A reprehensible surrender to the worst fans; also a fundamentally boring film

Rating: 1/10 (1 January 2020)

How one feels about The Last Jedi (the best Star Wars film) is going to greatly color what one thinks about this film. The film does everything it could to try to undermine that far, far superior film. In doing so this film undermines the entire series AND is just boring on its own merits. Johnson made a certain set of choices-largely around Rey's story-that should either been left alone or Disney should have insisted that Johnson make the choices Abrams does here. If Rey's parents were revealed to be "special" in TLJ it would have been lame but structurally correct in the trilogy. That so much of Rise is built around revealing who Rey's *real* parents were the film ends up treading water. That issue was resolved. The resolution that Johnson selected was utterly brilliant-why on earth must everyone be related? Abrams' retcon is unneeded, uninteresting and in this zeitgeist abhorrent. To insist that a hero must have special blood is disgusting especially given that the country is dealing with a resurgent far right. The script twist itself into pretzels to try to satisfy as many fan theories as possible; Rey ends up as sort of the offspring of two powerful families, including being in a way a Skywalker. All this film does is turn Rey's story into Luke's. We have seen that. Can we *please* have something different?
The film's most basic issue is it is for "the fans." Not all fans mind you, just the loudest most unreasonable, oldest voices. You see this repeatedly in how the film sidelines the newer characters in favor of OT characters. It isn't Rey who saves Ben it is his mother. Lando saves the day, twice. Some of the fan service is hysterical and contra to just basic filmmaking. To wit a common complaint about TLJ was how Finn, Poe and Rey weren't together. Abrams, as quickly as possible, gets them together and proceeds to have them all in frame as much as possible. Some of the resulting compositions are ugly, a lot of awkward and virtually all are not needed in the scene. It is one thing to have the three characters together more; it is quite another to have them literally forced into as many shots as possible. This film places fans' desires in front of good taste and good story telling repeatedly.
The best and most laughable example of this is Chewie gets a medal. No one else does. And given that it is Maz that hands him it the whole thing comes across as a participation trophy for older fans that have spent decades nitpicking that story point from ANH. The medal means nothing in this story. Maz and Chewie have virtually no scenes together. They don't have a relationship. Chewie, in this film, didn't do anything uniquely heroic. It is pure fan service; it is a dreadful bit of fluffing. If you enjoy that sort of thing just write your own stuff - better yet hire a sex worker - and let professionals do their work.
Even if we ignore the overall context of the film this is just warmed over hash; I don't even understand how certain things happened because they made up the rules as they went along. The emperor is back. It is a mobile death star. Light saber battles happen. It is *mere* product. Abrams said on the press tour that fans don't like being told this stuff doesn't matter (this is a laughable reading of TLJ). He made a film that re-affirms that yes this stuff doesn't matter; it a mere thrill ride and a way to generate capital. Repetition becomes tropes which becomes cliches which renders stories dead and meaningless. Rise retreats into what Star Wars has always been with no novelty, no spark, no personality of its own. The film is undead, a zombie crafted from garbage parts.
It seems pointless to complain about technical aspect of this production but the Leia scenes are exceptionally stilted and the illusion that it isn't just patched together scraps of film does not work. Abrams recycling old footage to turn Leia into a cinematic zombie is far too apt of a metaphor for this film so at least the film has that irony going for it.
I am grateful this was the final film. It makes cutting it out of the canon easier. So Rey's parents were drunks.