THE RISE OF SKYWALKER spoiler thoughts

Imagine Donald Trump in the waiting room for a medical visit. Imagine him getting bored and playing with the toys for children. At first he pushes those beads with his fat fucking fingers. It's like a slide for the piece of wood. Ha ha. But then he gets bored. He then sees one of those toys where you're supposed to match shapes. And so the president decides to push a square peg into a round hole. Someone from the secret service says "I'm sorry Mr. Trump, I don't believe that fits." But Donald being the Donald, he decides to keep pushing and pushing, thrusting this piece of plastic into a hole its not meant for (I'm sorry if this sounds like rape, but then also our president is a rapist, so that's going to happen) until finally brute strength lodges the piece into the hole, but he has now made the game broken and unplayable.

This is EPISODE IX of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

Writer/Director J.J. Abrams has shown himself to be good at a number of things, specifically television pilots and first episodes of rebootquels - which may be the exact same thing. But as critical as I can be of the man, THE FORCE AWAKENS is near a miracle. It introduces a squad of new characters and most of the old ones, and ingratiates them into a new but familiar narrative. He does so with energy and reminds you why you loved the OT in the first place. The biggest problem with the film is that Abrams sets up mysteries like Rey's Parents, or what's up with Luke? But he does them in such a way that's so vague it could be anything, so it could be anything. It's just we've seen what happens when he plays with his mystery boxes, and when he leans too hard into them, you get SUPER 8.

Rian Johnson, in taking over for THE LAST JEDI, took all of those loose ends, and turned them into something way more interesting than anything Abrams could come up with. The mystery of Rey's parentage is a mystery to her. She wants to believe that her parents are special, that they left for some unknown reason that will make sense of why they abandoned her. It turns out they're just terrible people. Why is Luke hiding out on an island? Because he's abandoned the force due to fucking up the training of his pupil, sorta like what Obi-Wan did. And as much as people want something different, many of these choices seem the only logical ones after what Abrams punted (you can't really make Luke a force for good if he's been hiding out where no one could find him, unless he too is on a quest that is ill defined and at odds with everything that's going on), while also subverting expectations (people wanted Luke to be a badass, but at the end of the day, he's always been this character, someone who sometimes gives up too easily at the wrong things). A number of people did not like this, but when it comes to Star Wars and the internet it's hard to know what percentage is real, and what is propped up by the loudest, most annoying fanbase this side of DC/Marvel and Ghostbusters fanatics (which may all be the same crowd). From my perspective, they seem annoyed that Johnson tried to make the story interesting, relevant, and drawn from all of the source material. Which is why Luke's final act is so perfect, and sets up a way more interesting movie than what we eventually got. Some people seem to think he betrayed THE FORCE AWAKENS, but he didn't, he just didn't approach the narrative with the sort of flippancy that Abrams did, and so when the rebels have claimed their victory, of course shortly thereafter the First order would follow them home in the hopes of destroying their rebellion. Why wouldn't you start shortly after the end of the first film? Sure he could have kicked it down the line some, but that's where I perked up and others I guess tuned out. Rian Johnson approached his sequel as a filmmaker.

Abrams, faced with what Johnson did, decided to start pushing that square peg into a round hole and he basically ruined his Star Wars. Salieri got his revenge on Mozart, but at what cost? Me, I'm fine with never watching TRoS again, but since I saw it last night, let's unpack some shit.

Because Johnson got rid of Snoke, guess who's back? The Emperor. Why? Because Ben Solo needs to redeem himself. And the only way he can do that is by having someone more powerful than him to turn against. What has the Emperor been doing? Building an army for thirty years in secret just as he survived. None of this makes any god damned sense, in terms of the franchise, the previous two films, or in terms of the film at hand. That is a huge problem with this movie. Everything happens because reasons, as if Abrams objected to trying to find motivation.

The next hour is then basically people chasing after objects that will lead them to more objects, and so when people talk about this film is in a rush and doesn't have much time for character, that's objectively Abrams fault because a lot of these side quests could have been eliminated to spend more time on the character dynamics, many of which were introduced by Abrams himself. But because Johnson complicated them, he decides to take his ball and go home, much as Maz Katana is left with nothing to do again. And because he doesn't like what Johnson did with his characters, he decides to avoid character arcs and growth. Other than maybe Kylo getting killed and resurrected and then realizing that he's an asshole? I think that's his arc? His character is woefully under-serviced by this film. Poe and Finn also have nothing, and Rey is afraid of going bad (even though she confronted that in the last film), but this lets Abrams do his Empire homage by having evil Rey face real Rey.

For the most part, new characters serve to realign the fracnhise to make it less interesting and more familiar. A perfect example of this is the character played by Keri Russell. Why is Felicity in this movie? It seems two reasons: To make Poe into more of a Han Solo character (he has a past as a "Spice Runner," which is like a weak way of avoiding calling him a smuggler), and to de-gay his relationship with Finn. Fans have often felt that there was a love/sex triangle with Finn in the middle of Poe and Rey, but this film decides to abandon that, and all of the sexuality of the previous films, outside of a pair of relatively chaste kisses. The film also sets up a new matching color relationship for Finn, but then abandons that female to Lando. I guess Abrams wants Finn's secret that he only wants to share with Rey now to be that he's force sensitive, but it reads in the film like he's afraid to tell her he loves her in front of everyone.And also, Finn developing Force powers fees like such a punt for a story at its conclusion.

