It’s impossible to talk about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker without any spoilers. So let’s get a few out of the way:
The movie is in many ways a memorial to Carrie Fisher, with recycled footage cleverly manipulated to give her a central role in the story. Her end is transformed from tragedy to a moment of beauty.
Emperor Palpatine is back, as hinted in the trailer and the opening crawl text, and there is nothing beautiful about his return. It is probably not a spoiler to say that some of the worst clichés of monster movies are invoked in his name.
Droid abuse is a thing. As we know from the trailers, C3PO faces an uncertain destiny, but remember that he isn’t the only droid we’re looking out for. Expect this movie to inspire some kind of Droid Anti-Cruelty League, since droids certainly were hurt in its making – both physically and emotionally.
Oh, and C3PO looks great in a hoodie.
For the rest, it doesn’t give anything away to state that R2D2 can still only process information via something resembling a 1980s 8-track cassette. In a galaxy far, far away, flash drives haven’t been invented, not to mention wireless data transfer. And every kid on Tatooine or Yavin doesn’t grow up coding, so you have to fly to distant planets to find a hacker.
The rest of the humans are far less interesting, although Chewbacca’s instills real heart in some of them. The main characters lurch from one Star Wars cliché to another, miraculously escaping being hit by stormtroopers, regardless of the number of adversaries, weaponry at their disposal, or whether they are running to or from their adversaries.
That’s another way of saying, this is classic Star Wars, representing a breathlessly entertaining two hours and 20 minutes rollercoaster ride. For die-hard fans, it’s a fitting climax to the saga – although even that statement could be a spoiler, given that it implies a satisfying ending in the eternal war between rebels and empire. But then, the very last spoken line of the movie is its true climax, delivering the full meaning of the episode title, and making it worth remaining seated to the end.
In many ways, the final episode invokes the original trilogy, drawing heavily on both its mythology and its iconic scenes. That, too, will sit well with the fans, but tends to undermine the solemnity of some of the scenes. Not that this is meant to be a solemn movie, aside from the odd death or two. It does attempt to tie up all the loose ends, but leaves a few dangling.
The most intriguing of these is probably the saga of Temiri Blagg. Okay, maybe not a saga, but it could have been. He’s the slave kid from The Last Jedi who had to sweep the stables on Canto Bight, when he used the force to bring the broom to him. Fan expectations for him were high, given his role in the climax of Episode VIII.
Well, expect both shocking revelations and the shocking destruction of fan theories – including those about Rey’s parentage. But don’t expect FN-2187, aka Finn, to overcome his inability to communicate his feelings. To anyone. Love triangles are so, like, episodes IV to VI.
Do expect awe-inspiring landscapes, planetscapes and formations both natural and unnatural, which demand watching the movie on the big screen. The production designers also deserve applause for the gritty, retro realism they invest in every battle-scarred spaceship and weatherworn landspeeder.
The awe falls apart when the sky is filled with such vehicles, and the CGI teams don’t cover themselves in glory in such scenes. The terrible beauty of a giant ship going to its doom trivialises spaceship crowd scenes.
For critical viewers, delivery will feel a little like the prehistoric times before same-day fulfilment: a little stuck in the past. As a visual spectacle, however, the movie delivers on all expectations.
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in cinemas in South Africa and around the world today, 20 December 2019.
- It stars the late Carrie Fisher, along with Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, with Ian McDiarmid and Billy Dee Williams.
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Abrams and Michelle Rejwan. Callum Greene, Tommy Gormley and Jason McGatlin serve as executive producers. It was written by J.J. Abrams & Chris Terrio.
