Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
After The Last Jedi came out, the Star Wars fandom was torn apart. There were and still are fans supporting the movie constantly fighting with fans who are against it. There are the casual fans that take issue with it, but accept it for what it is (in my opinion a movie trying to start a trilogy) caught in the middle. Whatever side you are on, I'm going to guess that when Disney announced the final installment would be called The Rise of Skywalker you probably groaned. Fortunately a title does not make the movie and The Rise of Skywalker would attempt to close out the Skywalker saga by using a lot of the same strategies as The Force Awakens used to kick things off.
Much like The Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker is not afraid to prey on your nostalgia. We see all kinds of returns here. We have the heartbreaking death of Leia, Han Solo appearing to Kylo Ren, Lando Calrissian returning, Luke Skywalker walking out of the flaming wreckage of a TIE Fighter, much more involvement from C-3PO, and of course the big return, Emperor Palpatine. All of these characters along with the new crew (largely minus Rose) work to try and piece together two movies that had nothing really to do with each other and wrap up the entire Skywalker Saga. It was a massive task, and I think the movie did the best it could with what was left for it. There are quite a few questions answered that were left from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, while many concepts from The Last Jedi, such as fuel, vanished. While many of those concepts vanished the force powers stuck around and even expanded more as Kylo Ren and Rey end up having a duel basically through the force.
I love all the callbacks in this movie to things that came before it. Very early on we have Emperor Palpatine giving the exact same speech to Kylo Ren that he gave to Anakin Skywalker. Luke Skywalker raise the X-Wing, Red Five, from the depths. While he is doing so the same music plays that plays when Yoda raises the same ship out of the swamp on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. Apparently Red Five is waterproof. There's an Easter egg with a battle droid from Episode I being visible in a trashed ship. There's so many little things like that that touch on the history of this saga, which makes the ending feel so much bigger. Speaking of big, Rey and Kylo end up fighting on the remains of the second Death Star. We even get to see the Emperor's old chair where he forced Luke to watch the Rebel fleet struggle against the Imperial forces.
We continued to see the expansion of the force. This time around we see force healing. Rey heals Kylo Ren after he was again distracted in a fight. In the end Ren, now as Ben Solo, gives his life so Rey can live. We also see that Palpatine has certainly gained significant power as he is able to now use his force lightning to shut down the systems of the Resistance forces. Speaking of force lightning, we also see Rey use the power in a struggle with Ren as they battle for control over a flying transport ship. As mentioned Luke raises Red Five from the depths in what I believe is the first time we see a force ghost move objects with the force. We also see objects transferred through the force as Rey hands off her lightsaber to Ben Solo.
I'm also a fan of Rey being a Palpatine. After The Last Jedi established that Rey's parents were really nobody even remotely important, it was a good recovery as The Force Awakens left it as such a mystery. It was obvious by the end of The Last Jedi that Rey had no blood relation with the Skywalkers, so having her be a Palpatine was the next best option. Though I have to say that another question that The Force Awakens left, but The Last Jedi didn't answer involved the Knights of Ren. We see them in this movie multiple times, but we still have no idea who they are or where they came from. Following The Force Awakens coming out, people theorized all kinds of ideas, even using the art book for the movie to compare them to characters from Rouge One: A Star Wars Story. Apparently the Knights of Ren appear in comics and other media, so there story is more known than the movies show.
We also learned that Snoke was basically just a science experiment that Palpatine created as we see massive test tubes filled with multiple Snokes early in the movie. Hey I guess if The Last Jedi killed him off without ever explaining who he was, at least we got something right?
So what didn't I like about it? Honestly I think it feels kind of rushed. I feel like they tried to jam as much as possible in, but at times it felt rush. Instances of that include General Hux being the Resistance spy. He announces it and is dead moments later. It would have been interesting to see more with that. While I understand the whole space horse force landing on the massive capital Star Destroyer on Exogal, I always cant help but think that though the Star Destroyers aren't exactly launched, they're not grounded either. Couldn't it have just pivoted or rotated a bit?
