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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams) is the third and final film in Disney’s current Star Wars trilogy. It has some impressive set pieces, make-up, production design, loveable characters and some stunning visual effects. Unfortunately, it’s not a very good film. I loved The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) and enjoyed The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), but this latest film is a poor result, on the same level as the prequels.
Whereas Avengers: Endgame (Joe and Anthony Russo, 2019) delivered fan service in an organic way in which character beats and behaviours were a result of plot, the fan service in Rise of Skywalker instead feels forced, clunky and even in poor taste; the filmmakers’ treatment of Leia (Carrie Fisher) is verging on unforgivable, especially considering some very specific promises Disney made after Fisher’s tragic death. Additionally, where is the LGBTQ+ representation we were promised by Abrams? The only hint of this representation is literally a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. There is no dialogue attributed to these characters in relation to their sexuality. When you can miss the inclusion of an entire demographic with the blink of an eye, they’re definitely not being sufficiently represented. Characters, locations and references are squeezed into the film’s surprisingly tight running time (for a Disney blockbuster), to the point where it feels like you’re at Dublin Castle’s Christmas market with no room to breathe.
Some of the character arcs and developments are, narratively, incredibly unsatisfying: The Last Jedi brought nuance and flaws to heroes and villains alike, unlike this film in which every lens-flared ray of sunshine is rose-tinted. Other new performances, Richard E. Grant for example, are completely vacant. This is no fault of Grant’s, but a script issue, in which he has been given a role with nothing to do except to growl and look evil. Why cast such a talented, multifaceted actor in such a vacuous role? Keri Russell is also underserved, and her introduction to the central characters is an example of some of the worst writing in this trilogy. The chemistry between the principal characters of Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) is still strong, with Poe being a comedic standout, and Ridley showing her critics from the first two films why she definitely did deserve her initial casting. Adam Driver, as always, is brilliant, but he also is undermined by the lack of potential offered by the script. Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a contentious character from The Last Jedi (and one of my issues with that film—not with her performance but with the script), yet she is almost axed from the script entirely, a complete disservice to an actor who went through social media hell from the toxic parts of the fandom, and for what conclusion for her character?
There is also one scene with the sole purpose of setting up a pivotal plot point for the conclusion. This would be fine if it felt organic to the narrative, but instead it actually undermines the purpose of why the characters are there in the first place. If you thought the flamethrower hint in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) was too on the nose, you wait till you see the snake scene in this. Not only is it lazy writing, the scene actually damages the contextual plot of the film. The now inevitable CGI de-aging moment also harms the plot by its jarringly bad quality, making the World War II scene in The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019) look like a David Attenborough documentary.
The cast do their best with what they have to work with, and one distraught outburst from a character certainly made my eyes swell, but I am certainly glad that this is it for a while. The Star Wars saga means far too much, to too many people, for the new films to not attempt something fresh, because otherwise they’ll never live up to the initial conception of the originals.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is released in Irish cinemas on December 19.
