Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Film Review

Does Ripping Off The Return of The Jedi be considered Plagiarism if You Steal from The Same Franchise?

Ratings: 2 out of 5 Stars

Let me ask this question to you, my dear reader. How would you end a film franchise that has become a part of contemporary culture for forty-two years and has given us characters we have become fond of and quotable lines that have been uttered out of the mouths of politicians, scientists, rock stars and the everyday Jacks and Jill's? I would hope that you would give it a state of reverence, humility, some humbleness and some final bit of solemn inspiration. We, however, did not get that with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final film to a franchise that helped define a couple of generations to believe in hope and a better future even for only two hours as you watched these stories being unfolded before your eyes. Princess Leia, never a Mary Sue or some damsel in distress, showed young girls what it meant to be a leader, to fight your own battles, and at the same time accepting help when she needed it instead of slapping a man's hand away from her. She gave everyone respect as they gave here. She was the role model when we weren't looking for role models. Han Solo, the wayward rogue traveler who started off with no allegiance to anyone, became the scoundrel who became the love for Leia and the love for us as we saw him as this big brother who would watch our backs when needed. Luke Skywalker, the name would become synonymous with a hero, a reluctant hero at best, who was filled with questions, angst, and uncertainty as he navigated the world and religion of being a Jedi.


We had become to worship these three principals. They weren't perfect, they were flawed and we liked that about them. They made mistakes and accepted the consequences. So why didn't I feel anything with this film? To begin with, all Star Wars film begins with a slow crawl laying out the preamble to the film. This always sets the impact of what is destined to come. As the crawl proceeded, I didn't feel connected to the story one bit. I found this strange and a bit perplexing. Had The Last Jedi corrupted and damaged my expectations where I just resigned those feelings to a simple, MEH? And so it begins.

As this film unfolded, Kylo Ren is up there on the screen. There is something about him that's been off-putting from the very start of this last Disney Star Wars trilogy. I figured out what it was. Darth Vader, the OG, never took off his helmet except when he needed maintenance. Kylo took off his helmet in The Force Awakens and we saw his face. When we saw it, the first thing that comes to mind is, "Hey, that's Bob and Linda's kid. He's a nice boy." Kylo Ren isn't bad, he's just irritated. Kylo Ren was never the apex predator villain that Darth Vader had become. You never bought into the notion that he was this big bad villain. At best, he was the pimple on Darth Vader's ass if you were to put him on a scale from a pimple to 1 to 10. There was never any mystery to Kylo. They made him too accessible this millennial villain light.

As we walk down The Rise of Skywalker corridors, Palpatine is brought back into the equation. But Palpatine was last seen in The Return of The Jedi and he was literally cooked away. But why, you ask? The only thing I can think of was that they ran out of ideas so they resuscitated a guy who, by all accounts, should have remained dead because this story has journeyed into the abyss of taking plot points from The Return of The Jedi. We were unwitting fools taken on a ride of false fulfillment on Anakin's journey to redemption in The Return of The Jedi. But wait, The Rise of Skywalker is not done appropriating from The Return of The Jedi.

We get to hear more from Palpatine with him telling Rey to "strike him down" and "feeling her hatred grow". Didn't he say that to Luke in The Return of The Jedi? Why yes, yes he did. Luke finds out that Vader is his father in the Return of The Jedi. Rey finds out that Palpatine is her grandfather in Rise of the Skywalker. Palpatine warns Luke that the fleet is in danger in The Return of The Jedi so that Luke can strike him down in anger. Palpatine tells Rey that the fleet is in danger in Rise of The Skywalker so that Rey can strike him down in anger. In The Return of The Jedi, the smaller rebel fleet was up against a much larger fleet. In Rise of The Skywalker, the much smaller rebel fleet was up against a massive larger fleet. You see the pattern here? This is what film critic, Grace Randolph, described as embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing. Palpatine is no longer the menace he once was and comes off as mild and hyperbolic. Plus, how did he amass such a large fleet in those years he was underground? Who built them and where was the workforce and base of operations? Ugh, more questions and not enough answers to the important ones.

