Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker review (spoilers)

The Star Wars sequel trilogy so far has, in my opinion unfairly, gotten a lot of flack from Star Wars fans. While there was initially a positive buzz about The Force Awakens when it first released in 2015, fan reception has gotten less favourable over time with fans merely dismissing it as a copy of the original Star Wars film from 1977. Then in 2017, Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi decided to take the story and plot points set up in The Force Awakens in different directions and ended up dividing the fanbase as a result.

This puts The Rise of Skywalker in a bit of a tricky position. Not only does it have to satisfyingly wrap up the 'Skywalker Saga', but it also has to satisfy the fans who felt alienated by the previous two entries. While this film does have some interesting ideas, it's messy plot holds it back from sticking the landing it intends to.

The film is set one year after The Last Jedi, and the plot sees Emperor Palpatine, the mastermind behind the first six Star Wars films who met his demise in Return of the Jedi, back from the dead. His plan is to give rise to a new Empire known as the 'Last Order' and wipe out the Resistance for good. The Resistance send Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, and C3PO to find a Sith wayfinder that will direct them to the Sith homeworld. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren has been recruited by Palpatine to find and kill Rey.

One of the strengths of the Sequel Trilogy so far has been the new characters. This is the first time we get to see our main trio for this trilogy of Rey, Finn, and Poe having an adventure together and it's great to see them interacting with each other, especially after Rey and Poe only met briefly at the end of The Last Jedi. It's because of how much I love watching these characters that I remained invested even when the plot got a little bit messy.

The most interesting arcs are those of Rey and Kylo Ren. We'll go into this more when we get into some of the things I don't like, but Rey's arc this time around stems from her embracing the dark side a little more and her fear of turning to the dark side and her place in the conflict. This gets to the extent that she decides to do what Luke Skywalker did and exile herself. However, she gets a pep talk from the force ghost of Luke Skywalker who tells her that what he did was a mistake, persuading her to go and take down Palpatine once and for all. Kylo Ren's arc is the reverse. While in the last film, it appeared that he had decided to fully embrace the dark side. This time around, while he's initially trying to convince Rey to turn to the dark side, he ends up getting redeemed by both Leia reaching out to him through the force and a talk with a voice inside his head taking the form of his father Han Solo. This convinces him to assist Rey with defeating Palpatine.

This film never feels boring. Unlike The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones which feel bogged down with boring talks about space politics and trade negotiations, this film never seems to let up with a lot of fun action sequences that prevents the film from becoming too boring.

Emperor Palpatine is a joy to watch as always. While it's not explained how he's alive after the events of Return of the Jedi, seeing him take such pleasure in being so evil makes his performance so enjoyable. He's also rather terrifying this time around, definitely ensuring that the film earns it's 12a/PG-13 certificate.

There's also a massive sense of urgency - you can feel the pressure that the Resistance is under to restore order to the galaxy and defeat Palpatine. This sense of urgency makes the threat of the First Order feel real and keeps us engaged in the story.

While he's been more of a background presence in the last two films, C3PO gets a lot more to do this time around. Thankfully, he's not as irritating as he was in Attack of the Clones. He's genuinely funny in this film and managed to get more than a few laughs out of me practically every time he was on screen.

The big issue this trilogy has as a whole is the lack of cohesion between films. This stems from the fact that, rather than planning out an entire trilogy in advance, Disney/Lucasfilm opted to tackle things one film at a time and make things up as they went along. Even though I enjoyed both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, the fact that there appeared to be no plan behind the scenes is pretty apparent from the way that Rian Johnson chose to approach some of the questions raised by JJ Abrams in The Force Awakens. However, this film makes it especially clear that there was no plans in place when developing the trilogy, which can especially be seen in the way it undoes one of the most interesting ideas presented to us in The Last Jedi.

In The Force Awakens, we were introduced to Rey and presented with the question of who her parents were. This lead to two years of fans coming up with various theories onto which bloodline she belongs to. In The Last Jedi, we found out that her parents were, in fact, nobody. They were simply junk traders who sold her for drinking money. While this rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, I felt this made Rey more interesting as a character. She wasn't connected by blood to anyone we'd seen in the saga before, yet she was still strong with the force. This gives the idea that greatness can arise from anywhere, no matter who your family is.

Sadly, this film chooses to retcon this and Rey is now Palpatine's granddaughter. While I do like what this adds to Rey's character arc and her inner conflict of fearing the dark side, it feels incredibly contrived. Even though it was somewhat set up throughout the film, by the time it was revealed, I was visibly shaking my head in the cinema. They could have found a way for Rey to fear turning to the dark side without making her related to Palpatine, something which goes against the idea that was set up in The Last Jedi.

