Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: “Long Have I Waited” For A Good One

SPOILERS

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Star Wars: Episode IX-The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams): *** ½

The Rise of Skywalker is the first Disney Star Wars to live up to the franchise’s name.  Rushed and convoluted, the picture feels the burden of being the eleventh work in the saga.  Still, it resolves story and character conflicts that have been set up over four decades admirably.  Skywalker is creepy, inspired, and thoughtful, while contributing a fresh vision of morality to this galaxy.

The picture starts with the return of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).  He reveals he’s responsible for the creation of the First Order to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).  He then asks Kylo to become his apprentice, kill Rey (Daisy Ridley), and rule the universe.  

While not an original choice of antagonist, Palpatine is welcome.  His mental scheming in the Prequels was delightful, and his ability to vanquish enemies without lifting a weapon made him scary.  With McDiarmid relishing his reprisal of the role, Palpatine conveys frightening awe.  He creates stakes, bringing a desire to see him defeated since his terror is tangible unlike the thinly written Snoke (Andy Serkis).

Palpatine also provides a spark to director J.J. Abrams’ filmmaking, allowing Abrams to manufacture the saga’s creepiest images since Irving Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back and the franchise’s tensest sequences since George Lucas’ Revenge of the Sith.  The thunder-lit, rain-soaked, ghoulish design of Palpatine’s decaying Sith palace lends an uneasy vibe; it is echoed by C-3PO’s (Anthony Daniels) red eyes, a fallen foe’s bones, and the nightmarish vision of Rey wielding a double-bladed red lightsaber.  These unsettling qualities are matched by thrills.  A lateral tracking shot of Poe (Oscar Isaac) avoiding stormtroopers, cross-cutting that focuses on Rey readying to bring down a spaceship with just her body, and a slimy snake-like creature contemplating eating humans and droids are among the most absorbing and gripping events Star Wars has seen in a decade.

Abrams’ action doesn’t always tap into this suspenseful spirit.  He is too timidly prepared to capture the youthful rawness of Lucas’ original Star Wars.  Yet, combined with the need to keep track of so much story, he lacks the precision necessary to replicate the ruthless crispness of Lucas’ Revenge of the Sith.  Nevertheless, Abrams’ messy craftsmanship helps him avoid the sterile combat of Rian Johnson’s lifelessly polished Last Jedi.  At his worst, Abrams’ fights frustrate because of their randomness.  At his best, like in an early chase involving the Falcon fleeing Kylo’s armada or a long stretch in which Resistance fighters enter Kylo’s vessel, his action has a chaotic, organic, and sudden vibe that’s difficult to resist enjoying. 

Of course, someone needs to drive action.  Outside of Palpatine and Kylo, this film’s drivers are the Resistance’s heroes, who travel across the universe, fight Palpatine’s allies, evade capture, and retrieve information to stop him.  Some are familiar from past films, like Leia (Carrie Fisher), Lando (Billy Dee Williams), Poe, Finn (John Boyega), Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), R2-D2 (Jimmy Vee), Chewbacca (Joonas Suatamo), and BB-8; meanwhile, others are new faces, such as Zorri Bliss (Kerri Russell) and Jannah (Naomi Ackie). 

The core of Lando, Poe, Finn, C-3PO, BB-8, and Chewbacca receive the most attention; Skywalker tries to draw on their past experiences and bonds to make their final stand against Palpatine inspirational and dramatic.  Unfortunately, despite dialogue emphasizing their supposed friendship, the fact that they don’t share too much history or intimacy from the last two entries weighs on early scenes.  However, the cast’s talent takes over.  Williams, Isaac, Boyega, and Suatamo find chemistry.  Moreover, they do an impeccable job of conveying the desperation they live with as they watch their allies fall while also showing how such loss brings them together, how it fosters love.  But it’s Daniels as C-3PO who steals the show.  The funniest character in Star Wars is a constant joy, aiding and burdening his friends, yet revealing that underneath his cowardness is stunning courage, an inability to leave people whose goodness he senses even if he’s just known them for a day.  It’s impossible not to care for him or his friends, unthinkable not to root for them.

