The Skywalker Saga Deserved Better

Rating: 4/10 (13 January 2020)

The Star Wars franchise under Disney has certainly been in a pretty rocky place as of late, and there hasn't been a more emblematic example of that than the Sequel Trilogy. The Force Awakens was a good, albeit not perfect, starting point for the trilogy, then there was The Last Jedi which was a flawed yet ambitious and overall fine film that greatly divided the fanbase. So, naturally, a lot was put on the shoulders of J. J. Abrams and company to bring the trilogy back home with at least a solid conclusion in The Rise of Skywalker, which was not only meant to end the Sequel Trilogy but also bring the Skywalker Saga to a close. And, as far as my consensus is concerned, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker did end the saga, but not in a satisfying way. In fact, I have to say that it's my least favorite film in the episodic Skywalker Saga overall. So, let's set S foils in attack position and talk about the letdown that was The Rise of Skywalker.
So, the plot, as we know it, is that Palpatine, the former evil Emperor played by Ian McDiarmid, who was once thought dead since Return of the Jedi, has come back and has some big plans for the galaxy that involves total domination and the eradication of the Resistance; it's up to Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and the Resistance to defeat the looming threat of Palpatine and the First Order led by Kylo Ren in the battle that will decide the ultimate fate of the galaxy.
There are positives that I can say about The Rise of Skywalker. First of all, the cast as a whole does very good; Daisy Ridley as Rey, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, and even Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine being the standouts.
The movie also has great visual direction going on. There's some good action here and there that also incorporate great effects; certainly not the best or most memorable in the franchise, but fun and well put-together nonetheless. However, the best moments for me that stick out are ones that actually don't involve lasers or lightsabers or starfighters or anything of the sort; it's the more dramatic moments, like where Ben Solo departs from the Dark Side after his mother Leia Organa dies trying to reach out to him and going back to a memory of his father Han Solo that's almost word-for-word the exchange between the father and son in TFA which all lead to his redemption in a pretty powerful scene. This is followed up by a great moment where Chewbacca just breaks down emotionally when he hears about Leia having passed on.
It's also nice to see Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, back despite his limited screen-time & presence, and it's even more nice that he doesn't die by the end of the movie like the three lead characters from the Original Trilogy so that's good for a change.
John Williams also does a great job with the score for the film, even though the most memorable bits of the soundtrack are motifs that we've heard from past entries in the series (no Duel of the Fates, though, which is pretty disappointing).
While there's quite a bit to like or to be entertained by in it, The Rise of Skywalker is still unfortunately a scatterbrained mess. Right from jump, you feel like you've missed out on some important events that occurred that the film just glosses over in order to move quickly along to the next set piece. While past Star Wars films have done that, like Revenge of the Sith throwing us right in the middle of some action after its opening crawl, it doesn't hurt the overall narrative because you can still pick up on some stuff without much trouble based on where a previous installment has left off (like how Attack of the Clones basically ends with the Clone Wars having begun and RotS taking us to one of the big battles in the Clone Wars where we see Anakin and Obi-Wan on a mission); whereas in the case of TRoS, there was nothing in The Last Jedi that indicated or even teased the return of Palpatine, which would be considered way too big a deal to gloss over considering the last time we saw of him in the saga chronologically, so such an event would just seem out of left-field. Also, Palpatine announces his return & threat to the whole galaxy so basically the plot of TRoS got kicked off by a dumb decision on the villain's part who could've just kept his mouth shut and his plan secret for just long enough to ensure some chance of victory.
The plot is basically a giant scavenger hunt for a Sith Wayfinder to get to Palpatine's HQ world Exegol, with characters constantly on the move from one thing to the next until the film reaches its big climax with very little room for proper development for the story and characters.
There's also an abuse of fake-outs in terms of certain characters in the film. Chewie gets captured which leads to a fake-out involving his apparent "death" and a detour in the plot just to keep the movie going. C-3PO gets reset, which causes a total memory wipe that's like a "death" for that character, but it's not treated seriously enough for it to even register and even then R2-D2 gives him his memory back so it's rendered totally pointless.
