Mark: Alright, so for our first experiment in basically doing a chat podcast as a review, we have a film that experiments with nothing in the slightest: The Rise of Skywalker, The Force Awakens writer-director J.J. Abrams’ return to making the Star Wars universe the safest, most derivative, pandering galaxy far, far away.
To start off, though, I’ll give Abrams this much: it really brings his saga full circle. First he destroyed Star Trek with all the worst parts of Star Wars, now he ends Star Wars with all the worst bits of his own Star Trek; child confronting daddy issues as recurring motif in both Star Wars and absolutely everything Abrams does.
Kevin: How is Palpatine alive?
This movie is so safe. It’s so safe. Just crowd-pleasing, fan service junk. It’ll please any Star Wars fan, but no self-respecting fan of quality would call this an actual movie, let alone a good one. It’s just a string of callback scenes designed to emotionally manipulate the viewer. And, you know, I was fine with that. It got me going on more than one occasion, and I was thrilled to have decades of fiction weaponized against me.
But COME ON.
I’m looking at the Wikipedia entry now just trying to piece the ramshackle plot together. And I saw it twice! They’re, like, trying to find a thing that’s on a planet that’s sandy but not Tattooine? Then there’s another thing that’s on a planet… Fuck, I don’t know.
Hey, remember how even Jimmy Vee had a larger, more impactful role than Lupita Nyong’o? That was funny.
Mark: Yeah, so to catch anyone up who hasn’t seen it—as the trailers firmly stated, Palpatine is indeed alive. And Abrams wastes no time in announcing as much. It’s in the opening crawl, and within about five minutes from that, you’re already seeing him. Since his death decades ago, he’s gone goth with black lipstick, but there he is. Also, as the weirdest explanation possible for why Snoke was ever a pseudo-Emperor, it’s immediately revealed that Palpatine has a tank of cloned Snokes! He apparently created him, and he has backups. Because the most charismatic leader of an empire he could imagine was this wretched-looking old Andy Serkis without a cheekbone, and he might need more of those. It’s so dumb.
Kevin: Meanwhile, the galaxy’s most androgynous Jedi is being trained by deleted scenes of Carrie Fisher in a forest somewhere. It’s the definition of perfunctory. Based on some information from a First Order spy, all of your favorites get together on your favorite ship to go to a planet to talk to a guy Luke Skywalker once knew. Surprise! It’s the Colt 45 guy!
Mark: But not before a set piece I swear is just the same CGI from Abrams’ first Star Trek with a new ship inserted. That dodging between narrow passages thing he originally co-opted from the Return of the Jedi’s Death Star run now repurposed alongside that sequence’s likewise repurposed pilot, Lando. It’s unreal.
And that sequence ends in what’s the first of so many regressive moves this film makes: while Leia was able to give an entire Death Star plan on what was basically a flashdrive in A New Hope, now spy information that ends up being basically a tweet needs to be transmitted via this novelty-sized iPhone 4 cord. It’s so stupid.
Kevin: Just real quick, regarding JJ’s recycling of action scenes: wasn’t it fucking thrilling to see Rey pilot the Falcon in The Force Awakens? What happens to even THAT lazy amount of bravado?
So, in their quest for the iPhone 4 cord, there’s the part where the bad guys capture Furry Tall Man. Just like in Empire! Also, as repeatedly reminded by Mr. Abrams in multiple films now, Chewbacca also plays holochess.
Mark: He rehashes so much in this! Like he’s already forgotten what he “referenced” in his first one. At least The Force Awakens had a (generously “borrowed”) plot. This film is a literal embarrassment of set pieces.
In the very first scene, Kylo Ren steals this little trinket pyramid from some nobodies, and it turns out that leads him to where the Emperor has for reasons never explained been able to sneak off to and, even more inexplicably, secretly build this massive army of uber-Star Destroyers. Somehow Ren couldn’t find this place, but a bunch of union guys did, and they’ve been working around the clock on starship-building? It’s not like Star Wars is logical, but it’s exceptionally baffling.
Anyway, absolutely the entire movie is tedious set piece after set piece for sub-MacGuffin after sub-MacGuffin, all for Rey and her Resistance buddies to find the ultimate MacGuffin: another little pyramid trinket to guide them to the Emperor and his army, who they would ostensibly defeat in some way or another.
Kevin: Yeah, so all the good guys go to the bad guy planet (because it is night and storming) and fight. The Deus Ex Emperor versus Lady Jedi, and Oscar Isaac’s spaceships versus Richard E. Grant’s EVIL spaceships.
Mark: It’s a film that’s hard to talk about because it mostly IS just these action scenes with a few lazy BIG reveals tossed in there as dressing for that bland iceberg lettuce and scant but fairly satisfying emotional croutons.
Ultimately, Abrams has given us a trilogy that’s a two-man Exquisite Corpse. He drew the head—a fine-enough sketch of George Lucas’s A New Hope—and expected The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson to build the neck down into an Empire Strikes Back clone of a sequel. When Johnson took the torso as big as Adam Driver’s, Abrams here decided to try stuffing that burly boy back into the Ewok-sized britches of Return of the Jedi. And it’s not a good look.
Despite all this frustrated talk, I don’t actually hate it, though. I was just entertained enough to give it maybe a C-. Like you said, Kevin. It plays it just safe enough to earn this lazy passing grade.
Kevin: C- is right. Imagine the film if not for featuring these beloved characters. It’s nothing. Just science fiction nonsense.
Mark: We agree. So let’s move on to our real gripes in the spoiler-filled second part of this review.
