Rise of Skywalker Thoughts

Like I said in yesterdays post, last night I saw the new Star Wars film and the capstone to the trilogy of trilogies… The Rise of Skywalker. I also managed to leave my credit card at dinner and am going to have to go pick that up tonight, but that is another story. Watching Rise of Skywalker in some ways reminded me of watching Return of the Jedi but for the wrong reasons. When I was a kid I was so deathly sick the weekend we were supposed to go see Return, but I refused to let my parents cancel because I was desperate to see it. Last night I was similarly fighting some sort of a crud and I think it dulled my senses, because there were so many moments that should have made me cheer or weep but all I could do was sit there glued to the screen attempting to continue breathing.

This is going to be a post about impressions and will be my attempt to do a spoiler free review. All of the imagery that you see in this post was pulled from the “Final Trailer” which wasn’t actually the Final trailer as I have seen 3 more new ones since then. I will however mention parts of Force Awakens and Last Jedi as I consider those to largely be “fair game” at this point. First off lets get my ranking of Star Wars films out of the way because in some ways that is going to tell you quickly how much of this “review” you are going to personally agree with. I posted it on twitter last night but here is my revised order of preference. I don’t hate any Star Wars films, I just have some that I like better than others. I’ve made my peace with the prequels.

• The Empire Strikes Back
• Rogue One
• The Rise of Skywalker
• The Force Awakens
• A New Hope
• Solo
• Return of the Jedi
• The Last Jedi
• Revenge of the Sith
• Attack of the Clones
• The Phantom Menace

The most controversial part of that list is going to be Last Jedi since it is a deeply polarizing movie. There are some of my friends that hate it with the passion of a Sith, and there are others that feel like it heralded in a brand new era of excellence for Star Wars. I’m somewhere between. There are moments in that movie that I really liked but I found it to be an overall disappointing experience. Force Awakens set up all of these mystery boxes that I desperately wanted to see opened in the follow up. Rian Johnson on the other hand seemed damned determined to toss them all over his shoulder into the ocean the way Luke tried to toss Anakin’s Lightsaber. It was a movie that purposefully tried to undo all of the knots that Force Awakens tied, and for that I will always be disappointed.

My cat loves to knock over the bathroom trash can, and get to any crinkly wrappers that might have been thrown away. I dutifully set the trash can upright and try and stuff everything back inside rather than just emptying the damned thing and moving on with my life. Rise of Skywalker is a movie that tries to set the trash can upright and get things back to a state of where the franchise was heading at the end of Force Awakens. As a result it feels like it undoes a lot of the things that are just tossed aside in Last Jedi, all the while attempting to walk the thin line between doing this and doing it in such a flagrant way as to piss off all of the Last Jedi stalwarts.

The Last Jedi was a smaller film about personal interactions and character development. Rise of Skywalker is a movie about giant epic set pieces that the story flows between with them purposefully knowing that this is the grand send off of the entire “Saga”. I like big damned action sequences and I like giant scenes that are going to be paused forever as the lore hounds mine tidbits of information from the corners of the screen. I really enjoyed the film, but it more or less follows the script that I had originally thought was going to happen after Force Awakens. None of the reveals or the way that the content flows was really a surprise to me because I had imagined things unfolding in this manner for some time.

There are also more bits of the previously expanded universe that creep into the film in ways that aren’t really addressed setting up even more mystery boxes. I have some tasty theories but I won’t dare talk about them for some time, because spoilers. If you’ve always loved Star Wars you are probably going to be happy enough with this outing. As I said before it is a grand send off of the entire Saga and it makes me super interested to see what might come along later. This movie finishes the story of the Skywalker lineage, but I am not entirely certain that the story that is expressed in this film is really over. I feel about the Star Wars universe now much like I did at the end of Return of the Jedi. The sky is the limit and there are so many more tales out there to tell.

I’m thoroughly happy with this film and I am looking forward to seeing it again. I wish we lived in a world where you could watch first run films in your home, but we do not yet live in that world. So at some point during the holiday season I am going to make my wife venture forth and go see it with me. Last night I saw it with a bunch of friends, because while my wife is awesome and seems to have a begrudging respect for the original Trilogy, she is in no way near the fan that I am. Harry Potter was her universe that she fell in love with, but she was sleeping last night in a Santa Yoda shirt so at least some of me has rubbed off on her. I am satisfied with where the movies have gone, and I have a feeling that knowing what is coming in this movie will probably make my opinion of Last Jedi improve significantly.