The dagger not only comes across like an unnecessary MacGuffin but also one that doesn't make sense as a MacGuffin especially when one considers that it's meant to point to where the 2nd Wayfinder is in the wreckage of the 2nd Death Star that's somehow still relatively intact after having been blown to smithereens in Return of the Jedi and lying in high-tide waters of Kef Bir for many years.
There's new characters who just show up out of nowhere (i.e. Zorii Bliss, Jannah) who would be a lot more interesting if we had spent more time with them in the trilogy as opposed to having introduced to them in what is supposed to be the final chapter of the Skywalker Saga.
The last 30 minutes are greatly disappointing, from the obvious Avengers: Endgame similarities, to Rey deflecting Force lightning back at Palpatine, which kills him, with just 2 lightsabers even though said lightning was powerful enough to take down the entire Resistance fleet, to Ben Solo, a Skywalker, not being able to at least take part in helping Rey kill Palpatine and simply dying after resuscitating Rey via the Force, and especially to Rey taking the Skywalker name even though it goes against the film's themes of being proud of where you come from and how it would've been much more poetic if she just kept her Palpatine name and go on to go against her grandpa by turning the Palpatine legacy into one for good as a middle finger to him. But, oh well, I guess.
The movie's story is not only rushed in execution despite how solid it may be in theory, but it also feels like "damage control" for The Last Jedi. General Hux is revealed to be a spy giving info to the Resistance only to be killed by a new villain, General Pryde, as part of said "damage control." Holdo's hyperspace maneuver in TLJ? Retconned as "one in a million." Rey coming from nobodies according to Kylo Ren in TLJ? Retconned to her being a Palpatine (Yep, she's Sheev Palpatine's granddaughter, which explains why she's so powerful despite not having gone through much training to gain such power), even though it totally contradicts with Kylo saying how he never lied to her. Snoke being killed off without much backstory in TLJ due to being a key stepping stone for Kylo's rise to power which was already fine as is? Snoke turned out to be created by Palpatine the whole time; ergo, Palpatine was ultimately responsible for Kylo Ren via a pretty convoluted way. Luke's Ghost acknowledging that he was wrong and pointing out how a Jedi weapon should be treated with more respect are organic in the context of the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy, but they still feel like jabs at the story decisions made in TLJ. Such jabs at other people's work makes the Sequel Trilogy not seem like a unified, cohesive whole, and that's not good storytelling. At least the Prequel Trilogy seemed like it was all planned out by George Lucas before he even started shooting Episode I and it was all a consistent vision; the PT wasn't the most well-executed bunch of films, but it at least had consistency in retrospective and seemed planned-out, attributes that the Sequel Trilogy is sadly mired for not having. However, Leia having had training does help fix some of TLJ's issues.
You also get a sense in this movie, more than TFA and TLJ, that the Sequel Trilogy wasn't created with a set plan/road-map in mind other than to make big bucks at the box office for Disney and Lucasfilm. Abrams set up plot threads that were left open for the next film to follow up on, then Rian Johnson decided to have TLJ go in directions with said threads that were radically different from what Abrams probably had in mind. So, with TRoS, Abrams had to follow up on the previous films in a way that would make the trilogy seem somewhat coherent as a whole and, as far as I'm concerned, he didn't succeed in that. As far as I'm concerned, a theoretical Episode IX that found a middle ground between satisfying what TFA had going on and what TLJ had going on could've been what we got without needing to bring Palpatine back, without retconning Rey from being the child of nobodies to Palpatine's granddaughter, without making Snoke Palpatine's weird Frankenstein-esque creation, without being so blatant about taking jabs at TLJ. But, it's not to be now.
When it's all said and done, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a greatly-disappointing finale to the epic Skywalker Saga. It's a watchable movie with great performances, good action and some pretty good dramatic moments/scenes that are pretty effective on their own, but all that isn't enough to make up for how convoluted and even kinda nonsensical the plot is. The Sequel Trilogy will now stand as a prime example of how not to plan out an overarching storyline. And, it's a shame, too, because Star Wars deserves better than a trilogy that was made without a road-map and I sure hope Lucasfilm really learns from this mistake.