Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
The dead speak according to the opening crawl of the final chapter of the Skywalker saga, The Rise of Skywalker, which sees the return of director J J Abrams with a script co-written with Chris Terrio, based on a story conceived in conjunction with Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, picking up the threads of Abrams own The Force Awakens and Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.
A premise so tenuous it may as well have been transcribed by Ouija board, Supreme Leader Snoke having been removed from the playing field in The Last Jedi, it was necessary to insert a new primary threat; whether it was Abrams’ intention to make it Emperor Sheev Palpatine from the outset or whether it was a dramatic necessity is unclear but either way it’s a desperate final act ploy on a par with discovering a long-lost relative such as a forgotten twin sister.
Palpatine’s summary reintroduction to the action of The Rise of Skywalker making it feel as though an entire episode of the saga has been skipped – as indeed it has, from a certain point of view – it seems as though it is Abrams’ intention to squeeze as much into the final film of saga as possible in order to make up for the time he has lost, and inevitably sacrifices of narrative sense and character are a consequence.
Approximately a year has passed since the Battle of Crait which left the First Order under new Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and the Resistance forces severely depleted; their new base is rudimentary, an encampment on a jungle world, and Rey has continued her Jedi training under the guidance of General Leia Organa.
Told in montage, more evidence of Abrams trying to make up lost time, Kylo Ren has been more productive, using a near mythical Sith wayfinder to locate the secret Sith homeworld of Exogol where a clone of Palpatine plots the end of the Jedi and the rise of the Final Order from his monolithic floating mausoleum.
The Force Awakens having been criticised for being derivative, structurally and narratively paralleling A New Hope, in its favour it was magnificently staged and infused with a celebratory joy; The Rise of Skywalker can make only one of those claims, the production values of the astonishing visuals, sets and costumes let down by a by-the-numbers sequel which fulfils the obligations of expectation rather than surprising or delighting.
Poe Dameron piloting the Millennium Falcon through “lightspeed skips” in order to evade pursuit, this new manoeuvre sets a precedent for the breakneck pace of the film which jumps across planets and plot points drawn from near vacuum as Rey and her friends engage in a scavenger hunt to locate their own map to Exogol in the Unknown Regions, a planet so secret apparently only one ship knows how to plot a course away from it.
Established in The Force Awakens as the leads of the new trilogy, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac return as Rey, Finn and Poe, as does The Last Jedi‘s Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, given marginally more purpose this time around, while opposing them are Adam Driver and Domhnall Gleeson as Kylo Ren and General Hux, and making their first appearances since Return of the Jedi are Billy Dee Williams and Ian McDiarmid as Lando Calrissian and Palpatine.
Their inclusions more virtuous than vital, a curtain call for a sense of completeness rather than coherence, the presence of the late Carrie Fisher as General Organa is larger than expected but less significant than hoped; composed of footage deleted from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, it is apparent she was often filmed on set murmuring vague inconsequentialities.
Her posthumous appearance a disappointment capped by the fact that the film carries no significant dedication to either Fisher of Peter Mayhew, Abrams’ undermines her death by bluffing the demise of other key characters, meaning the death of Leia is a damp squib, an aberration rather than the emotional centre of the film; presumably, like her mother Queen Amidala, she simply died of being sad?
Joining the cast are Richard E Grant as First Order Allegiant General Pryde and Keri Russell as Zorri Bliss, a former associate of Poe’s with whom he is contractually obligated to awkwardly flirt at every opportunity to dampen the rumours which sprang from his fast and firm friendship with Finn, a different solution to Johnson’s enforced separation of the pair and equally disingenuous.
Where The Rise of Skywalker does succeed is in reuniting the trio of Rey, Finn and Poe for the majority of the film, their dialogue at times little more than bickering but sometimes sparking such as when they learn of Poe’s pre-Resistance activity only for him to counter with their own personal shortcomings, but equally Abrams takes the bond between Rey and Kylo Ren introduced by Johnson and moves it to drive both them and the film forward.
There are callbacks to Return of the Jedi though fortunately it cannot be considered a remake, though once again a Resistance force is required to engage an overwhelming enemy with an egregiously accessible single point of failure, almost as if there is a superstition that should such not be included the fans will reject the film, forgetting that the best regarded of the saga, The Empire Strikes Back, was the one which broke that rule.
Released forty-two years after Star Wars, as acknowledged by the celebrations on the planet Passana which reoccur at that interval, and presumably intended as a culmination and conclusion to all that has gone before, The Rise of Skywalker never feels as epic as it should, but worse it never feels like it is trying to, the undeniable spectacle devoid of the emotion which Abrams so easily created in The Force Awakens and Star Trek. A rise it may be, but insufficiently high and ultimately a let down, as though simply making it to the end should be reward enough.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is on general release and also screening in 3D and IMAX 3D
