Film Review: STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019): The Sequel Trilogy Ends with a Damp Nostalgic Squib

Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker Review

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Film Review, a movie directed by J.J. Abrams, and starring Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Ian McDiarmid, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Keri Russell, Billie Lourd, Naomi Ackie, Matt Smith, Dominic Monaghan, and Richard E. Grant.

The more of Disney’s factory-produced Star Wars assembly line I watch, the more I’m convinced The Force Awakens was a minor miracle. Rian Johnson may have veered the sequel trilogy into a ditch, but this is only marginally better than his effort, which leaves me inclined to look deeper. That means stepping over some of their shared deficits (Daisy Ridley’s acting, again) and looking at those they don’t share. Because this seems to fart its way out, shot-for-shot, for completely different reasons to Johnson’s debacle.

The powers that be have obviously registered the backlash against their canon-jerking, so they’ve decided to lurch to the other extreme – as much fan-service as you can cram into 142 minutes, even if it negates what they’ve only just established. The narrative is a mess; I can’t recall a film so brazenly making up its key plot points in front of its audience as it goes along. But even that doesn’t get to the nub of the issue.

I knew within minutes this was going to be a turkey, and by the end I knew why. When The Force Awakens swept into cinemas, one could see a proper, modern remount of a classic, mining its source material because it was still there to be mined, and directed with passion and panache. Maybe you groaned a little when you realized it was a remake, but the sure-handed sweep of the spectacle, the thrill of hearing that music recapitulate itself into your consciousness, that was enough.

So what’s changed? Star Wars: A New Hope never had the deepest well of viable content to lean on, in essence a remarkably simple adventure movie that spawned a meatier sequel, but hardly enough to sustain what’s followed.

The Rise of Skywalker finds an artistically spent vehicle coughing up its own regurgitated past. There’s not a single beat in this film you didn’t see 4 years ago, which in itself relies on the thrill of something even older. Now the freshness of the past is gone, all you’re left with is a trite shambles of spent clichés, lifeless fetch-questing and empty self-aggrandizement, failing to offer anything new with a story that’s already been told – better.

Contrary to Disney orthodoxy, it is possible to sell toys and make good movies. Regrettably, they’ve only been doing one of those things for a while now.

Rating: 2/10

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