Lucasfilm's Low Ground

Rating: 4/10 (21 April 2020)

The Rise of Skywalker is a fascinating movie. It never ceases to amaze me how the pivotal final chapter of the franchise that changed Hollywood could turn out to be a 2 hour and 22 minute slice of bloated mediocrity. It tries so hard to be inoffensive that it is ends up offending a lot of people. For every single retcon of the much-maligned "The Last Jedi" to get the fans back on their side, there is an equally forced plot point that seems to have been put in there to divide everyone again. The plot is both strangely simple and needlessly complex. The film even manages the rare feat of feeling both overstuffed and overlong, an achievement I haven't seen since 2016's "Batman v Superman". It's an interesting film; but for all the wrong reasons.
The plot is, in essence, simple: Emperor Palpatine has returned from the dead (somehow, after getting thrown down a shaft, exploding and then having the shaft explode) and has made an Armada of shiny new Star Destroyers with Death Star Lasers, and it's up to Rey and Co to find their way to his top secret planet and defeat him. Simple, right? Well, no. Not only is the setup of this rushed, but everything is delivered at such a breakneck pace that you're not given any time to process things like character or motivation. The bland heroes of this Trilogy just jump from one scene to the next, as if the script simply stated "Exit, pursued by the First Order" at the end of each plot development. Plus, the plot is moving so fast that Abrams throws in a macguffin that leads to another macguffin that leads to Palpatine in order to get the film past the 2 hour mark. It's a complete mess, marked with significant plot developments that are reversed mere minutes later (oh no, Chewbacca's dead! Oh no, he was just on another ship. Oh no, C-3P0's memory has been wip- no, R2-D2 backed it up). There are no stakes, no reasons to be invested in the characters, no real surprises, just meaningless jumps to visually unimpressive locations.
It all builds up to a mixed third act, jumping between a so-so space battle and an absolutely pitiful confrontation between Rey, Ben and ol' Papa Palps. The ending is rushed and anticlimactic (I'm sorry, Rey's a Palpatine, not a Skywalker), and when the credits rolled, one thought crossed my mind- "Is that it?"
There is some good stuff. Despite some shoddy green screening here and there, the special effects are top notch. There are some excellent moments- I'd even call the arrival of the fleet the best moment of the Trilogy if it wasn't so suspiciously similar to Endgame- and Adam Driver shines as Kylo Ren despite the shoddy writing. However, this doesn't disguise the film's flaws: the fights are poorly choreographed and uninspired, the characters are two dimensional at best, and the whole thing feels like a trailer for the new, hyper-commercialised filler that is Disney's Star Wars. It's more of a sad reflection not just on the wasted potential of this Trilogy, but on the defacement of the past 6 films that set Star Wars apart (I love the Prequels, so there). If this Trilogy had been completely planned, we might have had something special. Instead, all we got was a studio making stuff up as it went along, and a botched, rushed, soulless and ultimately forgettable final chapter in a franchise that deserved so much more.