My history with Star Wars

I grew up with the original trilogy on VHS. I saw the prequels as a pre-teen and teenager in theaters and generally enjoyed them. It was only re-watching them later when I realized they were not good movies.

My thoughts on the other films

The original trilogy is the “bible” of Star Wars. To me, if it wasn’t in those movies, it wasn’t canon. I’m not a fan of how the special editions changed and tweaked the original films.

Rise of Skywalker

This movie is trying to do too much

It’s time to payoff what has been set up, not introduce new stuff. There are entirely new characters introduced and resolved in a matter of minutes for… reasons?

This movie makes no sense

Most of this movie feels like a fetch quest in a video game. It’s a whole lot of “go to this place and get this thing” which then leads to “go to this place and get this other thing” which leads to “go to yet another place to get yet another thing.” It’s just exhausting. Surely we could’ve cut at least one of these things they had to go find.

The Dagger

This Sith dagger makes no damn sense. It has instructions to a location where the Sith wayfinder is inscribed upon it — okay, I can accept that. It’s contrived, but I can go with it. But now it also has to be held up and perfectly aligned with the wreckage of the blown up Death Star (see below)? This is literally a scene from the Goonies but it makes even less sense than it did in that movie. As we all know, things in water never move and don’t erode over 30 years. Also, how bad were Luke and Lando at looking for stuff if this crew was able to accidentally find this dagger without really even working that hard?

Lightspeed skipping

Why does this movie introduce Lightspeed skipping? Is it just because it looks cool? It seems like a set up for something that never gets paid off. I assumed when I saw it that they would later save the day by using it, but they don’t. Why even do it then? It doesn’t matter. I guess it gave Poe a reason to yell at Rey for not being there? Seems like a fairly simple screenwriting problem to solve.

Palpatine’s alive

It’s so clear that J.J. Abrams doesn’t know what to do without a clear bad guy. He set up Snoke to be that, then Last Jedi made the choice to focus on the characters themselves and their internal struggles. Instead of going with that thread and expanding upon it, J.J. just undoes it and brings back the ultimate bad guy. This choice retroactively weakens the entire arc of Anakin by telling us his ultimate sacrifice was actually a failure. It’s a choice, but not a creative one.

Rey’s a Palpatine

This is lazy writing and completely robs us of a more interesting backstory for Rey. Go watch New Hope again — the whole point is someone from humble beginnings can rise to the occasion and be a hero. This is a powerful moment because it makes us all feel like that person could be us. This is what Rian Johnson so clearly understood and baked into the very DNA of The Last Jedi: heroes can come from anywhere; we can all be heroes. Making Rey a Palpatine is just like “ehh jk jk everyone has to be famous to be powerful” which is just a lazy hack. It’s boring and safe in the worst way.

The Final Order

Palpatine’s been cooking up these zombie star destroyers for 30 damn years and can’t come up with a better name than “the final order”? Good grief. Who built these ships? How did no one know this was happening? Why would you build them in such a way that they need this very specific, poorly protected navigation tower? Who are all the Sith people in this weird stadium thing? What do they use this for when this exact moment isn’t happening? Does it just sit there empty? (I have this problem with a lot of Star Wars sets)

Death Star wreckage

We’ve all seen Return of the Jedi — there is no Death Star wreckage. It was vaporized into tiny bits. This is so obvious I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about it.

Character arcs

Most of the characters don’t have them, the ones that do are unearned and rushed.

Rey

Rey starts the film with questionable motivation. We know she’s expanding her Jedi training, but we’re not sure why. She seems to have found some semblance of a family with Leia, but we don’t really see that. A lot of this is a limitation of not having Carrie Fisher in the movie, which is something none of the writers could control. But they knew this when they started writing. They knew they had limited footage they could use of Carrie Fisher. Why wasn’t Rey out there with Finn and Poe trying to redezvous with [name of random new character who didn’t matter] to get the secret information from the First Order spy? If her main motivation is to rebuild the rebellion (where she ends Last Jedi), why isn’t she helping her friends get the data to take down the First Order? Also, once she realizes she needs to get to Exegol and knows Kylo has been there, it seems like she could’ve just agreed to let him take her there. It would’ve made us think she might actually go dark, then would’ve lent even more power to her choosing the light in the end.

