We are what we grow beyond.

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2020)

Having witnessed TROS a week ago and realising that it required a moment to process, I went about re-watching its predecessors. I had never really registered the prequels as anything more than schlocky fun, but putting myself into the shoes of ardent fans waiting with baited breath at the turn of the century, TPM becomes more than just a disappointment. The political discourse aims for complexity but its conflicts are resolved with laser swords, the dialogue's delivery gives a fresh meaning to the word monotone, the ethnic stereotypes are at best irritating, and the visual effects are downright ugly. While the podracing sequence has aged relatively well, it's symptomatic of another issue - whoever thought it was a good idea to devote an entire third of Vader's origin story to his dopey pre-teen self? No matter his midichlorian count, the plot itself is inconsequential; the galaxy lies in precarious balance between the light side and the dark, but here he is playing with action figures.
Then there was AOTC, with its messy concoction of teenage angst and a side of detective mystery, in which George Lucas learnt to address his critics by throwing more lightsabers at the screen. ROTS is admittedly the best of a sour bunch, partly because it always had the benefit of Vader being the eventual end of its path. Whilst clumsy overall, you can't really mess up the reveal of the iconic mask with Williams' Imperial March on your side. But think again: what was the audience's favourite moment from Rogue One? The origin of the topsy turvy direction of this sequel series lies with JJ Abrams himself, who, with a completely empty palette and the Big Mouse's blessing to blast off into a new era, decided to press the reset button instead. Watching TFA again, it's little more than high budget fan-fiction, a glossy update of a galaxy far, far away, and yet so strangely familiar. The film emblazoned what we recognise as Abrams' trademark blockbuster stamp: zippy, lighter-than-air dialogue, zippier action sequences with sparks and explosions galore that never seem to kill anyone of importance, and a decidedly unpretentious giddiness in unveiling the fact that the Star Wars universe was returning to the big screen once more. And at the time, in the naive, innocent epoch of 2015, that was enough.
Oh, my sweet summer child. But who could blame us? We were just glad that the path ahead was course-correcting, that we could forget about Hayden Christiansen's pickup lines, that Star Wars, yes, the real Star Wars, was back. It didn't matter that we were circling back to the days of the Jedi order, even after Lucas' unintentional highlighting of the code's inherent hypocrisy and megalomania. Every Abrams misstep in Episode 7 is exacerbated in TROS, but it all began with TLJ. In more ways than one it is the Empire of the new trilogy; provocative in asking deeper questions of the franchise's status quo, transformative in its tonal shift away from the genre film. I had somehow mistakenly remembered Del Toro's character achieving redemption by coming to the rescue of Finn and Rose aboard the ship, as if I didn't trust the most popular film franchise of all time to be a little braver with its morality. But no, he sells them out, takes the money and runs, leaving behind his realpolitik take on all these wars in the stars, "They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow. It's just business."
He's wrong, of course, but in the wake of the final episode it's frustrating to see these crumbs being dropped and not picked up again. On a literal level, Finn and Rose embody the many scattered citizens of the galaxy that are just waiting for the call to rise up and rebel against evil. That's why Rey receives the necklace from a child on Pasaana, and that's why Canto Bight happened - the Force is a currency for hope across the galaxy, and our protagonists are its messengers. There's an entire character devoted to this in Jannah, but instead of grounding the story, she's reduced to being a plot device to get Finn from point A to point B. Zora Bliss suffers a similar fate, her ongoing 'will they won't they' with Poe a larger priority than her actual grievances against the Empire. Lando miraculously emerges with an entire battalion of rebel starships ready to take on the Final Order, yet we're left scratching our heads at where they were when Leia last sent out a distress signal. The surprise reveal is especially pitiful in the wake of Endgame sticking its landing in that department, indicating that these moments need to be earned. Without any stakes, they're just a cheap, faceless deus ex machina. On a more philosophical level, DJ's not the first to point out that the light side of the force isn't as pure and virtuous as advertised. This was TLJ's sub-thesis and the first thing that everyone, myself included, latched upon. Rian Johnson sought to unshackle the franchise of the baggage that is the unquestionable reverence of the Jedi order and its mythos, going beyond the simple binary of blue = goodie and red = baddie.
