Oh J.J. My worst fears have been realised.
Back in 2017, when it was announced J.J. Abrams was going to return and bring the Disney sequel trilogy into land, I had my concerns.
Because, if we’re honest, Abrams doesn’t make great movies.
He’s exquisite at casting, he can composite a nice shot, and he can even shoot a nice sequence, but he doesn’t tell memorable, lasting stories.
At best he creates ‘good time’ movies, fine as long as you don’t think too hard (Star Trek 09 and The Force Awakens), but at worst he creates aimless, soulless husks of films (Into Darkness and, unfortunately, The Rise of Skywalker).
If I had a checklist of just about everything I was dreading Abrams might do after the insanely good The Last Jedi (directed by a truly incredible filmmaker, Rian Johnson), he ticks all those boxes and adds in some new problems on top.
And no-one is more crushed than me because I love these movies….
*Spoiler warning*
What went wrong?
In truth, I think we’ll be picking over the bones of this mess for a while, and frankly it would take too long to go into every single thing that doesn’t work.
At the most fundamental level, however, it quickly commits all the storytelling crimes of modern blockbusters that I hate so much:
- McGuffin chasing rather than character driven
- Stupid reveals that add nothing to the story but make the universe feel smaller
- Emotional fake-outs where characters *die*…but not actually
- Nostalgia baiting instead of earned investment
- Fan-appeasing (and it is appeasing, not pleasing) rather than a challenging narrative
- Action set-pieces that don’t forward the plot or reveal anything about the characters
Weirdly, the three movies this reminded me most of were Spectre (and I fucking hated Spectre), Spider-Man 3 and, to a lesser extent, The Dark Knight Rises. It has Spectre’s non-sensical revisionism, Spider-Man 3’s undercutting of existing emotional stakes, and (while I accept Nolan’s is a much better movie), The Dark Knight Rise’s feeling of ‘really…you had two great movies behind you and THIS is how you wanna go out?’
On top of that, it lacks even the usual Abrams’ flair (not flare) – it’s a surprisingly ugly movie a lot of the time, choppily edited together, lacking the ‘spark’ he usually brings.
I mean, sure, if you’re only coming for space battles and lightsaber fights, you get them (lots of them), and if you want to find out if your fan-theory is right or wrong, Abrams certainly gives answers. But if you want depth, theme or an emotionally-resonant story…well, you better look elsewhere.
How does it relate to The Last Jedi?
It’s almost impossible to think of The Rise Of Skywalker in isolation, and not in how it relates to its immediate predecessor.
The Last Jedi is the most thematically-rich and, I think, satisfying Star Wars film there has been (you can read my take here) but it was also very divisive – I mean, there’s no accounting for taste.
So, all eyes were on this film to see how much Abrams was going to retcon to appease the angrier sections of the fanbase.
In the end, he does undo a lot of the good work done by that movie, but I don’t think it’s malicious. In fact, there’s a bizarre amount of effort to ensure as much of Rian Johnson’s take is honoured…but only from a certain point of view, which is very Star Wars!
Abrams and Johnson are wildly different storytellers with, it seems, very different views of what Star Wars is. Unsurprisingly, Abrams concludes the trilogy by reverting back to his vision of the series so, yes, that means major parts of what made The Last Jedi work are undone.
You know how awesome it was when Rey realised that it wasn’t her parentage that defined her, and that she had to find her own place in the universe?
Well, don’t worry about that, she’s the granddaughter of Palpatine.
At least your fucking fan theory can be confirmed now!
Again, I don’t think this is malicious or that TROS is some kind of purposeful refutation of TLJ –to be a refutation it would have to make some kind of point, and TROS is far too sloppy to do that.
Instead, I think Abrams simply doesn’t care for, or perhaps even understand, the ramifications of what TLJ was saying – that the obsession with bloodlines is unhealthy, and anyone should be capable of becoming a Jedi – and instead did his mystery-box garbage because that’s how he sees storytelling – mysteries that need to be answered.
And don’t let people tell you TROS doesn’t work because there was no overall plan for this trilogy because, frankly, I think that’s bullshit.
