Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

My last review of the year in a year with very few reviews (and relatively few good films) - sorry about that (it’s been one of those years for me). 

What to say about The Rise of Skywalker? It has a number of magical Star Wars moments that made me glad I had watched it. These magical scenes invariably involved characters who were neither fighting other characters nor planning to fight other characters. So yes, that only leaves about five minutes for those moments to occur (exaggeration admitted). Sigh.

Among the things I hated most about The Rise of Skywalker was the Stormtroopers. Finn and Jannah (a woman introduced in this film) are former Stormtroopers, conscripted against their will to fight for the evil First Order. They found a way to escape and now fight against the First Order. Finn and Jannah are clearly depicted as beautiful human beings worthy of a long happy life. Not so much the countless thousands of Stormtroopers (and other soldiers) who are still forced to fight for the First Order. They are treated like mindless dehumanized plastic machines who can be killed by our heroes without a moment’s hesitation. It’s as if clothing a human being in plastic makes them worthless objects. The Rise of Skywalker, like so many other similar films, is full of such thoughtless redemptive violence. Very sad.

Other problems with the film include the washed-out made-for-3D cinematography, which occasionally rises above this limitation to create the odd beautiful scene but is mostly mediocre, the many plot holes and the ending (not the last scene, which is one of the magical moments, but the previous twenty minutes or so). 

Speaking of the plot, film critics are particularly critical of what they think is a lame and unimaginative story that is an attempt by the writer/director (J.J. Abrams) to mollify the many viewers who complained about The Last Jedi. I have no quarrel with critics talking about the lack of imagination in The Rise of Skywalker. This final (we can only hope) Star Wars trilogy is, in my opinion, largely a repeat of the first trilogy. The Last Jedi showed sparks of imagination, but the others are certainly lacking in that department. But by the time I walked into the theatre for this final film, this is what I expected, and I found The Rise of Skywalker relatively satisfying in terms of a final instalment for the series (violence notwithstanding). UNLESS, that is, it is true that J.J. Abrams wrote this final story to appease the viewers who hated The Last Jedi. Insofar as that is true, I would have to agree with the critics. But my sense is that this is where Abrams intended to go all along. 

The acting and dialogue remain far superior to the first six Star Wars films. Daisy Ridley is, in my opinion, the best actor involved in the whole series (Sir Alec Guinness excepted, of course). 

So there it is. One of the worst years of this century for film ends with a whimper. But there were some great films this year that I have not had the chance to review, and I’ll be telling you about them over the next two weeks, when I post my favourite films of 2019 as well as my favourite films of the past decade. In the meantime, The Rise of Skywalker gets ***. My mug is up but shaking.