The leaks about the script, as reported by the YouTuber, Doomcock, (all hail Doomcock), were on the money. This was a bad thing, not for Doomcock but for Kathleen Kennedy and company because someone within Disney's corporation must have felt angry, betrayed, disappointed, conflicted about how J.J. Abrams was treating the final installment to Star Wars. The strange thing is that they did have compelling stories they should have explored but didn't.

Finn, the ex-stormtrooper, had a compelling and interesting back story that was never given any discovery to. Finn was taken from his parents as an infant and grew up in servitude under The Order. His main job under The Order was that of a FUCKING janitor. Can anyone see that one, there is a parallel with the semblance of slavery, two, the only job a black stormtrooper can attain is that of a janitor, and that, three, there are some racist undertones and stereotypes in telling this story? Why did they never explore any of that story to see what was the catalyst that turned Finn around? Was he so low on the Order's job duties that a droid was more important and couldn't do his janitorial tasks?

Speaking of Finn, what was it that he wanted to tell Rey? The one thing we were anticipating to hear was never brought back into play after being teased twice in The Rise of Skywalker. Where was this heading? What we got instead was Rey appropriating Luke's last name, one of the confirmed leaks by Doomcock.

We miss Carrie Fischer and her passing is still felt in Rise of The Skywalker. All of her scenes were from the cutting room floor from The Last Jedi and it showed. A body double was used for the behind the headshots and scenes where she was interacting with people were a bit stilted and came off as poor because you could see the inserting of Carrie in the scene and it looked off. Carrie was too much of a key figure to merely just be dropped in a scene and come off as a cardboard cutout. Many of her scenes feel like an afterthought. No explanation was given as to why the character, Leia, died. She calls out Ben's name and she drops dead. I guess they really couldn't do much with that but to show it as an unceremonious death.

J.J. Abrams has appropriated certain lines from other Star Wars film down to an art. This film is replete with them. He has revisited more from Return of The Jedi with this film than he did with A New Hope with Force Awakens. They paid this guy a lot of money to be this lazy. Embarrassing.

I know you have to suspend believe but sometimes the science isn't there and the feats they are doing just don't meet the laws of physics. Case in point, Finn and a resistance fighter have just leaped off a star destroyer and onto the hull of the Millennium Falcon. The ship takes off with them running across the hull with them not getting blown off. How is this possible? Don't think too hard, we're supposed to not ask any questions.

The Mary Sue that is Rey can leap over a fast-moving TIE fighter while slicing off one of its wings, She can also leap up from a star destroyer to the Millennium Falcon like Superman. Oh, and how is Kylo able to force project himself into Rey's surroundings and take things from her? None of this is explained yet we get explanations for some of the most trivial of things with the exposition. The important stuff, well, never mind. Finding the Sith dagger was just way too easy. The death star made nonoperational in the Return of The Jedi still had the power to open a door, the Emperor's chair was still intact and only a portion of the glass was broken out after crashing from space.

We get to see Dark Rey in a dark hooded robe with a nutcracker lightsaber. Now, where have I seen this before where we see our original hero facing off on himself in a dark cave? Yeah, right.

Kylo feels the passing of Leia and all of a sudden he finds his humanity as Rey is piercing him with his lightsaber. She, being the Mary Sue that she is, heals him and saves his life with The Force. Are we supposed to accept the redemption of Kylo Ren and he returns as Ben Solo? Like I said before, he never was an apex villain, to begin with. Han returns as a Force Ghost per Doomcock. Ben is forgiven for murdering his father. All of this is a build-up to Rey battling Palpatine, he uses his force, she uses her force, yada, yada, yada, Ben comes to her aid, he's thrown into a pit, yada, yada, yada, she gains the upper hand with Palpatine, he dies, she dies, Ben crawls out of the pit, he revives her with the Force, she kisses him, why, she saw him kill his father, he dies.