The film also has issues with pacing. It feels like they tried to cram too much plot into the film, so as a result, a lot of characters don't really get much to do and mostly tend to get pushed into the background so we can focus on Rey and Kylo's story. To the delight of the Fandom Menace (I still cringe when I remember that there is literally a faction of the fandom who call themselves that), that means Rose Tico is mostly just a background character. However, it also means that Lando Calrissian doesn't contribute to the story in a particularly meaningful way. Sure, it was nice to see him flying the Millennium Falcon in the final battle alongside Chewbacca, but at the same time, you could take him out of the movie and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

As well as this, a lot of plot points tend to get brought up and then not fully developed. For instance, at the start of the film we're told that there's a mole in the First Order feeding information to the Resistance (which is how they learn that Palpatine is back). This doesn't really get brought up again until about halfway into the film when we learn that the mole is General Hux, who's motivation is more to see Kylo Ren fail rather than for the Resistance to succeed. This is an interesting development, but just as it's introduced, Hux is killed off. Another example is the Knights of Ren, the order that Kylo Ren is the leader of that was first mentioned in The Force Awakens and absent from The Last Jedi. However, they have no meaningful contribution to the plot as they're just voiceless lackeys who don't end up doing anything significant until they're killed by Kylo Ren at the film's climax. Even Palpatine who's supposed to be the main villain doesn't get much development. We don't get told how he's returned asides from him giving a throwaway line taken from Revenge of the Sith about 'The Dark Side being a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural'. The only other information we learn about him is that he 'created Snoke', which feels more or less like a strand to connect the events of this film with the previous two films.

One casualty of this trilogy is the tragic death of Carrie Fisher in 2016. Princess Leia was intended to have a prominent role in Episode IX much like how Han Solo was prominently featured in The Force Awakens and Luke Skywalker was prominently featured in The Last Jedi. Sadly, her death meant that she couldn't be prominently featured in The Rise of Skywalker. JJ Abrams way around this was to use unused footage of Carrie from The Force Awakens and building the story around that. This of course limits her time in the story, and while it's great that she's been training Rey in the ways of the Jedi and that she's the catalyst for her son's redemption, it feels that her story isn't given enough time.

The film's ending is, for the most part, pretty underwhelming. The Emperor has a fleet of Star Destroyers armed with planet destroying weapons akin to the Death Star (which feels like a lot of overkill), so after Leia's death, Poe Dameron is made the general of the Resistance and put in charge of a large spaceship battle. The space battle itself is pretty enjoyable to watch, but where this finale lets itself down is the final confrontation between Rey and the Emperor.

Palpatine regains his strength by stealing life force from both Rey and Kylo Ren, and he ends up supposedly killing Kylo Ren while Rey is unconscious on the ground. However, she's provided with the strength needed to keep fighting by the voices of various Jedi throughout the series (including Anakin Skywalker himself and Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars animated series). Palpatine shoots lightning at Rey who is able to deflect it with two lightsabers. Palpatine cackles that he is 'ALL THE SITH!', and Rey replies that she is 'all the Jedi' (a line which sounds like it was written by a child), and pushes towards Palpatine and causes him to disintegrate. This proves too much for Rey, and she dies. However, Kylo Ren has survived, and he uses the force to bring Rey back to life. The two then kiss and then Kylo Ren dies. While there has been hints of romantic attraction between the two throughout the films (most prominently in The Last Jedi), them kissing does not feel like something that's earned and feels pretty underwhelming.

Seeing the Resistance celebrate their victory is pretty satisfying (especially as Chewbacca finally gets given his medal), but then we end on a particularly stupid note. Rey goes back to Luke's home on Tatooine to bury Luke and Leia's lightsabers. We see that she has a new lightsaber with a yellow blade. A stranger asks who she is, and she replies that she's Rey Skywalker. This makes the film's title feel incredibly contrived.

There's one more point I want to address before I sum up my overall verdict on the film. At the very end during the film's victory celebration, we see two women Resistance fighters kissing. The shot only lasts for a couple of seconds, and the issue isn't the inclusion of a same sex couple, it's that it feels like a massive afterthought put in for the sake of representation. I know that as a straight white male, I do not speak for the LGBT+ community, but honestly, including a same sex relationship that's part of the main cast (say, I don't know, Poe and Finn?) and have that be a properly developed relationship would have been so much better as opposed two one shot that lasts for a few seconds for the sake of clickbait articles talking about how there's a 'same sex kiss in a Star Wars film'.


I'm really not sure where to rank this film in comparison with the other films in the franchise since all these thoughts are based on my first viewing, and my thoughts on this film might change over time. For example, while I loved Rouge One when I initially saw it, I have found it less enjoyable on subsequent watches. With regards to this film in particular, while I definitely have some problems with it, I still found myself enjoying it. I was never bored watching the film, and while some parts were underwhelming after sitting with my thoughts for a while, I felt there was enough in the film to keep me somewhat invested. As far as the sequel trilogy goes (as someone who really enjoyed both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi), this is by far the weakest of the three. While I wouldn't call this film a good film by any means, I still had a fun time watching it. Only time will tell how I'll feel about it after subsequent viewings.