Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Review
Is the force strong with this one? Or will it turn us all to the dark side?
*THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS! I’ve tried to dilute the spoilers down as much as possible by being pretty vague but this still is going to have spoiler-y content in it. Thanks for reading guys!*
If you HAVEN’T seen Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker yet, wish to remain spoiler free but still read a review? We got you covered over here.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t hugely fond of RoS predecessor “The Last Jedi.” It was a good movie but not a good Star Wars movie. I knew I’d be reviewing this one so I put all of that out of my mind and focused solely on RoS. I wanted to be as fair as possible to the film and not too picky.
So, this is where the fun begins…
Plot
I was dreading writing this section because ,quite frankly, Rise of Skywalker is a bit of a mess plot wise. It has a plot. Or thinks it does. But it also has about 6 other plots going on at the same time.
The characters are together, then split up, then together again. All whilst we follow Kylo, finding the “wayfinder” which leads him to Palpatine.
Eventually Kylo finds Rey through their “force bond” and they fight over a ship that has smugglers on it. Through her frustration at losing the upper hand to Kylo, Rey loses her temper and lightning shoots from her hands. This destroys the ship and kills everyone on board. Distraught by her own actions, Rey collapses. Chewbacca is killed in the blast (don’t panic, it doesn’t last. He comes back)
Kylo spends the rest of the movie using the force bond with Rey to find out where she is. Whilst she and the rest of the resistance try to find a translation for what’s on the Sith dagger that they found on the first planet.
The 3PO mind wipe we all knew was coming
This is the C-3PO mind wipe part. They take C-3PO to one of Poe’s contacts who can take the restrictions off of 3PO but only if his memory is wiped with it. He goes through with it but because of Rey and Kylo’s bond they are attacked. Again.
They escape and 3PO reveals to them that not all is lost as he can still give a translation because he remembers what was written on the dagger (conveniently.)
Rey and Kylo fight on the Death Star. They both sense the death of Leia and it stops them both for a second but Rey recovers quicker and uses the upper hand she has to stab Kylo in the chest. She then reveals she will never be like him and fall to the dark side and uses her new found ability to heal him.
She steals his ship and the wayfinder and flies off to meet Palpatine on a desolate planet. He goads her in the same way he goaded Luke into trying to kill him in a fit of rage. He opens the arena roof to show the dogfight between the resistance and the Emperor’s ships and confirms her to be his granddaughter.
The Rise of Skywalker Review
You’ll notice that the “plot” section is kinda short. I wanted to add everything of note but there really wasn’t enough space. So I’ll do it in stages during my review.
If I was to do it in just a few words? This movie is basically fanfiction given the green light. The “Fifty Shades of Grey” Star Wars version, if you will.
It’s not a bad movie but it’s not good either. It’s certainly not a good Star Wars movie.
Here’s the main issue I have with this film. It’s, once again, unoriginal as hell: it’s basically Return Of The Jedi but with a few things tweaked.
Things happen and there’s zero explanation. The entire first half feels rushed, like it should be two stand alone movies on it’s own. And the worst of all? It doesn’t have the courage to do anything.
Remember the “Chewbacca death?” Yeah. He comes back. No explanation other than “he wasn’t on the ship we all thought he was on so now he’s back and not dead at all YAAAAAY!”
You’ve also got the 3PO mind wipe. Later in the film its revealed that R2D2 has stored memory of 3PO’s so he can just bring most of his memory back and 3PO will be fine.
The fact that the Emperor is there but all he does is troll the hell out of Rey and Kylo until Rey dies killing him and brought back by Kylo. Which ends in a kiss.
All of it is… bait. It’s obvious the filmmakers wanted to be brave and have these massively emotional moments with these old beloved characters being killed off or removed but there’s always a way out. And it’s always massively convenient. It’s like they wanted to tell a heartbreaking story but lost their courage last second and made up any old rubbish just so that they don’t have to.
It’s all so and uninspired. Add that to the obvious nostalgia-bait. It just doesn’t seem as if a lot of independent thought has gone into this movie at all.
Random powers needed for plot? Just throw them in, no need for explanations
Rey, once again, is shown to randomly discover powers she never knew she had or was trained for (force healing.) Now this is kinda explained by her being strong with the dark side as she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter but even then she’d have to train. Not only have to train but have to train specifically in the dark side as force healing is a dark side skill.
She’s shown training in flashbacks a bit but it doesn’t explain the random “being able to do this even though I didn’t even know it was a thing” ability.
The Rise of Skywalker is a movie a bit like a boat on some very rough seas. It doesn’t let the characters and their progression move the plot along. The plot moves the characters along and so they end up just being a pawn in a massive game of predetermined chess. They’re given no agency, as such, the moments that are meant to be emotional really aren’t. They’re stale and, at times, eye-rollingly cringy.
That’s it for our Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Review. If you want to, sound off in the comments with your opinions or let us know via social media.