You would think that they would wrap up some of the dangling threads that they purposely approached in the telling of the Return of The Jedi, uh, I mean, The Rise of Skywalker. We got nothing. Disney paid $4 billion for this property. It was supposed to be a continuation of the original three heroes to this franchise. What did they do, treat them like the bastard red-headed kids and brushed them aside to the point where the stories were unrecoverable and corrupted and alienated the very fan base that made Star Wars this cultural phenomenon. The bloom for this rose is gone now. The memory of the first trilogy is frozen in carbonite for us to preserve and treasure. Goodbye old friend. Rest in peace.

Jumanji: The Next Level — Film Review

Where in The World is The Second Act?

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Credited cast:

Karen Gillan … Martha

Dwayne Johnson … Eddie/Spencer

Madison Iseman … Young Bethany

Jack Black … Bethany / Fridge

Ashley Scott … Ashley

Danny DeVito … Eddie

Colin Hanks … Young Alex

Awkwafina … Ming

Kevin Hart … Milo / Fridge

Nick Jonas … Alex

Alex Wolff … Young Spencer

Rhys Darby … Nigel

Dania Ramirez … Flame

Danny Glover … Milo

Ser’Darius Blain … Young Fridge

Well, the holiday movie season is upon us. The studios are slowly rolling out their respective tent-pole movies with baited anticipation of visions of bountiful box-office revenue. I would say, not so fast. One of those highly anticipated holiday films that have been released is Jumanji: The Next Level. It is the followup to Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, a re-imagining to the original Jumanji that came out on December 15, 1995, and starred the late great Robin Williams. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle was a fun movie and a financial success that made in the USA: $404,540,171 on a reported $90,000,000 budget. With those types of numbers, a sequel would eventually come to fruition and it has. So how does the sequel fare?

It’s an aggravatingly slow burn that redeems itself in the third act. As the film opens up, we find that Spencer is working at some retail store as a stock clerk who is lost in his own dark and gloomy future. He has isolated himself from his friends and home life is just as dreary as we are introduced to a new character, Eddie, played by Danny DeVito, as Spencer’s bitter and curmudgeonly grandfather. Eddie is sullen and angry at the world but we don’t understand why at this point. We assume that he has to live with his daughter because he is old and has to have someone watch over him. But soon we are being introduced to another new character to the sequel and that person is Milo, played by Danny Glover, Eddie’s former restaurant partner in earlier times. Milo has one blaring character feature or, depending on your point of view, character flaw, and that is, as Jerry Seinfeld once described, he’s a slow talker, an annoying slow talker at that.

But let’s get back to Spencer. He is despondent and has retreated to his basement to relive a glory day moment from his past. That past was playing the game, Jumanji, the now destroyed game console resting on his table. In the meantime, Spencer’s friends are concerned that nobody has stayed in contact with Spencer and they come to his home to see him. They meet Eddie, the curmudgeon, as Martha goes upstairs to find Spencer to no success. As they are waiting, they here a familiar sound emanating from the basement. They soon discover that Spencer has reentered the Jumanji game. So, in order to make the sequel work, it is decided that they must go back into the game as well to rescue Spencer. But this time instead of the old team being drawn into the game, Bethany is left behind and in her stead, Milo and Eddie are sucked up.

So now in this alternate universe, we find the originals in the form of Karen Gillan, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Dwayne Johnson. Martha is in Karen’s body but Fridge is in Jack’s body, Eddie is in Dwayne’s body and Milo is in Keven’s body. So that is the switch up. You would think that with two seasoned actors and veterans who’ve done comedy and timing exceptionally well that you’d think that this would be a slam dunk, but you would be wrong. The trailer for this film did sell the fact that Milo/Kevin did showcase some comedic moments but Eddie/Dwayne and Milo/Kevin just bog down this portion of the film. Milo and Eddie’s constant bickering is a distraction. Eddie/Dwayne is stubborn and a bit arrogant and doesn’t listen to anyone. Milo/Kevin is such a slow talker that when he describes what an animal is, by the time he gets to the most critical point, he places everyone in danger. Plus, he’s constantly repeating himself as if he’s suffering from dementia. Much later on after the Milo/Eddie bickering dissipates, we find that in a moment of sincerity that Milo has an illness and is facing death which is why he walks back into Milo’s life after 15 years.