The group’s leader is Rey, who forms Skywalker’s moral center.  In The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, Rey’s ethical conflict was a moral vacuum.  She didn’t know who she was, so she didn’t know if she could be good.  Yet, despite her lack of identity creating a supposed internal crisis, the character only ever did the right thing, making it hard to feel her anguish.  In Skywalker, Kylo lets Rey know her lineage.  She finds out she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter.  In the shadow of Palpatine, Rey experiences a delirious tailspin, trying to do good, yet becoming so overwhelmed with anger and sadness that she often unleashes hell on those around her.  She’s not Luke from Richard Marquand’s Return of the Jedi, but Luke after he finds out Darth Vader is his father.  She’s Anakin after he sees his mother Shmi die in Attack of the Clones or senses his wife Padme’s demise in Revenge of the Sith.  And in the hands of a remarkable Ridley, who sculpts her body to convey all of her character’s fear, paralysis, and doubt, Rey’s descent into darkness is every bit as vexing as Luke’s fall in Cloud City or Anakin’s massacre of sand-people and slaying of Mace Windu.

However, instead of following Luke or Anakin’s footsteps, Rey forges her own path out of her dilemma.  When Luke’s belief in his and his father’s inherent goodness, a belief that led him to join a moral war he felt he wasn’t cut out for in Star Wars, cracked in Empire, he used his experiences as a Rebel to heal his and his father’s pain in Jedi.  The moments where he had done good, where he had relied on the Force to partake in minor actions and amazing feats that revealed he was capable of being the hero he always dreamt of, spurred Luke to remain good, rescue his father from evil, and eventually overcome the Emperor.  He sensed that if his father being a bad man meant he could not be purely good, then his good deeds meant his father could not be purely bad, a revelation that allowed for resilience in the face of adversity, for peace.

For Rey, her chaos means she cannot rely so much on her identity, her past acts, since she is unknown to herself.  Rey never idolized her parents; she never thought she could be someone.  Her kindness, compassion, remarkable adventures proved nothing to her about her goodness, about how she could live up to her heroic dreams because she never had them.  She feels the pull of her grandfather because she’s always found herself empty enough to consider being vicious and destructive. 

Yet, the finale of Skywalker suggests it’s the void inside Rey, the messiness, which can help her find a purpose, discover salvation.  While Last Jedi apologists will fret that the reveal of Palpatine and Rey’s link negates her status as a nobody, Rise of Skywalker affirms it.  She’s still Jakku’s scavenger, the girl who felt broken because her family left, the woman who had nobody and felt nothing.  Skywalker argues that these experiences, the distance from Palpatine’s power, are vital.  Rey’s life as an unknown, a nobody, is why she can choose to not to be her grandfather.  It’s why she can choose to be anyone.  Does she decide to remain a friend, a leader, a rebel, a Jedi, a believer in good or does she join Palpatine, embrace the terror she’s always felt, and succumb to the void?

This is a blockbuster, so it’s clear where Rey lands.  And yet, the peace she achieves doesn’t feel stale.  This is the first time someone has truly wrestled with good and evil on screen in Star Wars, felt the tug of both the light and dark side of the force, and chosen to be good, to live the right way.  In the sublime Prequel Trilogy, Anakin’s inability to reconcile the knowledge, discipline, and spirituality of the Jedi with their moral arrogance, blindness to the decay of the institutions they serve, and privileging of power over democracy transforms him from a sweet and innocent boy to Darth Vader.  While Vader eventually does the right thing in Return of the Jedi by saving his son from the Emperor’s wrath, he does so while sacrificing himself, thus he avoids living as a good man (this storyline is beautifully echoed in Skywalker as Leia implores Kylo to change).  The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi gestured at being about people who choose to live morally despite the torment such a decision can bring, yet both movies were so obsessed with providing comforting triumphs and rewards for the heroes that they made such ethical struggles weightless.

The Rise of Skywalker breaks from these films.  From the first second Rey appears till the last, she’s figuring out who she is, who she is afraid of becoming, and who she wants to be.  She causes suffering for others and herself.  However, much like how her friends continue to fight despite whatever darkness she leads them into, even with the many losses they suffer, and the demise they face, Rey holds onto doing right.  She perseveres into the light.  It’s a beautiful character arc, one that helps Skywalker add to Lucas’ creation while honoring it.  Outside of Rogue One’s ending, Rise of Skywalker is the first Disney Star Wars with a soul.