Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

So here's the final part of the Skywalker saga. Or the third film in this trilogy. Or the ninth film in the Star Wars series. Or the eleventh film in the franchise. Let's be realistic - in the coming years there will be titles like 'Star Wars: The Yield of Lucre' or 'Star Wars: Hutt River Province' or 'Star Wars: The Something of Boris' (apologies to Adam & Joe). It's never going to finish and it may very well repeat the formula over and over until film becomes an obsolete medium. But people (me included) will still buy tickets. It's a cultural blind spot that no matter how bad these films get, folk will flock (even Attack of the Clones made north of half a billion USD).

In saying that, The Rise of Skywalker is a really fun film and it goes at a clip. J.J. Abrams had a look at what Rian Johnson did with The Last Jedi and mini-retconned most of it. In fairness, Johnson did pretty much the same after Abrams The Force Awakens so, even Steven? For the record, I really liked TFA and didn't much like TLJ for reasons mentioned in other entries. I do appreciate TLJ a bit more now, if only as a diversion between the two Abrams films - three in a row from him may have been too much. But allow me to start with the slight queries I had with TROS. One of my beefs comes about 30 seconds into the film. We're told on the traditional scroll that:

"The dead speak! The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, the threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE...."

Is this the best way in reintroduce the primary villain of the entire saga? Presumably, it happens between films but I'd have liked to have seen this pretty momentous event actually SHOWN, rather than TOLD as a piffling preamble. Surely this cock deserved a more dramatic entrance.

Another issue was the handling of certain characters and the amount of screen time they had. John Boyega has been sadly marginalised since he more or less stole the film in TFA. Here he gets to shout a lot, almost tell Rey something important (?) and almost get sweaty with another new character, Jannah, played by Naomi Ackie. She also has bugger all to do, though not as bugger all as Kelly Marie Tran's Rose. I miss the days when incidental characters like Max Rebo, Nien Nunb or Wedge Antilles could just show up once and not appear again or be killed off or surprise us all by popping up again in another film AND IT WAS ALL FINE. It seems this latest trilogy has tried to assign too much import to minor characters. I don't remember people wringing their hands that Bib Fortuna didn't get more lines (though in fairness, there was no Reddit back then, nor internet to host it).

There are also a couple of typically manipulative 'ejaculation points', one example being when Poe, at the nadir for the rebels, apologises to everyone before Lando (echoing Falcon from Avengers: Endgame) surprises him with pre-triumphant reinforcements. And the maguffin of finding a compass to get Rey to Exagol is no less transparent a device than the myriad of them in TLJ, though done without all the boredom.

Now to the gold. The pace of this film is staggering, especially in the first act. It matches TFA in this respect and it sticks to the formula of bags of action happening while the 'important' one goes off to do 'important' stuff. At least here, Poe and Finn have a little crack at Rey for not being with them in the tight spots. Speaking of these three, their platonic love/hate triangle was nicely played and Daisy Ridley has really grown into this role - she's one of the standout performers. Adam Driver as Kylo Ren is another. He's cracking in this, as he has been all trilogy. His transformation is fantastic and his show-stopping moment with &*@^%@^#!$*& was enough to turn me into a bag of weeping snot. One more thing to mention is the slight disappointment that Richard E. Grant as General Pryde didn't clench his fist and shout "Then the fucker will rue the day!" or "Don't threaten me with a dead fish." There's a Snatch Wars style mash-up going begging here. Oh, and spoiler alert, but Disney really missed a trick by not naming Ridley's character Velouria. Just imagine the soundtrack - "Velouria, her covering, travelling career. She can really move, oh, Palpatine." Thank you, yes, that's about all I've got.

So ultimately a solid, exciting ending to this trilogy. Hits all the right spots. Not quite as good as The Force Awakens but better than The Last Jedi. Probably sits around mid table in the canonical films. So until the next trilogy or stand-alone film, it's a fond Ruow (that's Shyriiwook for goodbye).

See also:

I'll always agitate for Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and Bruce Robinson's  peerless Withnail & I (1987).

POD TO FOLLOW???