Rise of Skywalker Thougts (Spoilers)

Spoiler Alert for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

If you haven't seen the movie yet, read this blog instead.

I saw the movie yesterday, and I'm still trying to put everything together in my head.

The plot jumped around so much that I'm having a hard time remembering the sequence of events.  Most Star Wars movies are pretty easy to summarize, and are so sectionalized that they feel like two or three mini-movies.  For example, Return of the Jedi has the Jabba part, the Yoda part, the Endor part, and finally the climax (which jumps back and forth from three locations).

But Rise of Skywalker was so chaotic, that I'm going to have to watch it again just to get the timeline straight.  Not that I'll need an excuse to see it again.  I mean, yeah, I know they spend a fair amount of the movie looking for a MacGuffin that will lead them to the planet where the climax takes place, but that search covers so many locations that I can't remember what happens when.

Regarding Leia - While I'm glad they utilized unused footage instead of CGI (mostly because I didn't want to hear people whining about it), it didn't actually look any better than CGI would have.  Some of her scenes were so obviously digitally inserted that she wasn't even lit the same as the characters standing around her.  Maybe it was more obvious because I knew about it in advance, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed something was odd about her scenes.  Plus, a lot of her lines felt like they could have fit anywhere.

I was disappointed that the finale didn't involve a huge lightsaber battle.  I mean, I know there was some swordplay there, like with Kylo vs the minions, but I wanted a boss battle.  Either have Kylo or Rey get temporarily possessed for a big duel, or let the newly healed Palpatine pull out a saber like he did in Episode 3.

But Star Wars climaxes are hard.  Rey is put into the same position Luke was in at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Kill Palpatine and become evil yourself, or let him live and he kills all your allies.  RotJ handled this brilliantly, with Luke refusing to fight, and Vader killing Palpatine.  I thought something similar was going to happen here.  Either Rey or Kylo would strike him down, become possessed and evil, and they would fight each other.  Instead, Rey defeated Palpatine with some reflected lightning / force of will / power of love scene that feels right out of a Disney movie.  Oh, wait.

Of course, we did get a nice duel between Kylo and Rey earlier in the movie, but I found that fight a little underwhelming.  It was a cool location with the crashing waves, but it just felt like something was missing.  I think it was the soundtrack.  It needed something like "Duel of the Fates" to really make me feel it, but if I remember correctly a good portion of that scene didn't have music at all.

The ending - with Rey calling herself a Skywalker - makes it feel like the entire trilogy is Rey's origin story.  It feels like something really great is about to start.  Too bad Daisy Ridley says she's done with Star Wars after this trilogy.  Maybe she'd still agree to do voice work.  I would totally watch an animated series about Rey that takes place after this movie.

The little shout outs and fan service didn't do much for me, and seemed a little pandering.  Yay, Lando's back, but he doesn't do much that another character couldn't have done.  He would have been put to better use if he'd been the casino contact they were looking for in The Last Jedi.  Yay, Chewie finally gets a medal, but it felt like such a wink to the audience that it took me out of the film.  Yay, there was a lesbian kiss, but it felt like such a hollow token gesture that it annoyed the GLBT community just as much as it annoyed the bigots.

I know there's a lot of criticism in this blog entry, but I really did love this movie.  It's just easier (and more fun) to point out a movie's flaws than its virtues.  But nothing I've listed above is damning, just minor quibbles about a movie that's almost perfect.

The thing is, a lot of the negative reviews I've read about Rise of Skywalker have basically accused it of trying too hard to please fans.  It's a pet peeve of mine that "trying too hard" is considered a bad thing.  The world is full of movies that don't try hard enough.  Yeah, yeah, "Do or do not, there is no try", but Yoda's never directed a movie.