As a Starwars fan and movie lover

Rating: 4/10 (22 December 2019)

Coming up to this movie I did not want to go in with any preconceived ideas about the film. I tend to try to watch a film to enjoy it, learn from it and to be taken away by it. So to do that I made sure to not know anything, no trailers, no interviews, no casting list or disposition. I wanted to watch the film as it is and enjoy it based only on what has already been established in previous films in the trilogy. Now, with that being said... I found Star Wars IX: - The Rise of Skywalker to not only be a bad finally of the trilogy from a story perspective but also a badly made film as a whole. Why? From a movie standpoint I found the structure and pacing of the film to be majorly flawed as it failed to organize itself. To enjoy a film you need to let it take you on its journey and to be able to do that it needs to let you do it. As many have already said in their own reviews, it takes about 30 minutes to get into what is happening and get some sort of grip of the situation and that is just because so much is happening. A lot more than necessary. In the first 15 min, we get to see, meet and discover more new places, scenarios and characters in quick succession and it is hard to "get on the ride" and you are instead dispelled from the whole experience. The insensible shift from fast and eventful to slow and emotional is so back and forth throughout the film so if you manage to start to get into it, you are shortly thrown off again which only makes it a hassle to watch. This is despite the fact that you are measly aware that there is a conflict between good and evil at play and who belong to which team. However, despite this you don't get the opportunity to get a feel of were these characters really are in that war and you are taken aback at certain moments because of this. The reason why I found this to be the case is simply do to the directors and screenwriters attempting to cram as much as possible into the film which then turned out to be an impossible task. The shoddy dialog doesn't help either, with characters constantly handing out flat punchlines and old references which in the moment only makes them seem disconnected to what is Infront of them and you are once again thrown of the horse. The movie also doesn't seem to follow a cohesive logic as it also shift back and forth between what kind of theme it wants to establish, is it a conflict of morals? A classic fight between good and evil? A character journey? An adventure? A successor story? A great film would manage to have all of these things going for it at the same time, don't get me wrong, but there are too many elements which muddies the water which then makes you ask yourself... was that even worth having in the film? The answer to that question is more often than not... no... it should have been slimed down or played a more discreet role in service of something more defining. The only redeeming thing about the film is that it gave answers to many questions which you wanted to get an answer to but those questions mostly appeared in the previous two films which again perhaps would have been better served to be answered more appropriately then and there. Something you also need to think about is who is the movie for? And that is something the movie also doesn't seem to know. Is It for new fans? Old fans? Regular movie lovers? Or all of them? In any case I believe the movie is best suited for those who are only interested in the visual and a surface level experience and to those people I'd say you'll definitely say that it is enjoyable but not rewarding. You will not take this movie with you and probably not want to watch it again and that to me says more than enough of the quality of the film and the trilogy as a whole.