As with The Last Jedi, I hoped to like this movie. Also as with The Last Jedi, Skywalker thwarted those hopes.
- Release: 2019
- Director: J. J. Abrams
- Starring: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, John Boyega, etc.
- Screenplay: Chris Terrio, J. J. Abrams
- Spoilers? None.
I’ll stop just short of saying there’s no point to this movie, but only because my mom taught me to be nice. It’s another story with multiple genres demanding multiple beats, multiple plot lines requiring resolution, and too much happening too fast, resulting in another convoluted mess I couldn’t get excited about. If you want a plot summary, here you go. Good luck following the logic.
Writing lesson
The Rise of Skywalker offers numerable writing lessons. It’s a master class in what not to do. Plenty of drama surrounded the development of the final Star Wars story, and Carrie Fisher’s untimely death threw a serious wrench into the planning. So perhaps the first lesson, however obvious, is this: if you’re planning to tell a story in nine parts, don’t let forty years pass between the first installment and the last.
Its most instructive lesson comes from its position as a series finale. If you want a satisfying ending to a compelling series, map the whole thing from beginning to end before you write the first story (or at least, before you release the first story). It’s much easier to plant clues and develop compelling story lines the audience will care about if you know from the outset where the story will end up.
A third lesson: stay true to your own vision for the story. Don’t let fans of a popular series dictate the action. Fans will be served if you deliver a good, clear, compelling story. Let that be enough.
I hated The Last Jedi, but I loved this one. I agree with what you said in your review of The Last Jedi about there being no character development. Also, in that movie, they jumped all over the place introducing too many extra characters (as you also said), and I hated the way they wrote the women. Laura Dern is such a cool actress and they made her character so ridiculously weak and whiney. Rey was just boring and one dimensional in that movie. I also hated what the writers did to Luke, so crazy out of character! Anyway so I went into this one expecting nothing and was pleasantly surprised. I love the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. They both were going through internal battles and it made sense that they would be drawn together. One of the things I really hated about The Last Jedi and for which I could not get over and will forever hate that movie, is when Luke considered killing his nephew because of the possibility of him going to the dark side, but then Ren was driven to the dark side because of that act and I totally understood why Ren made that decision (unlike Anakin in Episode 3). But there were visions and talk of Luke being drawn to the dark side in the original trilogy but, Obi-Wan and Yoda never considered killing him! I loved The Rise of Skywalker because it returned to the original message from the first three, that is, you can choose your path, light or dark. I thought this movie rounded out the entire series very well.
Carla, I totally agree that the way the women characters were written in Last Jedi was dreadful. What a waste of Laura Dern, in particular!
In Rise of Skywalker, I really wanted them to explore the Rey-Ren relationship more. It had so much potential, but for me, that story line got diluted by all the other stuff going on. The story would cut away to something else and I wanted to shriek, “Wait! Go back!” (And that battle at sea had some amazing special effects.) It was fascinating to read about all the real-life drama surrounding the film’s development. Boy, those stories can suck you in like a black hole. It was originally planned for Carrie Fisher to be a major focus, but then she died and that sent them back to square one. I can’t help wondering what a difference it would have made in the overall series if they hadn’t taken so long from the first installment to the ninth.
The story did circle back, as you noted, to the original message that you can choose your path, light or dark. That’s a message that resonates with people in so many storytelling formats. Maybe in this project I will compare and contrast other stories in other formats that use that same message. Either way, I’m glad you got so much satisfaction from this episode.
What do you think—should I check out the middle trilogy, or no?
Yes, I think you should watch the middle trilogy. It’s the worst one, but I think it’s helpful to know Anakin’s back story, even if it is lame. Lol And that compare and contrast idea is a good one!