In the midst of all of this, Martha/Karen and Fridge/Jack discover a pool of water that switches their personalities into the other's body. This discovery will become critical later down the line but at that moment, Fridge/Jack is in Martha/Karen’s body and he messes up and is returned back to his body. They do find Spencer only this time he’s in a woman’s body and we are introduced to a new character played by Awkwafina. In the meantime, Bethany is in the real world trying to get back to Jumanji. Flipping back and forth from the game to the real world was interesting. She finds herself at the home of Alex who was in the game for a long time. With his help, he and Bethany return to the game but her avatar is a horse while Alex returns as Nick Jonas. Now all of the players are in the game.

What was frustrating about the second act was the relationship between Eddie and Milo. Eddie’s stubborn and headstrong attitude and Milo’s slow-talking not only worked on the viewers' nerves but the characters as well as they voiced their complaint. Now I don’t know if the director was brave or clever for this disruption to go on for that long because you could see that the film was being pulled down with this constant battle. Just as you were about to give up on this film, Fridge and Martha find a body of water with the same properties as the water that switched their personalities. Soon Bethany, Milo, Spencer, Eddie, and Fridge enter the water and Spencer, Fridge and Bethany are in their respective bodies from the game and Milo is the horse and Eddie is Awkwafina.

Spencer/Dwayne has his confidence back, Fridge/Kevin has his acerbic wit and comedic timing again, Bethany/Jack is back in form as well. The third act has been reprieved for the better and the energy level rises up tenfold. On the one hand, you could commend Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson for effectively channeling Danny Glover and Danny DeVito’s essence that made them so annoying and then totally reversing those elements to their former selves.

Now the team is back to a more cohesive unit with everyone being in their respective avatars. At this point, it becomes a by the numbers action sequence but it is a good by the numbers action sequence that you’ve sat through for two hours. They vanquish the bad guy and they save Jumanji once again. As everyone gets ready to return to the real world, Milo opts to stay behind and live out his life as a horse. Eddie comes to the realization that Milo made the right decision to sell the restaurant and that their friendship had been more than just on the surface. Spencer realizes that isolating himself wasn’t beneficial to his self-esteem or to the benefit of others. Bethany’s unrequited feelings for Alex were muted as she was underage in the first Jumanji and he was much older plus he has a young daughter when she showed up at his door. Now that she’s legal, this wasn’t addressed at all and no wife was seen at Alex’s home. So I guess this bit of a subplot just was ignored.

As we tie up things in a somewhat neat little bow, the team is at Eddie and Milo’s old restaurant now called Nora. They are sitting at the table chatting up about things in general. Eddie comes in for the first time in years and finally meets the new owner played by a refreshing Bebe Neuwirth who looks fantastic. 

Meanwhile, Mom is at home with a repairman to fix something in the basement and the guy notices the game console. He begins to mess with the unit and as the scene cuts away, we’re back at the restaurant where a Jumanji ostrich runs by. All of a sudden, a full herd of ostriches run by while the gang is heading out. Is this a sign for a three-quell?

I can’t fully say that this was a bad film. The challenge is sitting through the moment where Kevin and Dwayne are Milo and Eddie. You do feel the film is being pulled down but the director is taking a chance knowing that these scenes are diminishing the energy of the film. Perhaps he may have allowed it to go on too long but the moment it’s over and the pacing returns to a comfortable normalization. Is it worth watching? Yes. Is it funny? Yes, in some parts. Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Dwayne Johnson do have their funny moments that are spaced out perhaps in greater distances than we would like but it’s there. So take the kids, it’s a good family movie.