You'd presume that after a prequel series which prioritised lightsaber choreography over moral nuance and intricate characterisation that audiences would appreciate this. But the fan response to Luke's midlife crisis and the resulting amendments in TROS confirm the worst: that Star Wars fans would rather bury their heads in the sand and remain hopelessly devoted to their nostalgia-infused memories than confront a newer, more complex age of storytelling. Their version of these films has Luke striding out like a hero, flipping around like geriatric Yoda, and wielding a minimum of four lightsabers. Lucas forgot that a battle is only as engaging as the clash of characters behind them. Compare of any of his incoherent glowstick brawls to Obi-Wan or Luke's last stand, the latter of which prioritises the culmination of an emotional arc over the physicality or choreography of the actual duel. We recognise the significance of the mentor confronting his mistakes and placing his newly-found faith in the next generation. Where's the intrigue in facing Darth Maul, or General Grievous? You can't stage a meaningful fight against an opponent whose sole appeal is in how menacing they appear or how many lightsabers they have.
But who cares about all that? Rey unlocked dual wield, baby! The climatic clash of TROS is pitched at a juvenile level, the auditory equivalent of the cavalry arriving at Geonosis, ripped straight out of every shounen manga ever. Abrams' insistence in necessitating this for Rey's triumph over Palpatine removes her agency and strips her victory of any individual achievement, advocating instead for a crowdfunded effort bolstered by figures she has no personal connection to. The connection personal for only the audience, and this is what the film sells. Again and again, Abrams favours fan gratification over storytelling. It's so blindingly obvious that he wanted to finish on the iconic duel sunset, and so he forcefully engineers the plot towards this conclusion at the cost of any thematic logic; Tatooine was what was holding Luke back from his hero's journey, and Leia's never even set foot on its sandy plains. The sum of it all resembles a laundry list of moments where the overhead 'clap now' sign flashes to the audience, ushering in cheers and whoops, as the characters breezily lightspeed skip to the next dot point.
The most egregious of these betrays the film's lack of confidence in its characterisation, in that no one can really be significant without a significant past. Its predecessors set up a neat duality between Rey and Kylo, the former having every reason to become jaded and bitter at the world after being abandoned by her parents, and the latter given every resource and opportunity to take on the mantle of the next Jedi Master. To take Kylo's story and transfer it over to Rey, and to have the source of that conflict be a strained connection to a character we thought long dead is both disappointing and expected of a franchise so obsessed with its own legacy. Abrams leans on the 'surprise!' factor of the Palpatine twist more than its repercussions, and in doing so invalidates Rey's genuine struggles with being nobody by taking the easy way out. Whoops, just kidding! You have to be a Skywalker or at the very least a Solo if you want to be anything more than a disposable background character. The film's opening hurtles at lightspeed, hoping that we don't think too hard about these developments, while the protagonists engage in what can only be described as a grotesque version of Sorkin's ping-pong dialogue. Let's not stop and breathe for a moment, and spend some time unpacking some of this subtext or growth.
The Rise of Skywalker reveals that Star Wars is going through an identity crisis. These films meant a great deal once, and they can mean a great deal today, but they can't be the same thing. The days of the space opera riffing off pulpy serials is over. Look at the Stormtrooper helmet; it's goofy, and the updated sheen of the new Disney renditions doesn't change that. Chewbacca is literally a tall British guy in a bear costume, roaring nonsense. Captain Phasma is given roughly the same screen time and agency as the legendary Boba Fett, but none of the reverence. No one has never aimed the criticisms of her character towards him, because there's nostalgia involved, and that means the stakes are personal. This kind of attachment isn't a bad thing - the open scrawl and fanfare transports us all to a galaxy we've cherished for decades, but nostalgia is fleeting in its comfort, and eventually the story must evolve. THAT was the essence of The Last Jedi, in the immortal words of Yoda. We are what they grow beyond. Burning the sacred Jedi texts doesn't mean erasing the past, but embracing its mistakes and learning from them in looking towards the future. The Rise of Skywalker is a regressive move. It runs in the opposite direction.