Abrams brings back Greg Gunnberg, seemingly as an act of defiance. By what we saw in the last film, he wasn't around and likely killed off screen, but now he's back and he brought Dominic Monaghan with him. Rian obviously cast some of his friends in TLJ, and there's nothing wrong with it, but Johnson also hid Jospeh Gordon-Levitt as an alien, and even if Noah Segan got face time, he didn't get much if any dialogue and is killed. One senses Abrams gloating by bringing back his old buddy, and adding more familiar faces from his previous work (see also: Keri Russell).

And as much as him basically neutering Kelly Marie Tran into a red shirt who doesn't die in this film is a slap in the face of TLJ, I was more offended with what he did to Hux. Johnson decided to make Hux into - not a joke but - a person who is driven by power and is feckless, whcih I find an improvement over his bland loud fascist character in TFA. Because he's been defanged for good reasons, Abrams then makes him a traitor/spy, and then once that's revealed kills him off immediately, and replaces him with Richard E. Grant's character, which could have been interesting... if it wasn't in keeping with every other artistic decision made in this film, which is erring on the side of conservatism. But the very fact that he's made a spy, but then is killed off minutes after that's revealed suggests an annoyance with what that character's become. Or perhaps it's just bad storytelling. Either or.

I don't want to stretch too much, but just as it would have been a lesser movie if Norman Jewison had directed MALCOLM X instead of Spike Lee, J.J. Abrams is a child of wealth, and comes from a successful Hollywood family. I don't think he understands why it was so important, so powerful, to make Rey not special in the familial sense. And the bloodline thing here would be horribly insulting if it had any conviction. The film posits that the Emperor had children. So, what, was he married? Did he knock up a prostitute? Partly because of his role in the OT, but partly because of the antiseptic nature of the PT, the Emperor has no sexual energy for anyone in the franchise other than perhaps Anakin. But then also, his son/daughter already rejected him, so the bloodline aspect is already horribly compromised and rushed. It's as if the only purpose is to make Rey special in a way only someone of a bloodline would understand. And maybe rich people shouldn't be making fantasy stories for proletariats (see also: PRETTY WOMAN). But it also feels like he doesn't know how to tell this story without having that reveal, and that's just like someone with a fetish unable to achieve release without the fourteen things their fetish requires. On top of which, right now in real life we're seeing how bloodlines are part of what's making the world a worse place. It's a bad look.

As we've seen with Abrams before, specifically STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, he wants to create emotion with big shocking things, and then immediately walks them back. Three characters over the course of the film are killed and resurrected so quickly that it's impossible to mourn or believe the deaths have any meaning or purpose.

Also, as we've seen with Abrams before, he likes to make choices that look cool, but don't follow the rules of the narrative. It makes no sense for the Enterprise to be under water, but it looks cool for the Enterprise to emerge from water, so cool trumps all. The Emperor shoots lightning so powerfully he's able to knock all of the (and just the) rebel ships out of the sky, but that's a heretofore unknown power that probably would have come in handy before, just as setting up some of the new mythology that all comes in a exposition dump right before it happens would have been preferable to whatever the fuck this was. Why would Rey holding two lightsabers, two weapons, defend herself from the Emperor. It doesn't make sense in context of the film, this trilogy or the franchise as a whole. Going by what we know, she shouldn't use a weapon at all.

It's a fucking sloppy ass movie where characters show up where they need to at times the plot calls for it, with no bearing on what's going on,, what they said previously, anything. Part of me thinks the biggest problem with the film is that they wanted it out two years after TLJ, and when Colin Trevorrow was let go they had a time crunch, and Abrams was their only options when Johnson passed. I've long heard that Abrams wanted to make Star Wars his new playground, and perhaps when tasked with closing out the Skywalker saga, his main innovation was to not. Sadly, I think all the loose ends, and pointless narrative choices were partly about keeping the door open to continue this story, so Finn's secret, and Lando's new mission with the former stormtrooper, and all sorts of shit is left dangling because he hopes to make Episode 10-12. Going by Friday's numbers, I don't think that's going to happen. Honestly, I think they need to regroup before they go forward with anything more than the Disney + shows because this is a disaster, and I don't think even the most vocal TLJ haters are going to be happy with this. I think because they were never going to be happy with this.

All of this said, I thought Leia/Carrie Fisher was handled as well as possible, even if the use of deleted footage feels like a mad lib at times. There was no easy solution and though some may complain about the logic of the Han Solo dream, it makes sense in the context of Fisher's death, and I think it works, it's probably the best scene in the movie. Because it has heart, a heart partly because it's so obvious Ford did it knowing Carrie couldn't.