Now this film has really split the fans and critics right down the middle and has had its fair share of mixed reviews and bad reactions from fans. So, is it a good sold finale or just a big letdown?? Well, let's find out.
And as I will say just a little bit about the story, the following warning is coming up...
THE ODD SPOILER OR TWO ARE AHEAD BUT NOTHING MAJOR (HONEST!!).
STORY
So, the story begins with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) searching for the location of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) that leads him to the planet, Exegol where he finds a physically impaired Palpatine. Palpatine tells Ren that he must find and kill Rey (Daisy Ridley) in order for him to complete his destiny and become the supreme ruler of the galaxy.
Meanwhile, Rey continues her Jedi training under the tuition of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and the other resistance fighters receive information from a spy in First Order that Palpatine is indeed alive and has returned. Rey on looking for clues for Palpatine's whereabouts searching Luke's notes that include Jedi texts about a Sith wayfinder that will lead her to Palpatine. And so its from here that Rey travels with her friends and fellow resistance fighters, Poe (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo replacing the late Peter Mayhew) along with C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 to the planet Pasaana to start the trail to find Palpatine...
THOUGHTS
As a conclusion to the Disney trilogy and indeed the main Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker is an entertaining film that has actually been getting alot of stick from many fans and reviewers alike but I personally think its a better film than its been given credit for so far (or a lack thereof). And I really do have to say I don't get the hate for this film as there is still plenty to enjoy here as it has its share of good action scenes, engaging character moments and a reasonably decent ending. And while its certainly not a perfect film, I still think it makes for a solid end to its trilogy and its WAY better than the Last Jedi was and this film in a way sets out to perform a certain amount of damage control inflicted by LJ's director, Rian Johnson (boo lol!).
PERFORMANCES
As for the performances the cast are all on good form here.
Starting with Daisy Ridley who is excellent once again in her role as Rey, the last jedi who takes up her pivotal role again in the trilogy and in the film we learn more about her background story but I won't say anything about it here! Ridley has some good moments but again I won't really say much about them but suffice to say that Rey's character has developed some rather unique force powers that we haven't seen before now and she does have her share of good action scenes.
Adam Driver is also very good again in his role as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, who by now is the supreme ruler of the First Order and seeks out Emperor Palplatine, who is rumoured to be still alive but still has his own emotional conflict as he harbours feelings for Rey. And as the film progresses, Kylo will have a very important choice to make that has quite an impact on the film's ending but that's all I'm going to say!
Carrie Fisher even though she passed away three years ago still puts in a fine performance here as Princess Leia. And what we see here was cobbled together from unused footage of The Force Awakens and it works very well for the most part and hangs together well as an actual performance and it was great to see that we even managed to get that much for her final send-off.
Oscar Isaac also does pretty well in his role as Poe Dameron, the commander of the resistance, who is also a formidable pilot and he is given alot to do here as he takes on a hefty role as the film progresses. We also later get hints into Poe's past as he meet someone he previously knew at some point in the film where its suggested he had a prior relationship with them.
John Boyega is also pretty good in his role as Finn, a former first order stormtrooper now a resistance fighter. John however somehow is actually given less to do here, despite his screen time, his character doesn't develop that much more over the course of the film, which is a bit of a pity.
WARNING: THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH IS KIND OF A SPOILER!
Mark Hamill also makes a return to his role as Luke Skywalker who by now is a force ghost and he consults Rey later on. Basically at this point, Luke is taking on the same mantle here as Obi-wan Kenobi did in the Return of the Jedi and there are some pretty clearly drawn comparisons here between the two films for these scenes.
Anthony Daniels does very well again as C-3PO in what his of course his final performance as the pesky protocol droid, who seems to get on everyone's nerves. Threepio however does kind of have a touching moment later in the film but I won't say much more about it than that. At any rate, Anthony Daniels is the only actor to have appeared in all the episodic films of the Star Wars saga, so he get's a good send-off here.
Keri Russell is also pretty good in her role as Zoril Bliss, who is an old acquaintance of Poe's and she ultimately ends up helping the resistance out with their mission (and yet again that's all I will say about that here!). Strangely however, we never actually even get to see Keri Russell's face in the film as she is always wearing her helmet and there is one brief moment where she opens her vistor so we can see her eyes and that's it!
Billy Dee Williams makes a welcome return to the Star Wars saga here again as Lando Calrissian, except he looks decidedly older of course than he did before (and a bit heavier lol!). Regardless however of his age, Billy Dee Williams still looks well, especially given that he is now 82 years old! At any rate, its good to see Billy back in Star Wars even if it does feel like they are trying to re-uinite the old gang at any cost!
Kelly Marie Tran does well enough in her role as Rose Tico, who befriended Finn in the Last Jedi and it appeared like there would be a blossoming romance. However, the romance it appears to have been stopped dead in its tracks by director JJ Abrahams as she has been largely sidelined here with very little to do in her role, which is in some ways not a bad thing as the alleged romance never went anywhere anyway between Finn and Rose.