Sure, if there was a plan it might have made things easier, and admittedly TLJ doesn’t offer a particularly organic bouncing-off point, but it was a blank slate – you could make any conclusion you wanted. Rian Johnson took the armbands of familiarity off and said to Episode 9, ‘go and swim where you want’.
Abrams, however, immediately clings back to the side, panicked and spluttering up water. His sole spark of creativity being ‘Palpatine is back’. Yet, even with such an uninspired idea, he could have told the story he was trying to tell here SO MUCH BETTER if he prioritised character rather than plot, narrative rather than spectacle.
This film is bad because it’s poorly-constructed and poorly-told, not because the other movies didn’t set it up well enough.
It gets worse
And beyond that, it doesn’t commit to anything. There’s no vision. No thematic resonance. Only echoes of nostalgia.
I mean, compare the ending of TLJ and TROS. In TLJ, Luke stands down the First Order by projecting himself across the galaxy, in the ultimate act of pacifism, allowing his friends time to escape, finally fulfilling exactly what the Jedi were meant to be.
In TROS, Rey uses her lightsabers to move toward Palpatine until he explodes from his own electricity, an onward march of violence, utterly vanquishing her enemy – a strange message for a series about spirituality, balance and defence. Oh well, at least it was a bit like when Mace Windu done it.
And what’s galling is TROS doesn’t even work as a fan-service movie. If that’s what it wanted to be then, fuck it, bring Anakin back, have Qui-Gon appear as a ghost, go the whole hog – don’t get coy when the moment arrives.
But, instead, it simply appeases fans, trying to address Reddit complaints, rather than provide satisfying moments (plus, it’s kind of clear that of the new Disney directors, Abrams is the most against bringing the prequels back into the fold – it’s kind of ridiculous how this bills itself as the end of a nine movie saga when it can barely bring itself to acknowledge three of them!)
Any highlights?
Yet I’d be lying if I said there was no fun to be had here. Thankfully the main cast are all still great, brilliant casting being perhaps Abrams’ most unblemished legacy to the franchise. Daisy Ridley really comes into her own as Rey, who for the first time feels like a fully-fleshed out interesting character. There’s conflict here, and Ridley sells the hell out of it.
Adam Driver is also amazing, but we all expected that, adding dramatic weight to scenes that often don’t deserve it. There’s a quieter moment where he confronts a face from his past and it’s properly powerful – a brief moment of humanity against a backdrop of incessant noise.
Despite Palpatine’s return not being a great idea, I did quite like how it was done. There are moments when it’s a little bit bonkers, with hooded crowds and bizarre mythology, that I enjoyed. The decision to frame these sequences as horror, and portray old Sheev as an almost demonic entity, was fresh and I dug it.
There are also some awesome alien designs throughout – I especially liked the festival that our main trio stumble across which felt both distinctly different but totally at home within the Star Wars universe.
And there’s a rousing ‘to your left’ moment at the end of the film that, while being completely unearned, did have me grinning.
And so the Skywalker saga comes to an end…
I’m bummed. This is the first Star Wars movie where I’ve left the cinema and really not liked it…and it sucks to feel like that.
But, I will say this. I’m sure a whole load of fans are going to enjoy this movie and good on them, I’m jealous in the best possible way.
And, look, while I criticise J.J. Abrams here, I’m aware how easy it is as an armchair critic to point flaws in someone else’s work – but he’s immensely talented in lots of ways, and taking over the project reasonably late in the day can’t have been easy. Few could have done a better job.
But when I look back at these sequels, I feel like they never reached their full potential. This was the moment when the characters should have shaken free from the bonds of service to the originals and instead plotted out their own journey. They never quite did.
Let this be the moment when Disney realise that, great as the originals are, we need to let them go and allow this amazing universe that George Lucas created be free to show us new things again – new worlds, new creatures, new ideas.
Let’s treat these movies as an artistic endeavour once more, because all the time they simply feel like products designed to sell us nostalgia, they’ll never truly feel like Star Wars.
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