Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Chris Bumbray's take)

PLOT: One year after almost crushing the Rebellion once and for all, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) finds an unlikely ally in the resurrected Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) – who demands Ren bring him Rey (Daisy Ridley), who’s off training as a Jedi under the tutelage of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). Meanwhile, Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) discover there’s a spy in the First Order, and hatch a daring plan to end their reign once and for all.

REVIEW: No one could have predicted that the first Disney STAR WARS trilogy would be so controversial. After a fan-pleasing start with THE FORCE AWAKENS, THE LAST JEDI wound up being one of the most polarizing blockbusters in recent memory ((I’m unapologetic about the fact that I liked it – with a few caveats), clearly leading to some creative reshuffling at Disney, with J. J. Abrams returning to give the hard-core fans the final installment they’ve been demanding.

That said, is the thing they’ve always said they wanted really what they want after all? The early reaction suggests THE RISE OF SKYWALKER will be no less controversial than THE LAST JEDI, with many already accusing the filmmakers of playing it safe with an uneven, by-the-numbers entry. Sure enough, the first act is a total mess, with the opening crawl working overtime to catch us up on what’s been happening in a galaxy far, far away – with Palpatine having already been revived for some time. This element makes it feel like there’s a movie missing, as so much seems to have happened between THE LAST JEDI and this that the effect is jarring for the first half of the film. Similarly, the reappearance of the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia is jarring, with the use of stock footage and CGI far from seamless. Couldn’t there have been a better way to give the character some closure than by resurrecting her with “not quite there” CGI?

Luckily, things settle down somewhere towards the middle of the second act, and while uneven, there are things about THE RISE OF SKYWALKER that really work. For one, the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey is as intriguing as always, with Adam Driver nailing Ren’s increasingly conflicted nature, even as he gets closer to the emperor. Daisy Ridley has also proven herself to be iconic as a heroine, with this delving into her attraction and draw to the dark side in a way that allows her to show off a vicious side that up to now we haven’t seen. Again though, another film showing her struggling with the pull of the dark side might have made the finale more effective.

One of the biggest complaints about THE LAST JEDI was how Oscar Isaac’s Poe was turned into a reckless ne’er do-well, and that’s been corrected here, with him once again the heroic Rebellion pilot with a roguish side. He’s Han meets Wedge, and Isaac is magnetic as always (someone give him a franchise already). His bromance with John Boyega’s Finn is played up, with them rarely apart. As far as the baddies go, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER benefits from more screentime for Richard E. Grant’s snivelling first order baddie. He was made to be in these movies (by contrast, Domhnall Gleeson’s Hux is a glorified extra). So far these are the changes that work.

However, the so-called “course correction” also goes too far at times, with clumsy re-writing to bring Palpatine into the universe, and the question of Rey’s lineage is dealt with in a way that makes it painfully clear that whatever the plan was for her in the first two films has been hastily revised here. Finally, one of the saddest concessions to critics of the last film is how Rose Tico is sidelined, with Kelly Marie Tran barely having a role at all. I get a lot of fans had a big problem with her, but did she have to be sidelined so completely? There’s even a scene where the main crew is getting ready to go on a mission and she says “no I’ll stay behind and take care of Leia”, meaning you virtually never see her at all. She doesn’t get a single moment to shine, making me wonder why Abrams even brought her back in the first place. It’s too bad because (for me anyway) the character was a welcome addition to THE LAST JEDI, although I suppose I’m in the minority.

Another huge problem with THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is the endless series of fake-outs, with nonstop scenes of one of our heroes apparently on the verge of death or dying, only to be resurrected minutes later. In some ways, this is in the classic serial tradition, but Abrams takes it too far here, to the point that by the time the final battle happens you feel like there are no stakes whatsoever. This is the anti-AVENGERS: ENDGAME.

There is a laundry list of things THE RISE OF SKYWALKER doesn’t quite get right, but the fact remains that in the end, this is still STAR WARS, meaning it’s watchable enough even if it pales next to something like “The Mandalorian” (give Jon Favreau and Deborah Chow the next trilogy!). When the John Williams score starts pumping, you can’t help but get excited, and on a technical level, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is impeccable, with great CGI creatures (although the de-aging is definitely not Marvel-level) and sharp cinematography by Dan Mindel (there’s a welcome absence of lens flares). There are some wonderful bits and pieces here and there (including Billy Dee Williams’s long overdue return as Lando and a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from an original trilogy favorite), but it’s a compromised end to a compromised trilogy. Part of me thinks this is what happens when you have too many cooks, and really, it should have been J.J. Abrams guiding the trilogy all along, as you need the one voice if you’re going to make it work. Still, it’s worth seeing (it’s STAR WARS!) just go in with your hopes in check.