Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

There wasn’t too much riding on this one. Just deliver on the promise of two fantastically received films before it, overcome the bumpiest gestation of a Star Wars film since Solo, and perform its self-imposed task of wrapping up a nine-film saga over 42 years in the making, with the lowest-maintenance fanbase in the world, while tastefully navigating the untimely death of a key cast member three years before. No pressure. So, how did The Rise of Skywalker do?

Unlike the last two films, this felt to me a qualified success. At times, I was on a par with Richard E Grant, but this was in spite of a few niggles. So let’s delve into those first instead of the waxing lyrical about what a miracle it is that a film this extravagant, beautiful, exciting and funny even gets made.

My main bugbear is there from the start: Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). We knew from the trailer he’d be here. What I wasn’t expecting was the film would need him to be there right from the start. There’s no big reveal, unless we count the trailer itself, and that was only for our benefit.

Viewing the films chronologically, this man had been thought killed decades ago (a significant, symbolic death that brought about the redemption of Darth Vader, now slightly cheapened). The most powerful villain in the whole saga, back from the dead, but there’s no moment of horrified realisation for any of the characters (who will, at least, have heard the terrifying legends). The story needs him straight away, so we have to take it as read in the opening crawl that he’s back. What should be a huge shift for everyone in the film happens before it’s started, and it takes a while for us to get over this wrong-footing, in spite of the film’s best efforts to bring us aboard with confidence.

The Emperor is essentially here to fulfil the role of Snoke, who was himself fulfilling the role of the Emperor in the last two films before the exciting twist of his death in The Last Jedi. Presumably this was deemed a mis-step and a big villain to unite our antagonists was desired after all. Since Snoke only ever felt like the Emperor Mark II, maybe it made sense to replace him with Mark I. Except with the impact of his first appearance and his death in the Return of the Jedi now diminished, the Emperor Mark I now has about as much standing as if he were Mark II anyway. It feels one-note, which is not to diminish McDiarmid, who’s deliciously evil as ever, but where do you go from Return of the Jedi?

You go to Return of the Jedi again, it turns out, with the Emperor largely showing us his trick again. Forcing Rey (Daisy Ridley) to watch her friends struggle in battle is a direct lift, with even the motive the same, and no extra splash of colour from Sith mythology or even more Star Wars genealogy can quite shake that feeling.

Which brings me to my other issue: the reveal of Rey as Palpatine’s granddaughter. Quite apart from how it’s handled (compare the high-stakes, personal face-off of ‘I am your father’ to Rey learning her origins from Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who also happens to know; do we really feel this?), or the other, fussier questions this throws up (when did the Emperor have children? Does George Lucas now have to add a young Jodie Comer into the background of The Empire Strikes Back somewhere? Wait, how did the Emperor survive again?), it just feels like a climb-down. The twist gives Rey a more personal stake in the endless family dramas of this franchise, but when it reneges on The Last Jedi’s bold reveal that Rey’s parents were ‘no one’, in a film that championed the importance of ordinary people standing up, not just the space aristocracy, is it really worth it?

Where The Last Jedi made such brave choices, from killing the trilogy’s main villain a film early to making Rey’s parents no one of significance, The Rise of Skywalker backpedals to more comfortable places. It’s a fantastic, entertaining family adventure. But it feels very ‘safe’. The Force Awakens gave us a healthy dose of nostalgia with new, exciting elements thrown in. The Last Jedi started to question simple reverence of the past, and set us up for a showdown between Ren wanting to tear down all from before and Rey keeping a small flame of the past alive. The Rise of Skywalker…. well, given the history of this franchise, it’s not surprising nostalgia wins out. But in the end, we never even have the conversation.

So it is that we’re treated (and it is a treat) to an X-Wing rising triumphant from the water (same music as the corresponding moment in Empire), a trip to the remains of the Death Star (no, the second one), Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams, for a few whole minutes!) the twin suns of Tatooine (a beautiful final shot), and much, much more. Where The Last Jedi is sceptical of nostalgia, The Rise of Skywalker embraces it. And, as you’ll see, it won me over. But we never have that new, more interesting confrontation that we could have had. We end up back in The Force Awakens territory. And I love The Force Awakens. But we’ve been there before.

(While we’re on the subject of backtracking from The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose is side-lined throughout in a way that feels apologetic. Maybe Tran herself was happy to have a smaller role if it meant less abuse from ‘fans’, but I hope this wasn’t simply the filmmakers giving in to bullies. Never mind it robbing the vast majority who liked the last film of a satisfying conclusion to that character’s storyline; the message it sends is just plain wrong.)

We’re out of the dark, murky woods of my criticisms. Here’s a GIF to celebrate.

