'Rise of Skywalker' Review: The Force is Neutral with this One

The conclusion to the nine-episode saga with The Rise of Skywalker is all over the place.

Disclaimer: This is a mostly nonspoiler review of Episode IX. The only potential spoiler that will be covered is the return of Emperor Palpatine. Since the main thrust of film deals with The Emperpor’s return, there simply isn’t a way to avoid covering the topic in a review. There will be some spoilers from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

John Williams composes another terrific score, the action is beautifully captured and the acting is simply the best out of any Star Wars film. However, The Rise of Skywalker is easily the worst of the Disney Star Wars trilogy.

The lack of a clear overarching plan for this trilogy comes into sharp focus with Episode IX. Palpatine’s return is disappointing and largely nonsensical. The film is full of plot conveniences, odd pacing issues and retcons to precedents established in other films in the series.

If you’re looking for fun action movie set in the Star Wars universe, you will probably enjoy the film a great deal. However, if you’re looking for a triumphant conclusion to the Skywalker saga, The Rise of Skywalker comes up short in that area.

May the force be with you as we dive into the good and bad in Episode IX.

Light Side in The Rise of Skywalker

While the main plot involving Palpatine is diappointing, the outstanding performances by Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac is the main reason this film works as well as it does.

The chemistry between Kylo Ren and Rey is even stronger than the impressive dynamic shown in The Last Jedi. In Episode IX, Director J.J. Abrams expands the force Skype concept that Episode VIII director Rian Johnson established. The decision to circle back on Rey’s parentage is disappointing. However, Ridley manages to show uncertainty, shine in the action scenes and display warmth towards every hero, villain or creature she interacts with. Rey is the perfect heroine for this generation.

No disrespect to Michael B. Jordan, but Driver may very well be the best under-40 actor working today. Driver has to walk a fine line in playing the internal tug-of-war between Ben Solo and Kylo Ren. If the inner turmoil seems like a retread of where the chracter was at after the previous two films, well it’s, but that falls at the feet of Abrams, not Driver.

Rebel Alliance

Rey, Finn, Poe, C-3PO and Chewbacca spend the majority of the film’s runtime together for the first time in the trilogy. The dialogue in these scenes sizzles. From the comedic to dramatic elements, the acting is terrific. Poe provides the majority of the comedy. Finn provides great support to Rey, while matching Poe barb-for-barb. C-3PO hasn’t been used better in a Star Wars film.

Action

Unfortunately, since the pacing of the film moves at such a fast clip, most of the action doesn’t have the emotional stakes that a film like Avengers: Endgame featured. Unlike the The Last Jedi, there is a lightsaber-on-lightsaber battle. I don’t think any of the fight scenes are as good as the fight featuring Rey and Kylo vs Snoke’s guards in the throne room, but they are better than The Force Awakens. None of the action scenes touch the emotional impact of Luke Skywalker staring down AT-AT’s or Vice Admiral Holdo’s (Laura Dern) sacrifice inThe Last Jedi. However, the action itself is entertaining and quite strinking.

The Dark Side in The Rise of Skywalker

I adore The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

However, the lack of clear plan for this trilogy from Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy for these films comes home to roost. Kennedy shoud have stayed firm on having a different director for each film or have one individual direct all three film. Going from Abrams to Johnson back to Abrams again is such a tonal shift.

Abrams and Johnson are different types of directors. The lack of a clear creative direction gives way to a movie that features poor use of Palpatine, plot conveniences at almost every turn, and a fast pace that is used to evade logic gaps as well as hinder interesting story choices that deserved further exploration.

Palpatine: All Bark, No Bite

The return of Palpatine is given no explanation. While this does undermine Vader’s redemtion in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine’s reemergence could have been a boon to the story. Unfortunately, not a single scheme concocted by The Emperor works. Neither Kylo nor Rey are the least bit enticed by his actions. Ian McDiarmid’s performance is quite strong and that voice of his almost makes up for the illogical nature of his return.

The lazy return of Palpatine leads to Abrams retelling a very similar story to The Force Awakens.

In the Episode VII, the premise for the film is on finding Luke Skywalker and involves locating a missing piece of the map in order to track Luke’s location. Episode IX simply trades Luke for Palpatine and focuses on finding a different “McGuffin” in order to find The Emperor’s location.

Original Trilogy Character Usage

While it’s a pleasue to see Carrie Fisher one last time. Leia’s scenes just don’t work in the film. Abrams and company did the best they could in using footage featuring Fisher from the other films. However, it’s clear that Fisher’s dialogue served a different purpose, from how it’s used in The Rise of Skywalker.

Billy Dee Williams makes a welcome return as Lando, but doesn’t do much until the final act of the film. HIs moment is presented in triumphant fashion, but since we’ve spent such little time with the character, it doesn’t have the same impact as in something like The Return of the Jedi.

Fast Pace

One of Abrams strengths as a director is his strong grasp of pacing. With Episode IX, Abrams keeps the pace at “lightspeed” for the first 45 minutes to an hour, before finally starting to let some of the scenes breathe a little. Indeed the first hour seems to be Abrams attempt to tell his version of Episode VIII, then using the remaing runtime to get into his story for Episode IX.

Character Endings

Most of the chracters leave the film with unsatisfying endings. NO Spoilers here.

There’s one moment in the film that was so misjudged by Abrams that it elicited audilbe “ew’s” from the audience, only to then be followed by laughter. Rey’s parentage arc is defintively addressed in the film, but is a compete reversal from the “kill the past” message that was probably the strongest aspect of The Last Jedi.

Finn has an interesting runnng gag throughout the film where he tell Rey that there’s something important he needs to tell her. We never find out what this important piece of information is in the film. The Rise of Skywalker is the final Star Wars saga film at least for awhile, you simply can’t let story strings dangle into the ether. Just a bizarre oversight.

Wrap Up

There’s plenty of fun in The Rise of Skywalker. However, the terrible story choies and recycled plot devices undermines the outstanding performances and gorgeous imagery.

What did you thing of Episode IX? Where do you rank the films in the Disney trilogy? How about the entire Star Wars filmography? Sound off in the comment or hit me up on Twitter.