Guest reviewer Carl Bailey weighs in on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (This review is spoiler-free for major plot points but does contain details and descriptions of events in the film, so if you’d rather go into the movie absolutely unspoiled you should save this review for later.)
This was a beautiful mess of a movie. I say that because there’s a lot of this film that really feels frankensteined together, such as the retconning of some events from previous installments – most of them retconning The Last Jedi – and the chess piece positioning of characters and plot points in the first half hour or so of the movie, so that J. J. Abrams had everything in place to tell the story he wanted to tell to close out the saga.
Abrams also had the job of working in a presence for Leia using unused footage from The Force Awakens due to the late Carrie Fisher’s unfortunate passing before filming of this movie began. For those of us aware of this it felt a little odd, as the scenes were obviously initially meant in a different context, and were recycled to include Leia in this movie, and having known this, it was noticeable. Nonetheless, Abrams did an admirable job in including Leia the way that he did, and certainly made the best he could out of an impossibly sad situation.
All of this could have spelled disaster for the movie, but despite being someone who really enjoyed The Last Jedi, somehow i was able to accept the on the fly changes that were made, and roll with it.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about the sequel trilogy is following the new core trio, Rey, Finn and Poe, and getting to know them as their characters have developed. I loved that this movie finally had the three of them together for a substantial amount of time by having them go off on a mission together. It was a lot of fun to watch them interact and get a real sense of the close bond they now have with each other. If there’s one thing I’m going to miss now that the series has come to an end (for now) it’s Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac as these characters.
Having them together also really helped the pacing of the movie, as there was a lot crammed into the 2 hour 20 minutes runtime – from continuing the force connection and themes of shared destiny between Rey and Kylo Ren (Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver have been fantastic to watch in this series), the continually retconned development of Rey’s parentage, delving a little into Poe’s background, Finn’s deserting stormtrooper arc being tied up, and the return of Emperor Palpatine, amongst plenty other things – so it certainly helped to keep the movie moving at a brisk pace by having them all together most of the time.
The action sequences come thick and fast. In particular the lightsaber battles were all thrilling, and the huge battle in the final act was awesome to watch on the big screen as well. Add to this all the fan service moments that are slotted in throughout and this makes for a flawed, but highly entertaining, closing chapter in this 9 episode saga.
One final thing of note. I’ve seen several comments from people saying that Star Wars fans will hate this movie but casual movie goers will love it. That’s bullshit. Some people will love it and some won’t and that’s just fine because that’s how life works, not everything is for everyone. But fuck off being elitist and trying to claim some sort of ownership over this stuff, they’re just movies and anyone who has followed all of these movies from the beginning, whether they started watching 40+ years ago or just last week, and bought a ticket to see this film, is a fan.
Anyway yeah, loved it.
Carl Bailey is into movies, TV, books, Marvel/DC, and football, and with this review finished the #100filmsin2019 challenge. Find more at cbailey87 on instagram.