Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker Review

Rating: 5/10 (26 December 2019)

I've always been a fan of Star Wars. The Original Trilogy is almost perfect and the Prequels are hilariously bad but the Sequel Trilogy has been pretty mediocre so far. So how does this final film wrap up the ENTIRE Skywalker Saga? Meh, very messy and mostly disappointing. If you like fan service or huge battles then you will probably love this but I was looking for a good story with good characters and the film mostly doesn't deliver on that level. The only new character I liked that has been consistently good throughout the entire trilogy is Kylo Ren. He is the only new character to go through an actual arc throughout the trilogy about who he is while the others haven't really gone through one. Finn had one in the first film but that was completely abandoned by this film. Rey and Poe haven't gone through any arc but I like Poe as a character more than Rey. The Original Trilogy characters are fine. They already completed their arcs and are here to help these new characters but I have a problem with one of them, Palpatine. Although I enjoyed his presence and Ian McDiarmid did a great job as usual, he really doesn't serve any purpose to the story other than to be there. It feels like a last minute decision to throw him into the film and I felt that this wasn't their original goal. Leia's presence was awkward in a few places but I can't fault the film for that because they did the best they could out of a bad situation. The new characters for this film only weren't that good either. They were introduced, used for the characters to get out of a situation or get into something and then were abandoned until the end. They really weren't fleshed out a lot and felt useless. The first hour of the film was incredibly clumsy, messy, and at some points confusing. The film slowly got better as time went along but it didn't get that much better. The first hour is our group of heros hopping from planet to planet and delivering exposition. That's it. The editing was really choppy and quick along with the transitions. Some scenes would switch to another character for a minute or less and then hop back to our core three characters. It felt awkward and very rushed which completely destroyed the pacing for the rest of the film because the rest of the film has much slower pacing. The film tries to fit a LOT of information into its 2 and a half hour runtime where it feels like the film should have been 3 and a half or 4 hours to fit all this information. The film introduced a new force power that was stupid to me. It felt like the writers wrote themselves into a corner and used this new force ability as a way to get out. The final climactic battle was kinda cool but it wasn't that impressive to me. In fact, most of the action wasn't that special compared to some of the other action scenes in the other films. The battle between Rey and Kylo over the ocean was kinda cool but most of the other action scenes felt uninspired. The acting for the most part was pretty great. Adam Driver did a great job and so did the Original Trilogy characters. Although I wasn't a big fan of their characters, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Issac did a pretty good job. As always, the music by John Williams is fantastic. This man can never screw up Star Wars music. The visuals are pretty great also. The planets looked great and so did the ships and action sequences. Some of the alien creatures were practical which I felt was a really nice touch. I really enjoyed and appreciated some of the fan service moments. I won't spoil any of them for you but I had a smile on my face when those moments happened. Overall, The Rise of Skywalker is a disappointing ending to the Skywalker Saga with choppy editing, transitions, uninspired action, and rushed story but retains its good acting, visuals, and music with some good fan service moments to leave viewers happy.