Given its recent arrival (from "a galaxy far, far away") on DVD and Blu Ray, I thought it’d be a good time to review ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ and the impact it has had on the whole Star Wars saga.
Across the last forty-three years, almost everyone has seen some form of Star Wars media and that it is a worldwide phenomenon is in little doubt. As a very young child some of my first memories are of this beloved franchise, which has had a shifting and sometimes convoluted story throughout the years. Now after nine main saga instalments, two 'Star Wars stories', several seasons of animated shows and the latest live action show: 'The Mandalorian', there’s a lot of backstory to keep in mind. Kicking off the sequel trilogy which features ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ was the seventh instalment in the Skywalker Saga: ‘The Force Awakens’ directed by the visionary J.J Abrams. This was the first film released by Disney after they had acquired Lucasfilm. Fans had to wait a further two years after ‘The Force Awakens’, however, to be finally treated to the first words from Luke Skywalker since 1983. Directed by Rian Johnson, ‘The Last Jedi’ received mixed reviews from both the box office and film critics around the world. After the lukewarm reception to Johnson’s creation, Disney decided to bring back JJ. Abrams for the final instalment of the Skywalker Saga.
Sadly, on December 7th, 2016, the much-loved Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) passed away suddenly. Luckily all of her scenes for 'The Last Jedi' had been filmed by this time but her passing left huge questions for what would now happen regarding her role in 'The Rise of Skywalker'.
Perhaps the awkwardness with which Carrie Fisher's exit from the saga was handled contributed to how jarring and wrong this film felt to me. Frankly, the whole new trilogy felt wrong to me. I can only imagine that this is how an original trilogy fan felt going to see 'The Phantom Menace' back in 1999. Betrayed. The first film felt like a complete retelling of 'A New Hope', 'The Last Jedi' gave us a strange characterisation of Luke Skywalker that felt bizarre in light of all his previous development in the original three movies and 'The Rise of Skywalker' gave us a pointless and confusing resurrection of the long dead Emperor Palpatine. This resurrection came out of nowhere and has still not been explained, it seems that Disney didn’t know how to end this saga and instead of taking the time to do the right thing, decided to make a hasty and poorly executed cash grab. 'The Rise of Skywalker' was supposed to be the culmination of a nine film saga, the finale of a story arc spanning decades, tying everything together. Instead of feeling the sense of fulfillment that comes with a story well ended, I came out of the cinema feeling confused and let down. I wish I could blame my discontent on a specific reason, but sadly there are just too many to choose from. I can only dream of the potential this film could have reached if J.J Abrams had decided to proceed with Colin Trevorrow's original script for the finale, entitled 'Star Wars: Dual of Fates' (the title an obvious nod to John Williams' legendary score in 'The Phantom Menace'). However, we were not this lucky, and instead ended up with the lacklustre storytelling provided by Chris Terrio.
Given how many wrongs this film has, and how damning the subsequent review, I felt I should try and find some light in this bleak, dark tunnel. Indeed, it is important to give credit where credit is due: as a trilogy, these films have some amazing modern cinematic sequences, and feature the always welcome score from legendary composer John Williams (who actually has a small cameo in this film) which remains outstanding as ever. We do finally get many questions answered and a lot of closure for most of the characters involved. Many long term fans will leap for joy seeing returning faces such as Billy Dee Williams and Denis Lawson. Adam Driver gives his all to his performance in this film and carries many other actors' performances, for instance during the questionable redemption of Ben Solo and in a particularly touching scene between Adam Driver and Harrison Ford. All these things do fill the film with moments of greatness but not enough to save 'The Rise of Skywalker'. Unfortunately, this sentiment extends to the entire trilogy - nothing can save these films from their poor writing and at times the complete retcon of established law. The amount of plot holes created in 'The Rise of Skywalker' alone are countless. For instance: if Anakin were to have had the ability of force healing in Revenge of the Sith, his 'fall' to the dark side would have been nonexistent.
Overall, (as you can probably tell) I was not a fan of 'The Rise of Skywalker'. I would definitely recommend that people give the film a watch to complete this saga, but be cautioned: don’t expect a lot. We can only hope that whatever comes next is better.
'The Rise of Skywalker' receives one star out of five from Broadway Blockbusters.
Written and published by Lewis Connor Broadway.
Edited by Beth Parker.
Photo Credit: Dan Mumford.
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