"I can't watch anymore."

Rating: 2/10 (28 December 2019)

Rise of Skywalker is the first bad Star Wars film, but it's one that I am so glad exists. Its very existence not only foreshadows the re-appraisal of the unfairly maligned prequels, but the re-appraisal of Colin Treverrow as a director. Everything I can gather from his filmography and interviews suggests he could make a better Saga conclusion as a short film than this wretched disaster.
If you think this is going to be an evisceration of Disney or Rian Johnson or Last Jedi, I hate to tell you that I like all of those things. Last Jedi wasn't great, but I'm not gonna act like it was some awful film made by a hack either. It was an undeniably ambitious film. Not great, far from perfect, but decent.
Even as someone who didn't love Last Jedi, comparing it to this makes me sad. In fact, I feel dirty comparing this laughable, corporate and downright morally putrid video game to any Star Wars film. I previously compared it to Jason Goes to Hell, but that film has so much more charm and good intent than this.
Battlefield Earth?
Pfft, absolutely not.
That film is hilarious and made by people who were actually trying. It's a million times more entertaining than this one. It also had better performances and effects. Travolta and Whitaker also had way more chemistry than Ridley and Driver.
The "I don't care" level acting performances, horrendous-but-expensive looking CGI and surprisingly bad production values at points feels more comparable to something like Justice League or The Last Airbender.
You know what?
Comparing it to a video game would be unfair as well. I can at least have fun with bad games. The only person (and I mean the only person) who gave a damn was Ian McDiarmid, decked out in makeup that looks worse than the one from the no-budget YouTube Vader fan film that everyone hated for some reason. The only other compliment I can give it is that it boasts some inventive and slightly riveting action scenes. Just wait to watch those on YouTube.
Kylo Ren is not interesting. I am sorry, but he's not. He could have been a great Saturday Morning Cartoon villain, but he's instead a boring antihero who isn't relatable or even complex in any way. Rey does not have one single, solitary reason to love him. They don't have a childhood friendship, he called her nothing, he used and manipulated her.
Rey was only interesting to me in Last Jedi, so I'm really happy that this film strips all of her complexities and vulnerabilities to turn her into the 1 dimensional caricature of a heroine she is here. I considered leaving the theater when she practically gets praised as the greatest Jedi who ever lived. I never thought I'd see a Star Wars film weirdly supportive of an Ayn Randian world view, but here we are, friends.
Their kiss brought back memories of Ray Liotta and Leelee Sobieski's makeout session from In The Name of the King and I think that speaks for itself. They have the chemistry of 2 piles of horse manure.
You know how the whole internet lost their minds when Rian Johnson made Luke a fallible hero and everyone said it was disgraceful to his legacy? It wasn't. I can say this confidently given this film is actually disgraceful to Anakin's legacy. The hopeful and compassionate slave boy from Tatooine dies solely to delay the death of everything he ever cared about. Make all the analogies you want to what happened to the franchise here.
This film is as progressive as a 90s Turner cartoon with significantly less charm. It's what Avengers: Endgame would look like with no character development or investment or soul and if it were directed and written by Rolland Emmerich.