‘The Rise of Skywalker’ is a Beautiful, Incomprehensible Mess

WARNING: SPOILERS

About midway through The Rise of Skywalker, our heroes find a dagger. On that dagger, are the secrets to find a McGuffin – but those secrets are written in the language of the Sith. C3P0 is forbidden to translate them – but they can find a hacker who can erase those blocks. The catch is that C3P0’s memories will be erased in the process. C3P0 gives a long tearful goodbye to his friends. At the last second, he has another idea – but the gang immediately unplugs him before listening to it. Fifteen minutes of screen time later, his memory is fully restored when Artoo backs him up from the cloud.

This half-assed writing and plot development is endemic in The Rise of Skywalker, a film that is gorgeous to look at but utterly soulless and baffling to watch. The plot moves forward at a breakneck pace, and there’s never any gravity to anything and so it never feels like the stakes are real. And most amazingly, the film manages to simultaneously be incomprehensible yet thoroughly predictable at all times.

Fun topics of debate about this film:

1. What the fuck WAS the Emperor’s plan? First, it was to kill Rey. But then it was to have Rey kill him? And then it was to get the two lovebirds together? This is incoherent. Nothing regarding what happens in the first two films or first half of this movie makes sense in regards to Palpatine is orchestrating things.
2. If you’re going to make the central plot of the new trilogy a love story between Kylo and Rey (good!), why are you going to keep Finn pining pathetically after him? The triangle is never a plot point, Rey and Finn have no chemistry, and Finn has literally chemistry with every other young actor that comes in his orbit.
3. Are you really going to tell me that the planet busting technology that previously required a death star or planet to power now can be miniaturized on any star destroyer?
4. You do realize that Ben Solo never did anything to actually earn his redemption, right? After his resurrection he…. fought his way to Rey, nearly helped give the Emperor ultimate power, and then was thrown in a ditch where he was pretty much completely irrelevant to the final showdown.
5. In TLJ, the Rebellion sent out a distress call and literally NO ONE came. In this movie, EVERYONE did. Why? Is Lando really that charming?
6. Also, everyone who says that the space chase in TLJ was too short for Finn and Rose to go to Canto Blight, how long do you think it takes to crew and assemble the largest frickin’ civilian fleet in the history of space?
7. Has there ever been a ‘twist’ as preposterous and undersold as Hux’s flip? Also, wasn’t his death a little out of the blue for someone who was a major Big Bad in Episode VII? Y’all really couldn’t do something more interesting with that?
8. You morons are really going to enter the hangar on the star destroyer guns blazing?
9. Chewbacca’s captured, mostly offscreen! Now he’s dead! Now he’s not! It must have been that other shuttle we never saw!
10. The Knights of Ren sure ended up being unimpressive, huh?
11. Everytime Rey left the gang to go out on her own into an incredibly dangerous situation, only for Finn to follow her like a puppy dog, I wanted to throw something at the screen.
12. Why, exactly, was Finn mad that Rey wasn’t out in space with the gang? “You’re our best fighter!” Well, sure, but that mission needs the best PILOT.
13. Was Princess Leia’s final act really to kill her son? I realize JJ had to cobble together stuff with found footage, but that feels like you done her dirty.
14. The Lightspeed Skipping made me actively angry. Suddenly, not only can everyone jump to hyperspace from a planet’s orbit, that’s likely where hyperspace will land you! Also, apparently every TIE fighter now has light speed capability as well as the technology to follow people through hyperspeed. One person on Twitter said this was ‘Star Tours: the Movie’ and I agree.

There are things I liked about the film.

1. I liked that they built upon the Force Bond of TLJ, making Ben & Rey capable of fighting and transferring weapons. Some really slick moments came out of that.
2. Many of the new characters were great, especially the conehead droid, Jannah and Babu Frik. They were awesome.
3. Some absolutely beautiful shots. This was a movie designed via storyboards first. I just wish each moment had flowed better to the next.
4. The actors that played Rey and Kylo Ren did a fantastic job. I’d love to see more Rey in the future.
5. Poe and Finn’s bromance was awesome. Their patter was almost uniformly excellent.
6. I loved the mountain town planet (Kijimi). You know, the one the empire destroyed.

Overall, this was ‘meh’. I’d put this somewhere between Aquaman and Revenge of the Sith. And the more I read other people trying to defend the film, the more I think I’m right.

As a final thought, remember when I said this film was beautiful? It is. Enormous spectacle. Clearly this was put together via storyboard. And yet, a day later I can remember very few visuals from it that weren’t in a commercial. Compare that to The Last Jedi (a film I love) and the great shots in those: Luke finding the kids force touching, Yoda destroying the tree, Holdo’s Charge, Luke’s last stand, Luke fading away. There’s just no comparison. And that’s because Rian knew not just how to compose a beautiful shot, but how to make it pay off as well.