IX — Non-Linear Thoughts of a Squeeing Fangirl

Spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and possibly all other Star Wars films. These were my direct thoughts from the moment I left the cinema till the day I post this, so warning, it’s a little messy.

The end of the year is coming, and for some, so is Star Wars. Even if you don’t absorb all the media that Disney throws at you about Star Wars, a large number of film goers will be coming to an end in their Star Wars journey with Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Some initial thoughts before I go now to watch a triple play of the new trilogy, ending in the midnight showing of IX. I’m expecting fun. Although I loved The Last Jedi and all that Rian Johnson did, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the sections between the major beats of the film are going to be fun escapades with more comedy and less philosophical talking. This could go anyway, I didn’t hate it in The Last Jedi, but getting some more fun like the original trilogy pumped into the film could help it go a long way. And going by some of the trailers and television spots, it looks like there will be something along those lines with the group together travelling from planet to planet. I’m also expecting retcon. Although JJ said that he didn’t want to undermine anything that Johnson had put into the trilogy, he will most certainly turn around the kart when it comes to certain storylines that Johnson went a little off-piste with. It’ll be sad, but it makes sense that Disney would do it after the divisive The Last Jedi and a disappointing turnout for Solo. And finally, I’m expecting to be disappointed. This may seem strange as a huge Star Wars fan, but like any ending to a long-running franchise it is not going to live up to all the hype in my fangirl brain. But I am also a little worried that it will be disappointing due to some of the decisions that Disney have made over the last five years they have owned Lucasfilm. Giving IX back to JJ and Kicking off Lord and Miller from Solo to start with. This is one of the biggest moments in cinematic history, whether you like the new trilogy or not. A generation’s opinion on Star Wars will hinge on how this film ties up its starting points. We’ll see.

While I’ve got a few minutes before I go to the cinema, I’ll go over a few hopes for the film’s specifics. For example, I hope the Emperor isn’t the main villain of the film. I doubt he will be, but if they wanted to keep the film simple and not have to try at all, it would be an easy move. Not only has the Emperor been in nearly all trailers, he has also not appeared on screen at all, leading me to believe that my hope will come true and that he will appear as either a force ghost or as part of a holocron. I also hope that the relationships between the characters truly flourish in this film. We’ve had great hints at how these characters could grow and interact, but none of them have come to any fruition apart from The Last Jedi giving us some much needed development between Rey and Kylo. I hope that the film doesn’t give in to too many callbacks and cameos. We already have the Emperor coming back, we don’t need any more from Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon or Anakin. Give us something solid that isn’t cluttered with nonsense. And finally, I hope to enjoy the film. Too much of the film industry is centred around money to the point where films suffer as well as fans being too anal about every single film they see as being the pinnacle of modern cinema. I just want to have fun and be happy when I leave the screening. I guess that’s it for now, I’ll see you on the other side.

The Skywalker Saga is at an end, and what a journey it was. This is something that I’ve loved since I was four years old, getting me through bad days and boring evenings. Star Wars is a huge part of my life and it’s hard to see whether my love for it clouds my judgement of new releases like The Rise of Skywalker (but it probably does). After all that, the film was wonderful, but at the same time problematic. The best way I can describe it is that they made a ton of bad decisions, but managed to execute them to near perfection.

To begin with, I’ll go through my expectations and hopes, and then go through my thoughts on what actually happened. To begin with, I expected fun. And good lord, it was fun. Apart from a sidelining of certain characters, which I will go into later, our characters went around on fun adventures with each other. The only problem was that it could have done with some more time spent on these adventures. Not much more, but by the end of the film I had a longing for way more time with our group of heroes. This could have also been solved by taking this approach in The Force Awakens and therefore allowing The Last Jedi to make us miss the adventure group and bringing them back together in The Rise of Skywalker would’ve had a much bigger impact. I also expected some retcon. Rian Johnson did a great thing by taking a leap of faith and doing something different, but due to some fan pressure now is having his ideas slowly erased. The big one is of course, Rey’s parents. I’ll go into more detail later, but the idea (like the rest of the film) could’ve been much better while the execution wasn’t bad at all. My last expectation was that I would be disappointed. And to be honest, I was. There were numerous times I facepalmed or eye-rolled at the screening. But that comes back to the decisions they made. My first hope was that the Emperor would not be the main villain. Well, he was. I didn’t think it would’ve been that simple but apparently so. I thought that maybe it was someone pretending to be the Emperor or, more likely, he would simply appear as a force ghost and be guiding Kylo while he is the main villain. It worked reasonably, though there wasn’t too much explanation towards how he was there, or how this links with Operation Cinder. But like most of the new Disney cannon, you have to also read three other books, watch one television show and play a couple of games to actually fully know what happened around a particular event. Another hope was that the characters would actually develop. This happened and it didn’t. Rey’s storyline was an absolute mess due the retcon of her parents. Finn’s was reasonable, but there was only a glimpse of the best bromance of Finn and Poe. Kylo probably had the best storyline in the film. His character had a great arc that fit him very well. I personally would have ended it different, but the essence of what I wanted was there. Poe’s was much the same as Finn’s though the introduction of a new character called Zorri Bliss added a little bit to his arc. I must say, however, Zorri Bliss was an amazing character that should’ve been used a lot more. In fact, both the new characters (the other being Jannah) were only there to say that the film had new characters. They were barely used and got no time to develop any meaningful relationship with the characters. Even Bliss, who already knew Poe, barely got to interact with him. Lando was there. The rest of the characters are either not worth talking about, or I will get to them later on. The cameos were a little dumb, but no where near as bad as they could’ve been. My final hope was to enjoy the film. And I did. No matter how much I eye-rolled or facepalmed, I was also grinning and laughing and squeeing like the little fangirl I am. Every cool shot, every lightsaber fight, every character moment. It was, most definitely, entertaining.

