WARNING: This piece contains SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker came out last Friday and, as expected, the masses are reacting to it, after two years of the ever-present and divisive debates over Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi. It was that heated reception (mostly by a sector hardcore fans) that caused Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and returning director J.J. Abrams to wash their hands clean a la Pontius Pilate and make the movie we're seeing in theaters. Now, let me be clear: Not all hardcore Star Wars fans reacted negatively. If anything, it's a minority that was VERY loud in their displeasure for Johnson's "takedown" of their sacred childhoods.
The third installment of the sequel trilogy is an action-packed and neat bowtie around the pop culture phenomenon that began over 40 years ago. As usual for every third film of any trilogy, this one was exciting, fun, entertaining and full of action to satisfy any and all moviegoers. By no means, is it a bad film. Flawed? Absolutely. But not bad. It's a fun time to enjoy action sequences, visuals of massive battles, and shooting blasters...all in the biggest screens possible.
THAT BEING SAID, this is where the creative effects come in. The Rise of Skywalker seemingly lived and died on nostalgia; a course correction spearheaded by J.J. Abrams to reverse the negative hardcore fan reactions of the more thought-provoking The Last Jedi. Sure, it's quite possibly a final film for this particular saga of the Star Wars world, so we should get a send-off for our old favorites, right? What Rian Johnson did was turn the story over to the new blood, to new ideas, and to new characters, both present, and future, in an attempt to bring in fresh concepts. With this third film, they look back and sort of fail to advance on anything with any of the characters, at least not beyond some sort of closure any of them might have found regarding this journey they went on for these three chapters.
There was also the matter of fan service. Bringing back Emperor Palpatine was the most obvious fan service move when it was announced. At that point, one could put 2 and 2 together and figure out that he might have had something to do with Rey, which he eventually did. Again, unearthing the past for the sake of nostalgia. Based on that Rey/Palpatine reveal, the others were hollow and predictable (The General Hux one, I found particularly surprising, though).
The story came to a satisfying resolution. People were, for the most part, pleased. In the end, Abrams, Kennedy, and Disney achieved what they set out to do. This was a "give the people what they want" chapter. They achieved just that...at the expense of something actually challenging.
My score: ★★★
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