi
that divided audiences but actually stood for something. They desperately
wanted to please the internet trolls, bigots and misogynists to gain back their
precious coin. By doing so they sold the soul of Star Wars in order to make a
quick buck. And to all the JJ defenders out there claiming that he was
blindsided by the final cut and it was a terrible working environment, spare
me. The Rise of Skywalker was a spitting image of where Abrams wanted to go in
The Force Awakens with only a few acknowledgments to the turns that Rian
Johnson tried to make in The Last Jedi. He chose this project, he wrote this
project and he was proud of this project. Just because it is now getting
blow-back, doesn't mean he can suddenly plant sources saying it is not what he
envisioned. Is it hard to work for Disney? Sure. But every drop of this movie
oozes of JJ Abrams. With that out of the way, let’s get into a final review of
the last film (hopefully?) in the Skywalker saga.
THE DEAD HAVE SPOKEN!! as we are
told in the opening scrawl of the film which looks nothing like any scrawl we
have seen before. Palpatine is resurrected as some sort of zombie puppet without
even a mention as to how. and that is only the beginning where we get a
half-moment to breath before we are off on one of the fastest paced, messiest
adventures ever to be created. From one scene after another we are given either
important plot points that don't make sense or JJ gives us a trip back 4 whole
years to correct criticism that he faced from the force awakens. When a film
maker reacts to the audience in universe to the point where you can obviously
see the criticism he is trying to correct, be it his own or from a previous
saga, you know there is a problem. Did we really need to be pulled out of the
movie to see Chewbacca get a medal that he didn't get in A New Hope?
Absolutely not. Did we need to see Chewbacca over react to the demise of a
character after he didn't give it a thought when his best friend Han Solo eat
it in The Force Awakens? No. And if we are not correcting mistakes then
we are getting nostalgia slammed down our throats at every chance they get.
From Palpatine to the Death Star, from Luke's A New Hope medal to the space
chess in the Millennium Falcon, it is all a terribly chose trip down memory
lane instead of any kind of in-depth step forward. A surprising highlight of
the film is the unabashed sass that C-3PO brings to the film. It is almost as
if her himself can't believe the incredibly absurd things that are
happening around him.
While i is not the worst Star Wars
film ever made, Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace have those two spots
locked down, it is not the saga ending masterpiece that Disney wants you to believe.
The fact that you have to learn important details about the film from the
essential readers guide and not the work itself tells you the cluster of a film
and that bit off way more than it could chew. A number of the story-lines in
the film could have been cut to give us more time with the characters we
already know. The fact that Rose gets pushed to the side so we can be
introduced to a figure from Poe's past that has little bearing on the plot is a
travesty that should not be forgiven soon.
I will give the movie credit for a
couple of moments that were quite powerful, most of them involving the women,
but there are far too many missteps to call it a fun and satisfying end.
This earns a C- as it is a below average blockbuster
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