REVIEW: "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" - a messy end to the Saga

“A thousand generations live in you now . . .”

And so we’ve come to the end. It’s been forty-two years, eleven films from seven directors spanning three generations of a family, a handful of animated series, three film trilogies (a trilogy of trilogies), two spin-offs, a television Christmas special, and one epic story. Star Wars has come a long way since its humble beginnings in an airport warehouse in the mid-1970s. The Rise of Skywalker is the ninth film in the mainline series, the ‘Skywalker Saga’ that began with Star Wars (1977) and the eleventh live-action film overall.

I have been invested in this series ever since I was young. I remember watching the originals with my dad. I must have been eight or nine years old. I was at McDonald’s with my dad one night when the rest of the family was out and he asked me “guess what movie we’re watching tonight”. I had no idea. He pulled out a DVD of the original film that he’d borrowed from the library. I was thrilled.

Star Wars, like it has done for so many over the years, completely captured my heart and mind. I had never seen anything quite like it. It made me fall in love with movies in a whole new way. I remember pouring over the visual guides, comic books, and internet articles about the lore of the universe as I slowly consumed the original and prequel trilogies. I’ve seen Star Wars countless times since then. I can’t seem to get enough of those movies. To this day, I feel a buzz of joy every time I hear that opening fanfare. I love Star Wars.

I remember the thrill of seeing The Force Awakens (2015) opening night. Growing up, I never thought I’d get to see a new Star Wars. But here we were at the beginning of not just a new trilogy, but of a new era of Star Wars content.

Director J.J. Abrams and the Knights of Ren on
location in Wadi Rum, Jordan

Flash forward four years to December 2019.

It’s Sunday, December 15th and I am ecstatically awaiting my Friday-night screening of The Rise of the Skywalker.

It’s Monday, December 16th and I delete the Twitter app off my phone after the review embargo lifts to avoid anything Star Wars related. I want to go into the movie with a blank slate of expectations. That night, singer Dodie Clark posts on her Instagram that she really enjoyed the movie after attending the London premiere that night.

It’s Tuesday, December 17th and I open my Letterboxd to find a 2/5 star review of the movie from IndieWire senior critic David Ehrlich. ‘Whatever,’ I think, ‘it’s just David. I’ve disagreed with him before and he’s not even a Star Wars fan.’

It’s Wednesday, December 18th and I take a glance at the Rotten Tomatoes score. It’s at 59% (it’s dropped two more points since then).

It’s Thursday, December 19th and the other I follow on Letterboxd get back from their respective advanced screenings of the film and post anywhere between 1/5 to 2.5/5 star reviews.

It’s Friday, December 20th and I am nervous. I put aside everything I’ve heard about the film so far and I go in expecting to like it. I let my fan side out again. I had just rewatched all ten of the other films over the past few months and I was beyond excited to see how the story would end. What could go wrong?

Frankly, I wish I wasn’t here right now. I wish I wasn’t writing this review. I wanted to walk out of The Rise of Skywalker absolutely soaring. But I didn’t. And it was crushing. Sure, there are parts of it that I absolutely adore, but then there are moments that I can’t bring myself to enjoy. It’s a mess. A complete mess.

Episode IX is far from a bad movie. The first hour I absolutely amazing and I feel this is the place where we should start.

About the first hour of the film is genuinely great. It’s well-paced, well shot, and pretty well acted. The film chooses to keep the three main heroes, Finn, Poe, and Rey, together for most of the movie to its own benefit. The three have solid chemistry and are a lot of fun to watch together. It brought back memories of the original Star Wars trinity of Luke, Han, and Leia. The first half keeps things simple with a ‘planet-hopping’ narrative as the three (accompanied by Chewie, C3PO, and BB-8) hunt down an artifact that will bring them to the mysterious hiding place of Kylo Ren and the First Order’s terrifying secret.

The heroes first visit the desert world, yes, another desert, of Pasaana where they stumble upon a festival in progress. The scene highlights the fantastic technical work throughout the film. The costumes, production design, and puppeteering are amazing. Despite, a few less than stellar bits of dialogue, the scene is entertaining and features the stellar debut of the Knights of Ren.

Babu Frik, the film's best new character

On the planet of Kijimi, a frigid mountainous world, we are introduced to some of the best new characters. First, we encounter the criminal of Poe’s former lover Zorii Bliss, played by a masked Keri Russell, as well as Babu Frik, a droid mechanic hired by the heroes to access 3PO’s memory files. These two scenes show off the best of screenwriters J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio’s work and their ability to create memorable moments and scenes and to direct them exceptionally well.

The visual effects are fantastic throughout and John William’s score is phenomenal as always. It’s a technically beautiful film, even if it lacks the artistic cinematography of the preceding film. The design of the worlds, creatures, and vehicles keeps up with the impressive legacy of the series. I have greatly admired the entire sequel trilogy's use of practical effects and sets, which visually pay off very well. It keeps things grounded and with a similar aesthetic of the originals and avoids the fake, overly digital look of the prequels.

At this point, the film is thoroughly enjoyable. I couldn’t figure out why people seemed to not like the film. Sure, it lacks the gravitas of The Last Jedi (2017), the previous entry in the Saga, it is certainly entertaining. If they keep this up, this is going to be a fantastic film and a fantastic end to the series.