Domhall Gleeson also does OK in his role as the weasly General Hux, a senior officer in the First Order, who has harboured much resentment over Kylo Ren in the previous films and continues that here.
Richard E. Grant also makes an appearnce here as General Pryde, who is a high ranking officer in the First Order and he is a pretty ruthless SoB it has to be said and appears to have the backbone to do what Hux probably can't. Again I won't say much more here about Grant's role except of course he is very good in it as Grant is in just about anything he does.
And last but not least is Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine and his is great once again in the role as he is pretty comfortable in it by now and he certainly revels in hamming up the evil Sith lord, who is out to regain his rule over the galaxy. And we learn a pretty big spoiler about Palplatine's connection to one of the characters here, which I will leave for another time and most likely in a revisitation of this post.
DIRECTOR
As for the direction, J.J. Abrahams returns to the helm here and for the most part he does a pretty good job as despite the film's fairly lengthy run-time of 2 hours and 22 minutes, it never really lags at any time. I would probably say there are times where J.J.'s pacing is just a bit too chaotic, especially at the start of the film where there is so much going on at the one time. That aside, J.J. knows how to handle action scenes and he get's some good, engaging performances from his cast and he does a solid job overall here (take that haters heh heh!).
MUSIC
Music wise of course we get one final score from the great John Williams, who thankfully is still around and its great to see him live to finish the scoring for all nine Star Wars films and he contributes a very fine one to end proceedings. The only thing however I would say about the score is that there is a lot of retreading of the old themes from the original trilogy, which feels like they are trying to pay a bit too much lip-service for the fans. That aside however, its just great to see Williams finish off the saga than someone fill in for him.
FLAWS
As for the flaws...yep OK I admit that The Rise of Skywalker isn't perfect however I don't really want to get into spoiler territory here so I will try and address a few issues by going into as little plot stuff as I can.
So, to start off, one of the issues I had to do with the film is that the start of it is way too chaotic as Abrahams has the audience thrown right into the action straight off with no let-up and then it jumps too quickly between its other storylines. And its here that the film feels really rushed in places with its structure and I felt like they should have slow the pacing down in the opening 30 minutes or so as it just a bit too overkill how it is.
WARNING: KIND OF SPOILER IN THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH BUT NOT A BIG ONE!
Another issue I had was to do with the idea of Rey's new force powers as she suddenly use the force to heal wounds and maybe bring people back from the dead! I mean that is some pretty powerful force stuff right there, which was never exhibited in any of the previous films! So, for me I felt like Rey's new ressurective powers, was a bit daft and its another way of the film maker trying slap on new ways in which the force can be used.
I also thought the reveal of the First Order spy in the film was also pretty stupid and I will not mention here who it was although I do admit that the reveal itself was fairly surprising and I didn't twig right away who it would be. In the end though, the whole First Order spy thing felt a bit uneccessary.
Also like I previously mentioned, there are times where the film tries to pay a bit too much lip-serve to the fans in its use of music from the previous films just in case you needed a reminder of things. As an example there is a moment where we see an X-Wing being lifted out of a swamp! Ring any bells on that one?! And yep of course John Williams music from Empire Strikes Back suddenly ramps up at that moment. So, yeah in those moments it all get's a bit trite and contrived and again it feels unnecessary for Abraham to keep prodding people into remember the greatest hits moments from the classic Star Wars films.
Then there is the whole idea of the force connection between Rey and Kylo, which to be honest is pretty stupid and no thanks to The Last Jedi, we still get that connection in this film. And without giving much a way there is one moment in the film where Kylo can essentially physically touch Rey using this connection and he is able to pinpoint here location through it! And I'm sorry but I have to say that the whole thing is basically a bunch of BS and shouldn't really have been included again here. Sadly the damage control for the whole virtual-physical-touch-over-millions-of-miles-away force power introduced by Rian flipping Johnson was overlooked here!
And last of all I think it would be safe to say as one Youtube reviewer said that the opening title scrawl for the film sucks! Yep, the opening scrawl is very badly written and it begins with perhaps the WORST opening line I have ever seen in any of the scrawls which is "THE DEAD SPEAKS!". WHAT???! Is that really the best you can come up with for an opening scrawl?! Sorry but again its a completely naff way to start off the title scrawl, which doesn't really get that much better as it carries on.
Anyway that's it for the flaws.
SUM UP
So, to sum up, the finale to the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker is actually a pretty entertaining, decent send-off to the main chapters of the franchise and while I agree that it is far from perfect, what I don't agree with is all the hate this film is currently getting as it feels pretty unwarranted. Its like people wanted to see the greatest film ever made and expected something much higher and mightier than this but in the end I do think this is a very decent worthy send-off for Disney's trilogy and it deserves a bit more credit than its been given so far.
So, while its no masterpiece, I still think The Rise of Skywalker is well worth a look.
Anyway so that's it for now and I would like to finish by wishing you all a Merry Christmas tomorrow and I will be back with another post or two soon before the year is out.
Till then its bye fer now.
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