We’re nearly at the bottom, and my pick for this week—2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—probably is a bit of a giveaway as to my Number 1 pick.
The Rise of Skywalker is the final film in the Star Wars “sequel trilogy,” itself a bloated mess of plot holes, Mary Sues, wooden characters, and destroyed legacies. It’s not the worst film in the trilogy, but it’s pretty dang close.
Unfortunately, J. J. Abrams did not have a lot to work with here. Rian Johnson took an entertaining retread of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), 2015’s The Force Awakens, and totally ruined it in 2017’s The Last Jedi, a film with an unlikable, purple-haired admiral; an unlikable, SJW mechanic; and a somewhat likeable but ridiculous flying Princess Leia. Abrams had to salvage that utter disaster of a film to cobble together the loose strands and inconsistences of the wrecked trilogy into something vaguely cohesive.
When I first saw The Rise of Skywalker in the theater, I had two sensations. The first sensation was going into the theater: I had no joy. I felt like I was watching a Star Wars film out of a sense of obligation. Coming from a lifelong fan of Star Wars, that would have been inconceivable to me just a few years earlier. I even lived through the prequels, and I was still excited to see each of those films!
The second sensation was a sense of grim satisfaction that Abrams undid everything ridiculous that Johnson had done in the previous film. I actually left thinking it was pretty good compared to The Last Jedi, which is saying eating Grape-Nuts is good compared to eating a dog turd.
Upon further reflection, however, I realized that Grape-Nuts and The Rise of Skywalker are both still pretty bad, even if they aren’t as bad as their inferior counterparts.
The Rise of Skywalker, as I recall from seeing it in the theater, is basically Daisy Ridley and her soyboy hangers-on running around looking for a Sith wayfinder so they can get to the planet where Emperor Palpatine—yes, he’s back!—is hiding out.
The whole thing is a ridiculous treasure hunt. At one point, Rey/Daisy Ridley holds up a Sith dagger whose outline perfectly fits the sea-tossed wreckage of the second Death Star, which would require her being in that exact spot from that exact angle, and assuming that the Death Star didn’t lose any of its shape or components amid a storm-tossed sea.
Anyway, they finally get to the Sith planet, Exogol, and Emperor Palpatine reveals (spoiler alert) that he’s Rey’s grandfather (reversing Rian Johnson’s claim that Rey is a nobody, which actually was a somewhat interesting take on the character). Naturally, Rey barely struggles against the reincarnated Sith Lord, and the good guys win against a massive fleet of Star Destroyers that Palpatine apparently was conjuring up out of thin air.
Yeesh. Where to begin? Sure, when I first saw it, it was kind of cool to find out that Rey was Palpatine’s granddaughter. It would explain her massive powers and abilities with virtually no training, and the ease with which she skated through these films, never enduring any real or lasting hardship.
Then I realize it was just a lazy copout to justify this character’s abilities, and to echo the major theme of the original trilogy—Luke Skywalker’s own dark parentage, with a chance at redemption (Kylo Ren, the sequel trilogy’s cut-rate Darth Vader, reforms in this film to become Ben Solo). Except in the original trilogy, Luke sincerely had to grow and evolve over the course of three films, often making a lot of stupid or hasty mistakes on the way.
Rey, on the other hand, never doubts herself or her intentions, and Daisy Ridley just stoically squints through three films.
Like 2019’s Captain Marvel, The Rise of Skywalker is another example of Hollywood’s belief that a “strong female character” means a “flawless female character.” Female characters can be strong and have to struggle—just look at Princess Leia! Things don’t go so well for her in The Empire Strikes Back (1981), but the setbacks of those films force her to grow as a character. Everyone loves Princess Leia because she has to overcome.
Now, we just get these overpowered female characters that, at ninety pounds, improbably flip around men twice their size.
Meanwhile, the male characters in these films go from being kind of cool to being dopes, all just hanging on Rey’s every word. The character of Finn really suffers—he could have been an interesting character as a former Stormtrooper and potential love interest for Rey. Instead, he just becomes a buffoon by the third film.
I could go on and on—much like The Rise of Skywalker itself. But I think I’ll leave it here.
Rest in Peace, Star Wars.