Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Few film franchises carry the cultural weight of Star Wars. George Lucas's original trilogy, beginning in 1977, became a touchstone of popular cinema and shaped the blockbuster landscape in ways still felt today. By the time Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 and announced a new sequel trilogy, expectation and anxiety arrived in roughly equal measure. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) kicked things off under J.J. Abrams, followed by Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi (2017), a film that divided the fanbase so thoroughly it practically needed a referee. With Colin Trevorrow having departed the director's chair partway through development, Abrams was brought back to close out the trilogy he had started, a decision that set the tone for what would be a troubled, committee-feeling production.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), produced by Lucasfilm and Bad Robot and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, runs to 142 minutes and carries the rather grand tagline "The Saga Concludes." The film brings back the central trio of the sequel era: Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, and Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, alongside Adam Driver returning as Kylo Ren. Perhaps most significantly, it features Carrie Fisher, who passed away in December 2016, through the use of previously unreleased footage, giving the film a genuinely poignant dimension even before a single frame of plot unfolds. Mark Hamill also returns, as does much of the wider ensemble built across the previous two films. It is, on paper at least, an enormous undertaking, a polished but unremarkable assembly of franchise firepower tasked with landing one of cinema's most scrutinised story arcs.

Abrams is no stranger to reviving beloved properties, and his track record with the material suggested someone who understood the iconography of Star Wars, even if questions lingered about whether understanding iconography is quite the same thing as having something new to say with it. The film arrives weighed down by the fallout from The Last Jedi's divisiveness, a situation that would challenge any filmmaker, and the production reportedly involved significant creative reshuffling along the way. Whether Abrams was the right person to steer this particular ship into harbour, or whether the harbour itself was ever properly charted, is something audiences and critics have argued about ever since. For a sense of where the series had been before any of this, it is worth revisiting Return of the Jedi (1983), the film The Rise of Skywalker was always going to be measured against as a concluding chapter.

Somehow, Palpatine returned. It’s honestly remarkable how The Rise of Skywalker manages to undo so much of what was set up in The Last Jedi, not through clever subversion, but with pure, baffling laziness. I think the Last Jedi was a hot mess but they basically took all of that and somehow came out with a WORSE film. The film plays like a frantic scramble to tie up loose ends, but instead, it just piles more nonsense on top of the mess. Let’s start with the headline of the whole fiasco: Somehow, Palpatine returned. How? Don’t ask. The explanation is as shallow as it is ridiculous. No backstory, no real logic, just a crumbling, zombie villain who reappears with an army conveniently hidden on the Sith homeworld of Exegol. And speaking of Exegol, the huge fleet of Star Destroyers? What, exactly, have they been doing for the past 30 years? Just hanging out in the void, waiting for Rey and company to stumble upon them? None of this is explained because it doesn’t need to make sense. It’s Star Wars, apparently. Then there’s the ancient dagger. Oh, the ancient dagger. The way it just so happens to perfectly align with the wreckage of the second Death Star, leading Rey on a scavenger hunt with a completely unearned sense of gravitas. It’s a plot device so painfully contrived, I could feel my IQ drop just watching it unfold. And let’s not forget the ultimate betrayal: Rey being a Palpatine. For a saga built on the idea that anyone can be a hero (hello, Luke Skywalker, an orphan on Tatooine), suddenly making Rey the granddaughter of the galaxy’s most notorious Sith is not just lazy, it’s an insult to everything that came before it. It’s like they threw out all the thematic weight from The Last Jedi for cheap, fan-pleasing thrills, which NOBODY enjoyed. Finally, the kiss between Rey and Kylo Ren. What a laughable, unnecessary gesture. After all the animosity, the conflict, the back-and-forth, we’re supposed to believe this forced, ridiculous kiss is some sort of romantic culmination? It’s so far from earned, it’s not even funny, it’s just embarrassing. There’s no emotional payoff here. No satisfying conclusion. Just a hasty, desperate patchwork of fan service and nonsensical plot contrivances. The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t just fail as a film; it tarnishes everything that came before it. The saga deserved better. The characters deserved better. We deserved better.

And that, really, is what stings most about the whole experience. I went in genuinely hoping for something that would pull the threads together, if not elegantly, then at least competently. What I got was a film seemingly terrified of its own choices, frantically reversing course at every turn and calling it resolution. For a franchise I have spent a good chunk of my life following, from The Empire Strikes Back (1980) onwards, there is something genuinely deflating about watching it stumble so publicly at the finish line. Some endings close a door quietly and with dignity. This one ran through the door, knocked it off its hinges, and tried to convince you it was always supposed to happen that way.

Rating: ★  | Year: 2019  | Watched: 2019-12-04

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
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