There is never an easy way to end ‘The Skywalker Saga’ in the Star Wars universe. Since Disney acquired Lucasart the Star Wars franchise has been milked to its last drop. While the ‘Rogue One’ spin off added an additional layer to the story, ‘Solo’ was a lot less successful. The issue here is the classic trilogy was too much of an establishment, adding anything to it required quite a bit of tact and skill to not damage the franchise. George Lucas tasted it first hand with the prequel trilogy that a lot of people wanted to forget. ‘The Force Awakens’ managed to reboot the franchise to much fanfare but ‘The Last Jedi’ divided the audience and fan base. Without a doubt the last to ‘The Skywalker Saga’ bears even more pressure to whoever at the helm of it. To be honest with you Disney had cornered itself to finish it after the first two movies of this latest trilogy.
Entering ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ with a lot of unanswered questions is never a good thing, not to mentioned the actor of the supposedly key character planned for the last movie is no longer with use. Nonetheless JJ Abrams seemed to have pulled off an impossible feat no matter what the fans would like it or not. Leia was still there, a number of loose ends were tied up, and the story was kind of completed. But was it good?
I personally did not hate it. I in fact enjoyed it while I was watching it. Bear in mind though, I did not go in with much expectation but just watched it as a movie with familiar characters that I already knew. The movie was action packed and moved along the plot at God’s speed. Some critics said it had too much action and forgot about the story telling. But one must remember that, the original key story was hard to tell now – it was meant to be a Leia Organa story but Carrie Fisher is no longer available to complete it. I personally think that people should also give that handicap its credit for JJ Abrams to pull this off. He managed to weave outtakes from years ago in ‘The Force Awakens’ into this movie is by no means an easy task. The outtakes that were put in still managed to tell a coherent story and complete the character’s arc. That, for me, was an extreme task completed.
Episode 7 to 9 of the original Star Wars story arc has always been about the next generation. Whether Rey, Fin, Poe and Kylo Ren existed in George Luca’s original story plan or not, they are quite solid characters created over the last three movies and ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ completed their arcs. We might not see the last of them but then it is not important anymore as with ‘The Skywalker Saga’ coming to an end, Disney will without a doubt lay the franchise to rest for a while on the big screen while focusing on other projects to expand the universe, ‘The Mandalorian’ is a good example of this. In ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ Rey seemed to have found what she was looking for, Kylo Ren had completed his arc. In fact Kylo Ren’s story arc was quite interesting from the start to finish. Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren did not think that Kylo Ren’s story is about redemption as Kylo Ren, aka Ben Solo believed in everything he did no matter being seen as good or not by others. I think it was this view that made the character a bit more interesting. Initially I thought Kylo Ren was just the new Vader but then as the story progressed throughout the three movies, his character became more than a mere shadow of Darth Vader. Rey’s background was revealed in this last movie but then it just opened up more question for me as my head was busily calculating the timeline and the other characters’ back stories to figure out how this was possible. For me the lack of completion were the stories associated with Fin and Po, and even Rose. This I already discounted characters who appeared in this last instalment. Fin and Rose’s relationship from ‘The Last Jedi’ was not further explored and for Po, I don’t really know where his character is going apart from taking up the leadership void left behind by Leia. I wish these characters, who were quite promising at the beginning got further opportunity to develop. Rey, Fin and Po were created as the next generation of Luke, Leia and Han but then they were never given the opportunity to reach that level.
Since it is the end of the whole ‘Skywalker Saga’ there were certainly lots of Easter eggs and homage paid to the original movies. The interesting part was that these included references to the unnumbered projects in the past, which personally I think they were nice. It was great to see some old locales and also fun to see John Williams (the composer of all the Star Wars movies) at the bar and JJ Abrams voicing one of the droids. There were scenes that reminded you of old scenes from the old movies. I mean JJ Abrams did pull out all stops to get this movie completed to please fans.
The critics were not kind to ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ but honestly, I think as a movie it did great. With a project like Star Wars you can never please everyone. ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ made the proper balances in a lot of areas despite falling short in some. However, one should not judge this movie comparatively but as a movie that provided entertainment value while upholding the name of the Star Wars franchise. It will be unfair to judge it on whether ‘it is a Star Wars movie in your head’ but as a ‘Star Wars movie that completed a story arch of 42 years that overcame a lot of tough challenges in the making’.
