Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, also known as Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, is the ninth and final installment in the Star Wars saga and the sequel to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It was directed by J.J. Abrams from a script written by Abrams and Chris Terrio, and opened in cinemas on December 15, 2019 in Hollywood, with a worldwide release five days later.

Plot[]

When it is discovered that the evil Palpatine did not die at the hands of Darth Vader, the Resistance must race against the clock to find out his whereabouts. Finn and Poe lead the Resistance to put a stop to the First Order's plans to form a new Empire, while Rey anticipates her inevitable confrontation with Kylo Ren.

Why It's Great[]

It is the conclusion of the Star Wars franchise's nine-part "Skywalker saga" and the ultimate culmination of everything that has happened in all the other movies over 42 years, concluding the story arcs of the characters of the sequel trilogy and honoring the characters that came before them.
The conclusion to Rey's character arc serves as a great "Be careful what you wish for" story. Rey longed to find her family and feel like part of something important, and spent much of her young life training herself in the hopes that one day they would return. Maz Kanata told her they wouldn't come back (which they didn't), and Kylo Ren told her a half-truth about their identity, but Rey kept clinging onto the idea of them until the heartbreaking truth was revealed. She was forced to accept that her family is the people she has made friends with, not her blood relations, and her refusal to take Palpatine's place on his throne and instead rebuild the Jedi from the ground up cements that.
Kylo Ren's encounter with Palpatine on Exegol in the opening scene is a chilling and powerful moment. Exegol contains some of the most twisted and dark images that wouldn't be out of place on an Iron Maiden album cover.
It makes sense for Palpatine to be the ultimate villain that encompasses all three trilogies. It also makes sense that Snoke was created and controlled by Palpatine, and the story of Palpatine's survival and Snoke's creation through cloning ties back to the Clone Wars and the tragedy of Darth Plagueis, a story told back in Revenge of the Sith wherein Plagueis was able to cheat death to create new life.
The visual design, cinematography, lighting and integration of digital and practical effects are all top-notch, arguably even better than in The Last Jedi. One highlight is the use of unused footage from The Force Awakens being used for Carrie Fisher's performance as Leia. Another highlight is the wreckage of the second Death Star at which Rey and Kylo Ren's duel occurs.
The Battle of Exegol stands out as possibly the most epic battle in the franchise. Rey and Palpatine's final battle also deserves a special mention.
Great performances, with Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine easily being the highlight. Once again, he's having a lot of fun with his role.
Klaud is a cute character. Likewise, BB-8 is still pretty cute, and he finally gets a little droid friend, D-O.
New characters like Zorii Bliss, Jannah, and the delightfully chummy Babu Frik. They don't do much in the movie, but have just enough screen time to be memorable additions to the Star Wars cast.
Amazing music by John Williams, especially since it is the last Star Wars film he scored.
Phenomenal action scenes, from the chase scenes on Pasaana to the duel between Ben Solo and the Knights of Ren.
The Aki-Aki Festival is a fun and lively scene, featuring loads of colourful puppets and costumes. It's a brief few minutes of joy before the film descends into a much darker, more melancholic tone.
The decision to have the main characters argue and disagree throughout the movie gives the film an interesting tone. Poe also finally learns how to be a true leader - not by shouting at people, but by showing understanding and empathy.
This film showcases the Force in a way that the saga has never before. The entire concept of Force Dyad is creative, unique, and incredibly fitting to the film, the main characters, and the trilogy at large. It pushes the limits of the Force, furthers the story, provides interesting imagery, and further complicates Rey and Kylo Ren. The two represent the peak of the Force, and yet both have very different ideologies regarding how to use it: Kylo wants to tear everything down and rebuild it, while Rey wants to rescue what's left, find the good in it, and repair it.
The film also makes great use of C-3PO in its plot, a character who normally only serves as comic relief.
Leia still plays a prominent role in the film despite the real-life death of Carrie Fisher, which is worth of noting given that most of the time, when the performer of a character in some franchise passes away, their character is either killed off-screen or never mentioned ever again as if they had never existed.