Then everything changes. As the film goes on, the cracks begin to form in the narrative and the overall cohesion of the piece begins to crumble. A few good scenes don’t make a good movie, and The Rise of Skywalker proves that.

The film begins to feel like one long apology of The Last Jedi, a film that divided a lot of fans and led to a great deal of online backlash towards the project. Abrams tramples all over what the last film did. Instead of embracing what Johnson did in Episode VIII and moving forward with it, he seems to pretend that it never happened or at least some sort of imaginary version of it did and actively undoes the best parts of it.

This may be a criticism of Disney’s approach towards the sequel trilogy. They clearly went in without a plan and that hurt them. Instead of being one cohesive trilogy like the originals or prequels, the sequels seem to exist each in their own separate version of the trilogy. The differences between each film feel jarring and disconnected. What else do you expect when you rush a trilogy out under the leadership of multiple people. Abrams wrote and directed The Force Awakens with Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt and sets up a whole bunch of plot points and mysterious threads.

Then Disney gives complete creative control of The Last Jedi to Rian Johnson, which doesn’t work with Abrams. Johnson is a great filmmaker and I adore The Last Jedi, but it doesn’t work with what Abrams wanted to do. Rian Johnson made a Rian Johnson movie, which is to be expected when he has complete control over a property, and that meant that his movie as going to be heady and intellectual and narratively complex (something fans were obviously not ready for). Then Abrams gets back on the project and wants to make a sequel to his movie and not continue the complex themes and careful character building of Johnson’s work and so abandons everything good about his predecessor. And at no point did Disney step in to course correct.

Rey and Kylo Ren face off on Kef Bir

The film ultimately abuses and abandons its characters. Finn and Poe get no development whatsoever, despite introducing a secret Finn has to tell Rey, Abrams later said that he wanted to tell her that he was force-sensitive, and some characters from Poe’s history. There is so much potential for interesting character development, but Abrams wastes every opportunity to explore it. The film further sidelines previously introduced characters like Rose Tico and Kayden Ko Connix then introduces new characters like the aforementioned Zorii Bliss, General Pryde, played by Richard E. Grant, Beaumont Kin, played by Dominic Monaghan, and Jannah, an ex-Stormtrooper played by Naomi Ackie, and brings back Lando Calrissian only to further sideline them.

Kylo Ren suffers the worst of any character here. He was once being built up to be the Saga’s most complex character, but now is thrown away and waisted.



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Most of Ren’s problems come from the third act and the final showdown with Palpatine on Exegol. His redemption seemed inevitable since The Force Awakens, but The Rise of Skywalker handles it so poorly. All seems to be going well as he throws his red saber into the waves of Kef Bir and heads off to Exegol to fight Palpatine. And then he gets tossed out of the fight early by Palpatine before Rey kills the villain, then returns to save Rey, then dies. It’s a moment that doesn’t give Kylo Ren, or Ben Solo, the justice he needs. Instead of conquering the enemy, reclaiming the Skywalker name, and defeating his demons, he is thrown to the side.

Of course, Palpatine is his own set of issues. He simply functions as a walking, talking plot hole. He appears out of thin air without explanation. Or the fact that he has kids and even a granddaughter. They throw in this Rey twist to create another “I am your father” moment, but it lands empty. It’s an obvious attempt at ‘fixing’ The Las Jedi, but just throws off the emotional arcs of the entire trilogy and creatures further holes in the storyline and how it relates to Palpatine. I am not opposed his return to the series, I think it’s a rather great idea, but not when it isn’t thought through intelligently.

I will say that I really like Ian McDiarmid’s portrayal of the character. In his fifth turn as Sheev Palpatine, a.k.a. The Emperor, a.k.a. Darth Sideous, he once again brings a terrifically menacing energy to the film as he always has. The design of Exegol is also solid. I liked the small detail of those two Snokes growing in a tank in the Emperor’s base.


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Abrams is trying to balance way too many ideas on top of each other here. He retroactively introduces a trilogy’s worth of ideas in the last film in the series and it doesn’t work. There’s a lot of cool plot points on display, but they aren’t executed well in any way. Abrams wants to make both an adventure-comedy like Return of the Jedi (1983) as well as capture the tone of Revenge of the Sith (2005), and unlike the previous film which blends the two well, his tonal shifts feel jarring.

The Rise of Skywalker comes off as the first Star Wars film written by Reddit. It’s an empty fan service that lacks any of the depth that made Star Wars cool in the first place. The film’s story does too much in far too little time. It is bursting at the seams thanks to the two-and-a-half-hour runtime. If Abrams wanted to accomplish everything he set out to do, it needed another hour at least.

The film boils down to 142 minutes of empty filler. Despite the promising opening hour, the film can’t sustain itself or its lofty ambitions. This makes the finished product even more frustrating. There are moments that I absolutely love, but then there are moments that I don’t. I can’t hate the film, but I can’t love it either.

But hey, at least it’s not the prequels, right?

Score: 2.5/5

The Rise of Skywalker Quick Facts
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Written by J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio
Starring Daisey Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, and Ian McDiarmid
Released December 20, 2019
142 minutes