While I find the final showdown between Rey and Palpatine to be a bit cheesy with the whole I am all the Jedi stuff, I have to wonder why didn't Palpatine just stop using the lightning? That's the second time he's allowed himself to be either disfigured or killed by that. The first being when Mace Windu reflects his lightning back at him in the same fashion in Episode III which caused Palpatine to become disfigured. Speaking of Palpatine, the movie doesn't actually tell us how he survived or really anything about him other than he is able to gain enough life force from Ben and Rey to be made whole once more. It wasn't until well after the movie was released that the book confirmed that the Palpatine in the movie is actually a clone that then ended up restoring the original. Or something along those lines. Palpatine was brought back as a clone in the original extended universe, so it's not at all surprising that he'd be a clone, but it would have been nice for the movie to explain it a little bit.
The last little issue I want to bring up is the moment that was all over the trailers. We see Kylo Ren's TIE Fighter screaming along just off the ground. Rey draws her lightsaber and waits. Eventually she runs, jumps, and cuts one of the wings off the TIE. The TIE crashes with the cockpit literally bouncing along the ground until it explodes. Kylo Ren emerges from the wreckage completely unharmed. I don't know why that bothers me as we have seen stuff similar to this before, but man does that cockpit roll for a while before crashing and burning.
The Rise of Skywalker made the most of what it had to work with given how much the previous two films really clashed with one another. Could it have been better? Absolutely. Could it have been worse, oh yes it could have. I think this movie did enough to salvage the trilogy. It wasn't enough to bring the trilogy up to the level of the original though as the disjointedness between the first two movies made it nearly impossible for the trilogy to ever be considered one of the greatest. The Rise of Skywalker is able to close out the Skywalker Saga with Rey taking up the name of Skywalker, forging her own lightsaber and one could assume eventually starting a Jedi school of her own. The ending closes out in an incredible way with Rey and BB-8 burying Luke and Leia's lightsabers where the entire Star Wars story franchise began, at the now abandoned house of Luke and Leia's aunt and uncle on the desert planet of Tatooine. We see the two suns setting with Rey and BB-8 in a very similar fashion we saw to when Luke dreamed of leaving the planet. It was a perfect ending that I think could have only been more perfect if it had been C-3PO and R2-D2 returning to the planet as opposed to BB-8.
So where do I put the new trilogy. Well I certainly cannot put it above the original for a multitude of reasons. I just don't know if I can put it above the prequels and hear me out on why. While the prequels were not the greatest of movies (mostly looking at Episode I and II with that), they told a very cohesive story of the rise of Darth Vader, the fall of the Republic, and the rise of Emperor Palpatine to power. This culminated in Episode III where everything that was good in the galaxy seemingly failed and darkness took over. The new trilogy saw the rise of Rey from a nobody to a Jedi, the Resistance fighting back against the First Order that apparently the New Republic was not able to get a handle on before Starkiller Base wiped them out, Kylo Ren becoming the leader of the First Order, and the revelation that Palpatine had returned in the last movie. It's so all over the place.
The original three movies and prequels I can sum up in just a couple sentences, but I just can't find myself able to do that with the new trilogy. So where do I rank the new trilogy? I think the three movies are better overall. Even The Last Jedi I think is a much much better movie than Attack of the Clones. The Force Awakens cannot even be compared to The Phantom Menace in my opinion. That said if you asked me if I prefer The Rise of Skywalker to Revenge of the Sith, I'd have a real hard time. That said since the other two in the new trilogy I prefer to the prequels I'll give it the nod over the prequels despite the prequels clearly having the more defined story.
So what comes next for Star Wars? Is the franchise finally washed up, done, over with, left to die? Absolutely not. I expect that we will continue to see more and more Star Wars content come out on Disney + and other forms of media. Will we see another Star Wars film in theaters. I'm sure, but I think it's going to take time and honestly I think it's going to take time for the fan base to heal from the ongoing rupture that The Last Jedi caused. I do believe that Disney has it in them to right the ship again. We've seen signs of it already in the Star Wars Stories movies that came out and The Mandalorian has done incredibly well on Disney +. With The Rise of Skywalker launching on Disney + today we will see what happens from here on when it comes to Star Wars. All I know is that the franchise has been a part of my life for so long and will continue to be that, so I'm going to buckle up and enjoy the ups, the downs, and everything in-between. As always thank you for reading. This series does not end here as the next installment to this series will be looking at both Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story. I leave you with a video of Star Tours: The Adventure Continues from Disney's Hollywood Studios featuring the new scenes added in from The Rise of Skywalker. Stay tuned for the next blog coming real soon!
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