We finally have Lando Calrissian in a Star Wars movie for the first time since Return of the Jedi (not counting Solo: A Star Wars Story). It's also nice to see Han Solo again after he was killed off in The Force Awakens, even as a cameo.
Allegiant General Pryde serves as a welcome call back to the likes of Grand Moff Tarkin, standing out as a sinister, cunning, and competent antagonist.
To compensate for their absence in The Last Jedi, the Knights of Ren return.
Logical plot and character development from the previous film.
- Luke has grown out of his bitter hermit phase after forgiving himself for his failures and continues to mentor Rey in her battle against the Sith and the First Order. In a touching moment, he encourages her to continue to fight instead of exiling herself in Ahch-To as he did before, admitting that he was wrong in isolating himself and tells her to confront her fears.
- Kylo Ren repairing his mask and wearing it again after he destroyed it out of anger in The Last Jedi is representative of the entire core of his character.
It takes the story line of Rey’s desire for belonging and identity from the last two films and takes it to a new, inspiring level, making for a powerful moral of self-discovery.
The reveal that Palpatine is Rey's grandfather explains and justifies why Rey is so powerful in the Force and offers a more interesting origin story than her being a "nobody"; it also doesn't contradict The Last Jedi because Rey's grandparents weren't discussed. However...
Incredibly emotional scenes, like the death of Leia Organa, Kylo Ren conversing with a memory of his father and reclaiming his identity as Ben Solo, and Ben sacrificing his life to save Rey's by giving his life force to heal her after she dies defeating Palpatine.
Rey and Kylo Ren's final duel on the second Death Star is incredible.
The "Dark Side Rey" scene is often viewed as mere trailer fodder, but it does have a purpose: it implies that Rey is capable of murder. Not long afterwards, Rey stabs Kylo in the chest with his own saber and causes Leia's death, showing that, yes, Rey does have a bit of Palpatine in her.
The scene where Luke finally lifts the X-Wing was nice to see, especially given that he failed to do so in The Empire Strikes Back back when he was training under Yoda.
Great call-backs to previous films.
1. One of the early scenes features a festival that happens once every 42 years. The original film was released in 1977, 42 years before The Rise of Skywalker.
2. Chewbacca never receives a medal at the end of A New Hope. In this movie, Maz Kanata gives him one at the end. As Chewbacca has now lost all three of his friends Luke, Han and Leia, he has something to remember them by.
3. Right before dueling the Knights of Ren, Ben Solo does exactly the same casual shrug that Han Solo did in Return of the Jedi.
4. Rey encounters a dark-side reflection of herself, just as Luke did on Dagobah.
5. Before Luke shows Rey Leia’s lightsaber, he says “There’s something my sister would have wanted you to have”, calling back to how when Obi-Wan gave Luke Anakin’s lightsaber, he said “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough.”
6. The Ewoks make an appearance during the victory celebration as does Cloud City on Bespin.
7. Luke lifts his X-Wing out of the waters of Ahch-To the same way that Yoda did on Dagobah, complete with the exact same piece of music playing while he does so.
8. Finn meets several former Stormtroopers who defected from the First Order after refusing to gun down unarmed civilians, just like he did.
9. When Rey heals Kylo after stabbing him, it not only heals his chest wound but also the facial scar she gave him all the way back in The Force Awakens.
10. When Kylo Ren asks Palpatine how he could possibly still be alive, his only response is "The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.", which he said in Revenge of the Sith.
11. Ben Solo's vision of his father is deliberately staged identically to their final confrontation in The Force Awakens — right down to the camera angles, the dialogue, and the progression of shots — only the outcome is deliberately reversed. And during this scene, when Kylo/Ben says 'Dad' and Han answers 'I know,' this is a call-back to the iconic scene between him and Leia in Empire Strikes Back right before Han went into the carbonite freeze.
The scene where Rey is empowered by the voices of Force ghosts like Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka Tano, etc. is amazing, with their respective actors called in to record cameos, and even using archive audio of Alec Guinness as the elderly Obi-Wan.
The ending where Rey renames herself "Rey Skywalker", with the Force spirits of Luke and Leia proudly watching her under the planet's twin suns wraps the Skywalker saga up beautifully and perfectly.
"Do not fear their feeble attack, my faithful. NOTHING WILL STOP THE RETURN OF THE SITH!!!"
"I'm the spy."
- "I knew it!" "No, you didn't!"

