Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

I love Star Wars and despite feeling disappointed by this film, I still wanted to find something to love. Unfortunately, there was not much. I have really enjoyed seeing these new characters over the last four years but here they felt distant, remnants of their former selves even. It’s partly the fault of the film's pace, it doesn’t take a breath, ever. It’s all go from the start of the film, even the opening crawl contains a plot point that I would much rather have seen unfold in real-time.

You never get a moment to let the characters breathe, to feel their pain and their struggle as they fight their way to what the film tries to make an emotional climax. I feel here like Disney got scared, scared of the loud minority of toxic fans that hated The Last Jedi with a passion and, instead of ignoring them, they pandered to them. Here JJ Abrams tries to please everyone and inevitably will probably annoy more people because of that. You can’t please them all and trying to forgive certain plot points of previous films without ever thinking about how it actually relates to the story left a sour taste in my mouth.

Here we get action for action’s sake and never any build-up to those moments that could have been epic elsewhere. I remember getting goosebumps throughout The Force Awakens as it led up to a climactic and powerful battle on Star Killer Base, same with The Last Jedi as we only see relationships develop in unique ways, making the pivoting of Kylo Ren's morality in that film even more emotional in its conclusion. Here we get lightsaber fights aplenty but they don’t have the emotional weight that we’ve seen before and they’re even mainly shot in close-ups making it difficult to follow the action.

The film feels rushed, I’m sure a lot of effort went into it but it lacks the love and affection that the previous films in the trilogy oozed. Even the special effects don’t feel so special, Leia’s part in the film feels disjointed and you can tell she’s not there. It only works to undermine her incredible performance in The Last Jedi as here she serves little to no purpose other than saying lines that feel better placed in a fortune cookie. I feel like it would have been better just to leave her out entirely than to shoehorn old footage of her into the film. They make the effort this time to turn Maz Kanata into a puppet and she feels like she’d be more at home in a theme park than a movie.

The dynamic between Kylo and Rey still remains the high point of this trilogy and there’s some fun to be had with them here. However, nothing feels as nuanced or as human as the interactions we saw in the last film. The whole film is just plain lazy at times; with its awkward dialogue, a multitude of MacGuffins and five or six death fake-outs that render any of the peril you are supposed to feel useless.

I would have happily waited longer to see a more carefully created and original closure to the Star Wars saga but instead, we get a rushed sprint to the end: a lazy attempt to link everything together and the characters we’ve seen grow throughout two films reduced to stereotypes of their former selves. Love or hate The Last Jedi it opened doors for an exciting new universe for Star Wars but instead, the studio got scared and backed away into a conclusion that takes no risks and ultimately feels bland and lifeless. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.

2.5/5

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