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  • Writer's pictureRoman Arbisi

Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - A Beautiful Lie


42 years and eight films later, comes the final installment of The Skywalker Saga, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Directed by J.J. Abrams, and starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac in what is perhaps the most disappointing experience I’ve had with a movie. 

Star Wars has defined my life just as it has for millions of others. It’s a galaxy that gives me countless characters to love, villains to scare me, action to grip me, romance to be swooned by, plot points to be surprised by, and stories to be lost in. Worlds unseen. A galaxy explored. Visualized with grandiose sights and sounds. Trumpets blaring, drums rolling, choirs chanting, characters dancing, clashing, smiling, laughing, and crying. Star Wars is something that is inherently magical, mysterious, and nearly indescribable in regards to the emotions that leap off the screen. Even through the “not so good”, the charm ingrained in this saga will forever mean something to me. Whether it’s mocking bad dialogue, or crying because an X-Wing slices through the air to the tune of whatever magic trick John Williams conjured up, Star Wars makes me feel. It can inspire me, it doesn’t always challenge me, but it swings me through emotions high into the sky, where I eventually dip into lows, but on the way back I will reach the same heights I did before. Star Wars is a pendulum of emotion; So what went wrong?


The Rise of Skywalker didn’t make me feel. 


I’ve spent north of 24 hours having to come to grips with the fact that the supposed end of this life-changing saga left me distant. I’m on the outside looking in, wondering how something that is usually told with ease, is now the hardest thing to do in the world. We could spend all day discussing the threads that spun this web, but singularly, The Rise of Skywalker fails. Fingers can be pointed and people can be blamed, but this was a unified effort from everyone involved. No matter if they actively worked on the film, made a couple YouTube videos, or condemned a vocal minority, this was everyone’s doing, and frankly, it’s a film we deserved for all the wrong reasons.

 

After the patient outpouring of love for a franchise in desperate need of fresh air, The Rise of Skywalker descends to the lowest levels and collapses within itself. It’s unable to support the weight of any film that came prior, because it isn’t made up of the right material to even exist on it’s own. The distance I was talking about before, all comes from Skywalker choosing to alienate not just one specific demographic of the audience, but the entire audience. Alienating them in a way that doesn’t exclude us from everyone else, but in a way that thinks we may be the most incapable, unimaginative, stupid audience in the world. After spending months exclaiming this was “a gift back to the fans”, I am astonished, and feel insulted to be given a film that was told “it was for us”. 

This movie speeds through every red light it can, because there is no one around to stop them. From the get go there is no patience, no semblance of structure, or pace. It reads like a story with no outline, but more frustratingly, no vision. At this point it is abundantly clear that the sequel trilogy had no roadmap, and in franchise film-making, that is (unfortunately) important. Sure, I personally love The Last Jedi and find myself gleefully enjoying The Force Awakens, but the vision here is so broad, that the horizons it thinks it’s reaching, actually aren’t even remotely close. This film fundamentally misunderstands every basic form of storytelling, because it is more concerned with exchanging any meaning, for the rotten apple under the apple tree. Any choice made here that is mildly interesting, or potentially challenging, is cleared up no more than three awful cuts later to maintain some wacked out sense of “brand recognition”. There is zero reach for anything greater, higher, or more ripe for the pickings. As much flak as the prequels get for being poorly executed, at the very least there was a vision, and the artistry was idiosyncratic. 


George’s voice within the prequels was distinct enough, outside of its foibles, that it still felt like it belonged in the galaxy he created. The Rise of Skywalker on the other hand is so busy with trying to remind us what we love about Star Wars, that it ends up not feeling anything like Star Wars. The musical cues are there, the visual memoirs are also there, the characters are clearly there, but it doesn’t feel anything like Star Wars because it isn’t concerned with feeling. It is astonishing how unconcerned this film is with even attempting to let an emotion settle. Any moment of potential emotional engagement or character challenge is skipped by with a sneering “shoo” instead of a welcoming “wave”. Why? Because the movie is eating with its eyes, and not its stomach. There is no sense of self-control or desire to evolve character. No ability shown that even one person involved is completely confident in what lie they’re trying to sell. Even John Williams, who is usually harmonious and memorable, completely airmails it. 

This goes without mentioning that many believe it retcons the previous film. It doesn’t really retcon the previous film, it retcons other films in the saga before it ever does The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker is a continuation that took the prime position it was left in to tell a much easier story, and decides to do all the heavy-lifting for no reason at all. Essentially, this story is an entire trilogy’s worth of material packed into one film. It renders past characters’ decisions meaningless and it shifts the grand scheme of things and shrinks the world even more than it was before. 


I am simply dumbfounded. Still. 

This hurts a lot. I’ve seen plenty of movies that made me feel like a zombie, but I never thought the most joy-filled world ever could. Star Wars has always been the perfect blend of candy and vegetables. The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t portion itself out properly. It’s lazy, too focused on what doesn’t actually matter, and actually angry at itself. It’s stunning that a trilogy that started with empty promises has an ending from the same guy that still has no idea where the story was even headed to begin with.


What does this mean moving forward? Not just for the films, the brand, or Disney+; What does this mean as a fan moving forward? I’m not trying to speak for everyone here, because many people are loving this movie, and that is their subjective right to do so. But I have to wonder if we should be accepting of a brand looking us dead in the eye and saying this is the best we can give you. Not that I expected The Rise of Skywalker to be the best Star Wars movie, that is a monstrously tall order of expectations, but the lowest level of fan service? The cheapest plot points? The decreasing of character value? The forced, inexplicable, tired nostalgia it thinks is hitting the right notes? The most uninteresting story you could tell? Fridging a character because a vocal minority hated her? Reducing the impact of the greatest redemption in the saga to explain a new character’s strength? Cheap, unearned surprises and twists? Is this the bar? One that had to be set so low, that all it had to do was look to the other side and act like it succeeded in achieving something grand? Simply, baffling.


Lastly, I mentioned “lies” above, but I saved one more. All movies, are lies. Great movies are great lies, bad movies are bad lies. We either believe this completely made-up story, we think you’re full of shit, or maybe we find there to be a sliver of truth, but aren’t entirely sold. The Rise of Skywalker is a bad lie, a terrible lie, but it comes from the mouth of the worst liar of all. J.J. Abrams. 


What hurts my experience with The Rise of Skywalker the most, is the fact that Abrams stood tall and proud for MONTHS saying that he didn’t side with the toxic, tucked away corner of this fanbase. He defended Rian Johnson, his choices, his vision, his film, and even shunned that group of people that harassed him and his colleagues for every waking hour. He stood in front of cameras, colleagues that took that heat, people that worked with them, and proclaimed that Star Wars was ready to evolve, and if that meant leaving some people behind, then so be it. It was all lip service. The Rise of Skywalker is J.J. Abrams’ bold-face lie to every person that he comforted in the fanbase’s darkest times. He sold out by trying to please everyone, and it ultimately sides with the people who verbally, mentally, and sexually abuse the people he worked with every day. To me, that is the most deplorable aspect of this production, and it ends up becoming the cause for what is the Skywalker Saga’s biggest failure yet.

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