Some mysterious to go through that were set up in VII and VIII. To begin with, the big one, Rey’s parents. So after beautifully crafting the road in which Rey finds out that her parents are nothing and that they probably sold her so that they could live, JJ decides to through all that out of the window. Rey is the granddaughter of Palpatine. Now, this causes many different issues of the bat. Firstly, if you’re going for the whole ‘she is actually evil!’ route, then simply make her a clone. This then gives you more of a option to go down the route of ‘will she be evil because she has no choice, or can she break away’. The other problem that would be solved by making her a clone over an actual blood relative is that Palpatine, at least in my eyes, was always seen as an asexual and aromantic. He wants nothing other than power and the only relationships he develops are purely to further his and the Sith’s goals. It doesn’t compute with my brain that Palpatine would ever have a child with anyone. Yes, theoretically he could do it to ‘further the Palpatine line’ but that is what cloning is for. They even introduced the idea of Sith spirits moving from body to body which is what the whole cloning storyline of Palpatine is in Legends. Though, one good thing is that she isn’t a Solo, Skywalker, etc. She does choose to go by the name Skywalker in the very last scene (the only thing that makes the title sensible), but that at least feels earned. Another mystery was that of Snoke. Apparently this was a very simple one and that Palpatine made him. That was a joke. All that setup and nonsense to simply be a figure made by Palpatine is whack. This brings up my thought that the whole trilogy should have been made by either Johnson or JJ (Johnson would be my choice) so that this random nonsense of messing around with other film’s storylines to make your film cooler ruined half of the storylines and character arcs. The only other mystery that is worth mentioning is where did Maz get Anakin’s lightsaber. It doesn’t get resolved in The Rise of Skywalker and I suspect it’s one of the ‘read a book to find out’ mysteries.

I’ve vaguely talked about story and characters, so if I pop a little bit on the end here about some visuals and sounds, then we can wrap this up. Visually, the film competes right up there with the best of the saga, great landscape shots similar to The Force Awakens while also carrying on some of the great colour palettes of The Last Jedi. I was a little annoyed that the final planet wasn’t called Dromund Kaas due to how similar it is both story-wise and visually, but the scenes on the planet made up for that ten-fold. Most CGI was okay, including a great shot of VI Luke, but other CGI including VI Leia as well as the stock footage they used of Carrie Fisher after she died was awful. It looked unnatural and every scene with Leia felt like a massive insult to her. I think it would have worked better if they had written her out of the film and had Leia die between the films. You can still pay tribute to Carrie and have the character affect the cast and audience in a meaningful way. Soundtrack as always is great, John Williams cannot do wrong. Having watched it with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi right before, the best track of the whole new trilogy is most definitely Rey’s theme. It seems to perfectly encapsulate the feeling of the new trilogy while hiding some of Daisy Ridley’s terrible acting. Before I used to say that she was only a little wooden in the first scenes of The Force Awakens, but now watching all three in a row, she is most certainly terrible. The rest of the cast throughout all three films carry her, including new characters like Bliss.

From the opinions of others, it looks like The Rise of Skywalker did not go down well. I hope that this both does not discourage Disney from attempting cool Star Wars projects whilst also letting them know that having multiple directors over the course of a trilogy does not work for everyone. They need at least one person who is in charge of the process at a creative, not production, level. This is now part of Star Wars history and we must embrace it.

You can’t go back now. Just like I can’t.

-Boad