Where there’s little divergence from the previous films is, surprisingly, Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) role. Her absence is handled as well as it can be, and I can’t help but feel the way her story ends isn’t so different from what was planned from the very beginning. It seemed inevitable that Leia would set her son on the path to redemption, even if it’s done in slightly fewer beats than it might have been. But done it is, and Han’s (Harrison Ford) surprise reappearance cements it. The fatal father-son stand-off from The Force Awakens is re-staged and corrected, on the wreckage of the Death Star, from which Starkiller Base, the site of their last confrontation, was perverted (the past is embraced fully and wrongs are righted).

Another piece of continuity from the last two instalments in this trilogy: we have here yet another candidate for the funniest Star Wars film. Diminutive droid technician Babu Frik (voiced by Shirley Henderson) gradually generated hysterics in the audience when I went to see it, during an otherwise poignant scene of C-3PO’s (Anthony Daniels) memory wipe. Each re-appearance got its own cheer.

The relationships between all our leads sparkle and it makes for some great comic moments. My personal favourite was General Hux’s (Domhnall Gleeson) confession to Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac): ‘I’m the spy.’ ‘WHAT?!’ It’s a broad laugh that punctures all the grandeur you trick yourself into expecting after a childhood spent buying into the mythology of it all, even though fun is what the Star Wars films were always really about. (Incidentally, how fantastic to see Hux blasted down a corridor with the contempt he deserves. A boy playing at soldiers for the whole trilogy, finally overshadowed by a proper henchman in Richard E Grant, who I only wish we could have had in these for longer; he’s magnificent.)

And one more piece of continuity, not just from The Last Jedi but also successfully harking back to the first ever Star Wars, and to every classic film where the cavalry suddenly arrives. That wonderful moment, perhaps my favourite in the whole film, in the climactic battle when all hope seems lost, and Poe realises their calls for help have been answered after all. Lando comes in on the radio, Poe flies out and sees the sky teeming with spaceships of every shape and size, come to their rescue. What a shot. And an amazing counterpoint to the silhouetted fleet of Star Destroyers from earlier (JJ Abrams knows what to do with that shape).

Crucially, it’s the fruition of all the hope that was talked of in the last film, the hope that ordinary people would stand and fight for each other. As a First Order solider says, mystified, ‘They’re just… people.’ Star Wars has often struggled to hammer home the scale of the terrors it shows us in terms of just how many ordinary lives are touched by them. In The Force Awakens, we see a brief shot on the ground of a world of the Republic as it’s swept away. The Last Jedi went further, showing children inspired by stories of the struggle, even though they might feel removed from it. And here, no more Rebel Alliances and Resistances. Here, the Galaxy makes its voice heard, and it’s a cohesive, inspiring, glorious ending.

A fitting finale, then. And although my earlier niggles were still there in my brain when I left the cinema, so too was the rush of having been swept up in a fantastic adventure. Which, in the end, is all I really turned up for in the first place. The Rise of Skywalker may be seen as the weakest of these three Star Wars sequels, but in such a strong trilogy, there’s little shame in that.

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

The new Star Wars films continue to delight. I left the cinema feeling The Last Jedi was the best to come out of the franchise since The Empire Strikes Back, certainly the best to be made in my lifetime. Which isn’t to say I didn’t adore The Force Awakens. But The Last Jedi builds on its promise brilliantly, and where The Force Awakens needed to re-establish the old battle between good and evil, between the light and dark sides of the Force, The Last Jedi seeks to muddy the waters once again. It challenges the received wisdom that morals work in binary terms, as well as continuing this trilogy’s look at the relationship between one generation and the next. It also gives a compelling discussion of legends and their deceptive nature, but in the end acknowledges our need for them, our need for symbols, stories and heroes.

There’s a trend established at the film’s beginning of putting characters in pairs. Sisters Paige (Veronica Ngo) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) are linked, even when one dies, by their matching pendants. We also learn early on that Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) are wearing a tracking bracelet each, for Rey to find her way back to the Resistance. Characters often play out the action in twos as well – Finn (John Boyega) with Rose, Rey with Luke (Mark Hamill), and later with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Those last two couplings overlap, as Rey and Kylo Ren experience telepathic conversations across the stars while she trains with Luke; the binaries aren’t fixed, and nor are morals.

We saw the hints of moral conflict that have made Star Wars Star Wars in The Force Awakens, but those didn’t pervade the entire film. The Last Jedi takes what it has inherited and flies with it. The film is filled with twist upon twist as to whether we can count a character as trustworthy. Kylo Ren’s allegiances are in constant flux, tempting Rey into the First Order’s hands, only for him to betray his master Snoke (Andy Serkis), then turn to darkness again. With Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), we move from her impressive first speech in command of the Resistance fleet to frustration, despair and even suspicion at her apparent inaction, only to have ours and Poe’s (Oscar Isaac) doubts disproved, when she shows herself to be a hero as brave as any member of the Resistance. Our expectations are constantly thwarted, not least those of Luke, built up as an ancient hero, an all-powerful Jedi Master, in fact disillusioned, bitter – and fallible.

