Reports of the Skywalker Saga’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
By: Richard Lebeau
Tags: Review, Star Wars, Film, Movies, Culture

[Author’s Note: The following review does not reveal the major plot revelations nor the ending of the film. However, I highly recommend that you do not read this review until after you have seen the film — or have decided you will not.]

A super brief history of Star Wars

The original Star Wars trilogy — confusingly consisting of the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters in the saga — was released between 1977 and 1983. Despite having no bankable stars or characters, the first Star Wars (1977) became a huge commercial and critical success. It quickly became the highest grossing film of all time and was nominated for ten Academy Awards, of which it won six. The first sequel, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), was also a huge commercial hit and in retrospect is hailed as the greatest of the Star Wars films by many film critics and fans. The trilogy-ender The Return of the Jedi (1983) was less warmly received by critics, but still beloved by fans and hugely commercially successful.

A decade and a half after the original trilogy finished, George Lucas — the mastermind behind the Star Wars saga — decided to finally film the first, second, and third chapters as a new prequel trilogy. Buzz was deafening and the box office results were more than satisfactory. However, the films were largely derided by critics and disappointed many fans of the original trilogy. Some good will was restored by the fact that the three films gradually increased in quality with the finale The Revenge of the Sith (2005) actually getting some strong reviews.

In 2012, Lucas sold Star Wars and all of Lucasflim to Disney for $4 billion. Disney quickly went into high gear expanding the Star Wars universe creatively and commercially in ways that Lucas had never fully pursued. The primary focus was on creating a follow-up trilogy that would cover the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of the saga. It promised to reunite viewers with the original characters and set up new storylines, characters, and worlds. And indeed it did. The seventh chapter, The Force Awakens, was helmed by J.J. Abrams (best known for television’s Lost and Alias) and released in 2015 to audience relief, critical acclaim, and unprecedented box office. Within a couple of months, it became the highest grossing film of all time in the U.S. (unadjusted for inflation). Disney then released Rogue One, the first standalone theatrical Star Wars film, to more stunning box office and mostly warm reviews. But then came 2017’s The Last Jedi…

John Boyega and Oscar Isaac in a scene from “The Rise of Skywalker” (Copyright: Disney)

Why Episode IX was bound to breed divisiveness and disappointment

The fallout from the eighth chapter of the Star Wars saga is one of the most fascinating and infuriating pop culture stories of the past decade. Critics were enamored with The Last Jedi and it received the best reviews since the original trilogy (it has a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 85/100 Metacritic score). However, a subset of die hard Star Wars fans were enraged by the film, which was written and directed by Rian Johnson.

What did these fans hate about The Last Jedi? They hated the deviations in tone and structure from previous Star Wars movies. They hated the fact that key questions set up by the prior chapter either weren’t answered or weren’t answered in a way that they liked. They hated that Luke became an angry recluse (even though this is completely consistent with his character arc and the plot of the prior film). They hated the new characters, particularly the women. (Vehemently angry online trolls almost always have a heavy dose of misogyny in their rants.)

In a very questionable marketing move, Disney released the second standalone Star Wars film less than six month after the release of the very divisive Last Jedi. Solo was a prequel focused on the back story of Han Solo (the smuggler made famous by Harrison Ford in Episodes IV-VII). The film had a contentious production (the original directors were ousted midway and Ron Howard came in and finished it up). The mix of the bad press the production received, the loss of good will among some Star Wars fans from The Last Jedi, general Star Wars fatigue from releasing three movies in three years, and the riskiness of the premise (taking one of the saga’s most iconic characters and replacing them with another actor) contributed to Solo underperforming critically and commercially.