Bad Qualities[]

The opening crawl flat-out spoils the big reveal of Palpatine's resurrection, instead of the film just revealing it through the narrative, as all the other movies did with certain climactic events. It is also mistimed and as a result, ends too early.
It's never made clear exactly how Palpatine came back beyond a vague allusion to the dark side (doubling as a call-back to Revenge of the Sith). He does state that he died, so he wasn't just hiding somewhere after Endor, but beyond that it's left vague.
- The film's novelization clarifies that Palpatine transferred his essence into a cloned vessel of his original body after Anakin threw him down the Death Star II's reactor shaft.
...but this revelation is contradicted by the The Force Awakens novelization and other works in Disney's Canon, which all state that Snoke witnessed the rise of the Galactic Empire from the shadows and that Palpatine did not know of his existence until the Battle of Endor. And while this seems to close the book on Snoke's origins, it actually ends up raising more questions than it answers. Was Snoke a clone of a previous Force user, some kind of homunculus created by Sith alchemy, or something else.
Rose Tico's role is significantly shortened, perhaps as an overreaction to Kelly Marie Tran being bullied off social media after The Last Jedi. The filmmakers claimed that Rose and Leia were originally going to lead the remains of the Resistance together, and once the filmmakers realized there wasn't sufficient footage of Leia from The Force Awakens to make this idea feasible, the filmmakers were forced to scrap this idea. However, this does not explain why Rose's scenes with Rey were cut or why she was cut from merchandise.
Kylo Ren's death was forced and predictable and he should have survived as it would have differenced him from Darth Vader.
General Hux is wasted as a character; he is revealed to be a mole within the Resistance without any real explanation, and just one scene later, he's unceremoniously killed. The fact that he doesn't care about the Resistance winning is also an inconsistent portrayal of his character, since in the previous films he clearly doesn't want them to win.
The budding romance between Finn and Rose, established in the previous film, is abandoned in this film. After a brief shot of Finn standing watch over a recuperating Rose, the pair barely interact.
The dagger that contains the location of the Sith Wayfinder represents both a missed opportunity and a plot hole. As a missed opportunity, it would have been interesting if the Dagger of Mortis from the Mortis Arc in Star Wars: The Clone Wars was incorporated in this film, and it would also have provided some explanation for the dagger's origins. As a plot hole, who put the Wayfinder in the crashed Death Star II, and who built the dagger to make it findable?
...There were no prior explicit hints that they were related and Palpatine previously had no known relatives in this continuity. Only a few fans had theorized this possibility after The Force Awakens and it was considered a fringe theory compared to other theories about Rey's origins.
Padding: The main heroes' quest to find Exegol takes over half the film to conclude.
The Last Jedi's ending revealed that the boy Finn and Rose encounter on Canto Bight, Temiri Blagg, is Force-sensitive, something that is never touched upon or even mentioned in this movie (though he was in the script for Duel of the Fates in the ending, in which Rey trains several Force-sensitive children).
The Emperor's throne room on the second Death Star is shown to have a secret chamber containing the other Wayfinder, even though it is clearly shown to have no secret chamber at all in Return of the Jedi.

Reception[]

Unlike the last two films, The Rise of Skywalker received mixed critical reception, earning a 55% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and holding a 54% on Metacritic indicating "mixed or average reviews". Reception among fans was polarizing, however. Some fans claim that this film was a great conclusion to the series, while others dismiss it as another bad Disney-made Star Wars film, as well as a disappointing way to end the saga.

Box Office[]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker grossed $515.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $558.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.074 billion.

Videos[]

Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker - How to End an Era Video Essay

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