Luke holds his own legend in contempt, as well as the old symbolism of the Jedi. The film goes to great pains to challenge its characters’ faiths. When Rose first meets Finn, she knows him by reputation as a hero – someone she has placed her hopes in – and realises he is in fact running away from a desperate situation. It’s in part a misunderstanding (just like that which turns Ben Solo against Luke and creates Kylo Ren in the first place). Finn’s escaping for Rey’s sake, not purely out of cowardice, but it’s enough to shatter the image Rose has held of him before ever having met him. It takes time for this image to be reformed, and later surpassed.

The Last Jedi devotes a lot of effort to interrogating not just characters’ expectations but our own. Our own prejudices, even those first seeded by previous Star Wars films, are confronted throughout. The big mystery of Rey’s parentage is resolved – they were no one of note. In a franchise famed for its revelations of family ties, here the twist is that there is no twist at all.

On a more political note, we’re wrong-footed when Rose tells Finn their mission to find a codebreaker will take them to a place filled with the worst people in the galaxy. We naturally assume, from the franchise’s past, that it’ll be somewhere akin to Mos Eisley, a dank refuge of the underclass. It alerts us to a prejudice we didn’t know we had when we arrive at the Canto Bight casino, a haven of the superrich and an example of the new kinds of world the film introduces, where previous films have revisited and rehashed. Finn and Rose find assistance there not from the ‘master codebreaker’ they told to identify by an emblem on his clothing, but from DJ (Benicio Del Toro), a rougher, grimier character they meet in a jail cell. He later reveals wealthy arms traders at the casino have made their fortunes selling weapons to both the First Order and the Resistance. What does it say of anyone’s morality when both sides are provided for and manipulated by the same outside influence?

Increasingly, the grand picture of good against evil is rejected for a more complex, intricate and unpredictable tapestry of individuals with their own agency. It’s often communicated through challenging visual symbols we had been using to mark as good or evil. Captain Phasma, in her final moments, has her Stormtrooper helmet damaged. Just before she falls to her death, we glimpse the person beneath. It’s not just Finn who can break out from behind the veil. Similarly, Kylo Ren, admonished by Snoke, destroys his own mask in a rage. The youth who had so yearned to emulate previous generations in Darth Vader now seeks to demolish the past and carve his own path. When he and Rey destroy Anakin Skywalker’s iconic lightsabre in a struggle, we can see how the film, to a small extent, agrees with him.

Luke certainly does for a time too, albeit from his own perspective. One of his last acts in the film is to try burning down the tree where the sacred Jedi texts are kept, doing away with the physical relics and remnants of the religion once and for all. It takes Yoda’s (Frank Oz) intervention to show how his anger is misplaced – not in the sense that he should be protecting the texts, rather that he needn’t care for them one way or the other. And he does care – it’s made plain when Yoda destroys them himself, and Luke tries for a moment to save them. He places a disproportionate amount of value in the symbols of the past, and such zealotry for or against them achieves nothing. It’s ironic that the wisest old master of the original trilogy should be the one to teach Luke a moral against placing too much stock in the power of the old, and in favour of letting the young make their own way forward with what you leave behind for them.

This seems ultimately to be what the film believes, more or less. Symbols and legends cannot win a battle alone. But they can take you some of the way, not least in the hope they offer to keep you going. Rose’s pendant gives her hope. Han’s metal dice from the Millennium Falcon give hope to Leia in her darkest moment. What first encourages Luke to leave his life as a hermit and help Rey? R2-D2’s (Jimmy Vee) projection of Leia’s distress call, the one which started Luke, and us, on this journey in the original Star Wars. Symbols do matter.

And although it’s action, not symbolism, that wins the day, the film even offers moments when these emblems take on material value as well. Rose’s pendant comes into its own when DJ uses it as an electrical conductor to break through a lock. And Luke, who has so long condemned symbols for their deception, comes to embody all that is good in them when the Luke who has been confronting Kylo Ren is in fact a projection. But it has bought the Resistance the time they needed to escape. There’s something to be said even for illusions.

Anakin Skywalker’s lightsabre is broken in two, but at the end of the film, we see Rey has kept the remains – though it may not function anymore, it keeps some small value of its own. A small spark of hope in a symbol can be all that’s needed. It’s a point hammered home in the final scene, when children who have barely featured in the film are talking excitedly of their Resistance, inspired by their slimmest of encounters with our heroes at Canto Bight. A story, a legend, a spark of hope that lights the fire. A lone, nameless boy, as much a nobody as Rey, looks out to the stars. It may be his actions, and those of many others, that carry on the fight, but his first steps will be thanks to stories of before.

The Star Wars franchise started out with a film that was a traditional moral tale of good triumphing over evil. That over forty years later, this same franchise can attract enormous Hollywood audiences and still carry on that old battle while also championing greater nuance and complexity, questioning its own power as cinema and storytelling along the way, shows what a remarkable saga this really can be. The Last Jedi is a worthy entry indeed.