Kylo Ren

Kylo probably has the best arc of anyone in this movie, but that’s not a high bar. He starts as someone who wants to “eliminate any threat to his power” (so the crawl tells us) and ends in a redemptive self-sacrifice that restores the balance to the force (perhaps fulfilling the Skywalker destiny, finally?). I do think this turn is rushed and not entirely earned though. He turns from being one of the most vengeful Sith Lords into a redeemed almost Jedi because his mom said his name to him through the force? Again, we’re limited by not having Carrie Fisher to be in any of these scenes, but again, the writers knew this going in. I think having Han Solo there to be the person Kylo reconciles with is… okay, but it should’ve clearly been Leia. We also have this whole scene where Kylo is on Mustafar hunting down a Sith wayfinder that previously belonged to Darth Vader. Are you surprised by that information? Because it’s not in the movie. Could we have had a scene with force-ghost Anakin explaining why he turned away from the dark side? It would’ve been interesting to have the guy Kylo’s been idolizing for the last few years come talk some sense into him. I know it wouldn’t have made sense early in the movie, but that scene didn’t necessarily need to be early in the movie.

Finn

Does Finn actually do anything in this movie? I’ve seen it three times and I’m not sure he does. He does a lot of “Where’s Rey” and follows her around, but he doesn’t save Chewy when he has the chance. He recklessly follows Rey into the Death Star wreckage (more on that above) for… reasons? He also completely ignores Rose as if the previous movie didn’t happen.

Poe

Poe’s arc in this movie is probably the least interesting — because he doesn’t really have one. He’s upset at Rey, then upset at Finn, then Leia made him acting general (this is one of the bright spots — a payoff from Poe’s arc in Last Jedi), then he just flys around doing what he did in Force Awakens. He didn’t actually learn anything. He still rushes into a fight and gets a bunch of people killed for no reason, then relies on someone else to swoop in and save the day. There were a lot of interesting ways to go with this character and this movie kind of feels like it wasted him.

Lando

I’m not sure why Lando has such a big part in this movie. Seeing him at the festival in the desert is cool and great, but that could’ve been it honestly. When he shows up after Poe is reflecting on his role as a leader in Leia’s absence, Poe just says “How’d you do it?” like Lando had been there the whole time. No “Lando! When did you get here?” or “Hey, Lando! You made it!” He just talks to him like he’s been there the whole time. People don’t talk like this to other people. Also Lando’s conversation with Jannah at the end of the movie is just awkward and weird. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to take away from that but I don’t like it.

Zorri & Jannah

Why are they here? Zorri’s character arc is like 3 minutes long. Jannah doesn’t even have one. Both of these characters seem to exist only to deemphasize the Finn / Poe relationship and quash any rumblings of FinnPoe. Jannah had a lot of potential — an entire moon of deserting Storm Troopers? a super cool idea — but ultimately is kind of unnecessary to this story. Zorri literally goes from “I’m going to shoot Poe in the head” to in love with him and wanting him to escape with her in a matter of minutes. Nothing is earned about this. She also just gives Poe the token she’s been working to collect for years without so much as a second of consideration? What? Why? These characters are poorly developed and could almost be cut out of the movie with minimal impact. Everything Jannah does in the final battle could’ve been done by Rose. Poe already knew Babu Frik so we didn’t need Zorri to connect with him. There’s just too much going on here.

Lack of conviction

This movie doesn’t have enough courage to actually make a choice and stick to it. One minute Rey kills Chewy, the next minute he’s alive. One minute C-3P0 loses his memories, the next minute R2 has given them back to him. Both of these are moments to potentially add weight to consequence to the battle these characters are fighting, but they’re both dismissed just as quickly as they’re introduced. This causes me to mistrust the rest of the movie and never believe anything that happens on screen. I just assume anything that happens will be undone moments later. Imagine if Rey had actually killed Chewy in a moment of losing control and giving in to the dark side? What a choice that would’ve been! The movie could’ve continued to explore the fallout from that and made us actually believe Rey might’ve gone bad. Similarly, 3PO getting his memory back completely erases the impact of his sacrifice. He’s seen almost everything that’s happened in this whole saga, so giving all of that up isn’t just something he does lightly. It’s a serious thing to effectively sacrifice who he is for the greater good of defeating the empower. It’s a powerful moment that gets completelty undermined by the script moments later. And for what reason? It’s not like the story ever need 3P0’s memories after that moment. It doesn’t. It only exists to re-assure the audience that “everything is okay” for no reason.

Ultimately, disappointed

The Force Awakens did exactly what it needed to do by teeing up the new trilogy and reminding us what it was like to actually enjoy a movie that felt like Star Wars. The Last Jedi did what I didn’t think Star Wars ever could — it paid respect to the legacy of the franchise while exploring new ground and questioning the assumptions we’d all held for so many years. It raised new, interesting questions about the universe and provided a glimpse into more than just this one family’s storyline. It made the world feel big and expanded the idea of what a Star Wars movie could be. The Rise of Skywalker feels scared of this bigger world. Like Luke on the island, it retreats to the familiar and says “no” to it’s role in the broader world. Luke grows and sees the error of his ways. This movie is unwilling to do that.