There will be a spoiler section at the end of the review this is where i will go into issues that i have with the film which i can not talk about without spoiling the film.
The Sequel trilogy for Star Wars has been a mixed bag, The Force Awakens is a good start too the new trilogy but felt way to much like a New Hope which holds the film back from being great, The Last Jedi tried to subvert peoples expectations but some of the plot points just fall flat and are really bad but in appreciate it tired to do something new, all The Rise of Skywalker had to do was land this rough journey, instead it crashed and exploded on landing. The Rise of Skywalker feels like a well made fan project instead of an actual Star Wars film.
I’m going to start with the positives which are few and far between. It’s a well shot movie, there’s some beautiful scenes of planets and ships that are simply stunning but I also feel that the best shots in the film are cgi heavy. The acting is good, there’s not a single bad performance and no one feels like there just doing it for the pay check. The soundtrack was good but the highlights where the soundtrack stands out the songs are from the original films and not new tracks which is disappointing.
Now on to every thing I didn’t like. Let’s start with the least offensive moving onto the most offensive. This film acts like The Last Jedi never happened, they retconned many plot and character elements introduced in The Last Jedi clearly so J.J. Abrams can do what he wants to do and in my opinion clearly to please fans who didn’t like The Last Jedi, to me however it feels cheap and lazy. The Rise of Skywalker would have been a much more interesting if it was a sequel to The Last Jedi rather than a sequel to the Force Awakens.
The action scenes are just not engaging and to me extremely boring, the original trilogy didn’t have amazing action scenes and the prequels had awesome fight scenes but they are a bit over choreographed, compared to this film the action just doesn’t work. It doesn’t help that Rey feels overpowered, she never struggles or is hurt badly in fights, there’s times where characters shoot and kill stormtroopers who are off screen and its confusing as we don’t have an establishing shot showing where the stormtroopers are. The lightsaber fights are boring the best thing about one of them is what is going on in the background. To me the worst thing action can be is boring which is what the action in this film is.
Most of the characters are just not interesting, Rey is maybe the single worst character in along time, like I said before she never struggles or is hurt, she is just overpowered and knows things that she shouldn’t know as the characters who teach her don’t know the abilities, there’s more to Rey which I hate but they are spoiler related so I will talk about them later. Finn feels like a character that they don’t know what to do with and its very noticeable here as Finn’s character does a complete 180 from the last Jedi, Poe is just Poe just throwing quips and being a side kick.
There are some moments of fan service that are just in your face and feels pathetic, there is a legit scene from the original trilogy somewhat recreated in this film with the same music and everything without spoiling what the scene in The Rise of Skywalker is, all I will say is that they recreate the scene where Yoda lifts the X-Wing out of the swap from the Empire Strikes Back, there’s also a fan service fix/node to a New Hope which didn’t need to be in the film.
The Film is really repetitive in terms of structure, the film goes we have to go a certain location to find an important item then repeat. This happens like 3 or 4 times throughout the entire 2 hours and 20 minute this film runs for. Speaking of the running time the film could have been restricted to 2 hours and not missed many story beats, also there is many plot moments that happen only to be reversed moments later which is frustrating. Theres also more plot points that I feel are so dumb that they are laugh out loud funny but their spoiler related so there will be more details about those moments in the spoiler section.
Why is the Emperor in this film, he is just brought back and he completely ruins the film, it feels his involvement was a break glass in case of emergency moment and I hated it, he doesn’t fit in the movie and his resurrection ruins Anakin’s arc from the first 6 movies. I feel like he was only brought back so we could have a intimidating villain that Star Wars fans know, like and also to make sure that Kylo Ren isn’t the big bad of the film which to me would have been the better route to go as Kylo Ren is the best part of this new trilogy but instead they went the lazy route and brought back the Emperor.
I really didn’t like this film. I feel like this isn’t a good movie in any way shape or form and just feels like a cash in. Im slowly starting to get fed up of Star Wars, so much so that I don’t want any more movies and I really want to see where Star Wars goes on the television side of things with Disney Plus. To me this film Is just as bad as the prequels (not going to say worse than any of them as haven’t rewatched the prequels) and to me that’s a shame as I love star wars and I was bitterly disappointed with the lack of a clear direction the story took.
Warning Below there is Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker please read if you’ve seen the film or don’t care about spoilers.
Spolier Section
Rey is a Palpatine, she is the Emperors grand daughter and i’m thinking when did the Emperor have a child. This is the worst retcon in the entire film. For her to be a Palpatine it would mean at some point during the saga Palpatine would have had been in a relationship that resulted in a child being made. The best part of The Last Jedi is they say Rey was a nobody and I loved that. It brought back the idea that anyone can be good force user and it stopped linking everything back to characters from the original trilogy but J.J. Abrams had different plans and it’s a change that just doesn’t work.
When Rey used force lightening it was cool I guess but I thought you would have to learn that rather than just getting really angry can cause it to appear. The final line of the film is Rey stating she is Rey Skywalker which caused me to burst into laugher when that line was said. I suppose she could be saying that as the Skywalker name is symbolic to good and hope and that she is winning over the dark side that her named linage has but who knows.
Lets also talk about the Emperors plan, which is to invade the galaxy with a fleet he calls the Final Order, which yes I did laugh at that to, the fleet is a bunch of Star Destroys that contain Death Star levels of destruction like legit a Star Destroyer blows up a planet in this movie and to me it ruins the importance of the Death Star if a Star Destroyer can have the same level of fire power.
There is two moments that something important happens only to be reversed moments later those being when Rey thinks she killed Chewbacca only to be revealed that he is alive and when C-3PO loses his memory only for R2-D2 to reload a back up of his memory but in the film they state that R2-D2’s memory back ups don’t always work so its annoying when C-3PO makes the sacrifice to lose his memory so that the main character can get the info they need only for it to be reversed moments later in a moment of humour.