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.