Part 40 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

This is the introduction scene for the little cone-headed droid, a bold move for a movie that’s not got a huge amount for the droids to do in it. Structurally, this is a movie about some combination of Finn, Poe and Rey going places and doing things, and every other character is either with them while they do it or waiting patiently to hear whether they’ve succeeded from back at forest base. BB-8 and R2D2 are an immediate clash for the plucky companion role; I don’t remember if them being the same character was so much of an issue in the other sequel films but here’s it’s a drag. I almost asserted that BB-8 makes R2D2 redundant here, but I just managed to remember that it’s R2D2 receiving the information from treasured friend Boolio, possibly because that big chunky data transfer cable would have been hell to try and seat properly in a sphere. Still, the film manages the somewhat impressive trick of making R2D2 feel old, surrounded as he is by the modern, more overtly hyperactive droid that Disney prefers.

The cone droid is cute enough. He’s got the same kind of anxious little voice as the later, superior B2EMO from Andor which permits him a bit more agency than the mute BB-8 ever gets. Not that there’s much time or space for him to express that agency in this film, though the only outcome from this is that at one point back at forest base, Finn mentions Exegol to him and the tinny little droid says “oh yes, I know all about that”. And then Rey sends them the coordinates anyway. Otherwise he just wobbles about on his monowheel. It was nice of Rey to lubricate him though.

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With the new droid in tow, the gang finally reach Kojimi, where it’s the Holiday Special every day of the year. As I discussed in Scene 37, the staging of violent abuse of power by the First Order here isn’t hugely compelling. We get a slapstick alien stepping outside of his door, doing a big “Ohhh nooo!” and then dashing back inside. All these First Order Stormtroopers are supposed to be kidnapped children, but it’s hard to understand that when they’re exactly as officious as regular Stormtroopers, or dipping back into Andor the corporate security forces. It’s impossible to imagine that Finn was ever knocking on doors like this.

It’s not like it’s a totally unsuitable pitch for more Star Wars to portray a fascism that is cruel through incompetence and disdain, rather than bureaucracy and overwhelming force. It would help distinguish the First Order from the Empire. You could have the First Order troopers act in some particular way that strikes the viewer as wrong, as different. But come on, it’s far too late in the day to be having ideas like this. The movie is over. The trilogy is over. The Rey Movie is over. The Hunt for Ben Solo is over. It’s no good grasping for what-could-have-beens. What we got was a depiction of a reborn space empire that was strange and confusing but not ultimately in a way that came to anything.

At least it’s snowing, permitting the use of a large quantity of Snowtrooper uniforms. The oversized gang of protagonists are all in big parka coats, even C3P0.

Next: I’m gonna kill him

Part 39 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Did you see that? Rey just blew the transport carrying Chewbacca out of the freaking sky! With a blast of force lightning? Because she was mad at Kylo Ren just for how he’s always being like that? Crazy! Also John Boyega is really good at making it clear that Finn is madly in love with Rey despite a script that half the time would like him not to be. The scene where he’s failing to comfort her over having exploded Chewbacca with her lightning hands is really nice. “Kylo Ren made you do it!” he ineffectually voices.

The beauty of the randomiser once more is that I don’t have to care what comes next in the Chewbecca saga. I’ve definitely seen bits of film that take place after the one where he gets unmistakably blown up with a lightning blast and they still have Chewbacca in, but that’s not my problem. I got my mini-movie consisting of the teaser trailer, with an extra coda in which Chewbacca gets shot by mistake. I’m happy. That’s the end of Chewbacca for me, for now and forever.

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Anyway – in this scene, they fly now. I think if you weren’t prepared by the preceding 38 scenes of Rise of Skywalker you may not be ready to parse this in the correct way, as the lunge into psychedelia that it is. Star Wars, shorn of the taming influence George Lucas, is gradually becoming Jodorowsky’s Dune. Poe, Finn, Rey, Chewie and C3P0 are being pursued across the desert by Stormtroopers, but the muted, conservative design of the Forest Trooper is a distant memory. These guys, armour gleaming brilliant white against the sky, are riding great monstrous beast-bikes that lap at the ground with flailing sandpaper tongues, in pursuit of Poe who has hot-wired a triangle. With a shout they leap from their vehicles into the air, jetpack bursting with flames in a maddening suicide attack. It immediately brings to mind the loyal acolytes of Immortan Joe leaping from from the skies in Furiosa.

In fact, I’m sure Fury Road was a reference for this scene, and it’s a cruel irony that it’s oft mocked for being silly given how desperately it’s trying to be silly. As a practical measure giving a Stormtrooper a jetpack is nonsense – as a bombastic show of spectacle it touches genius. Fire, paint, smoke, blasts of colour, the protagonists thrown comedically through the air, flailing. The final trooper, clipped by a laser blast, goes spiralling off into a mountain like Wile E. Coyote. This is a comic book!

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My one complaint – and I wouldn’t mention this, but because we’re paying extra special attention to the care shown to our large, carpeted friend right now: when they fall through that quicksand and are each checking if the rest of the group are all alive, no-one hugs Chewbacca. For shame.

There’s also a godawful conference with Leia here where she’s somehow aware that this scene is happening like she’s been watching it on the force television, but you know we’re 39 scenes in and I just don’t have the life in me any more to keep complaining about it.

Next: B-b-battery charged

Part 38 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

I feel we’re into the dregs now. Chewie awkwardly shuffles down some sand while the Knights of Ren watch on for whatever reason. Those guys sure do a lot of standing about and looking imposing and not a lot of anything else, other than get beat up by their own boss in a wordless brawl.

After that we’re in the desert again with Rey, and we’re going to do the trailer. I saw this so many times over the course of 2019 that I was absolutely sick of the sight of it. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t have any interest in seeing the finished film; certainly I wasn’t spoiling myself for Cats in the same way. This is fully a set-piece, a concept-driven piece of action that is adhering solidly to the rule of cool. I am obliged to note that it’s not totally dissimilar in that concept to the appearance of Maul on his little scooter on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, though frankly that’s as weak as these connections get – this could just as well be inspired by The Searchers or Trigun.

Yes: a lone figure stands on the desert. From a distance, sands are thrown up by a great approaching craft. It’s on a collision course. She jumps just in time – while mid-flip, she severs an essential connection. She lands. It crashes. This is as core a character piece for Rey as we might ever get, the infamous Rey Movie being in the limbo that all post-Rise of Skywalker projects have slipped into. We might imagine Luke in this scenario steeling himself to trust the force, unsure of abandoning the practical option of finding cover. Anakin would have been less surgical – maybe driven the craft directly into the ground. Obi-wan is the character most likely to take Rey’s tack here, a little showy, a little violent. She’s not afraid of injuring her love-hate partner Kylo Ren here, a refreshing frankness in a film that is otherwise reflexively sentimental.

That’s Rey, and we’ll see her in this much fickle detail for a moment later when she runs Kylo Ren through with his own sword then heals him back up. Sadly she doesn’t really appear again after that.

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As well we get a grotty as all hell long-distance telephoto of Kylo Ren walking away from the wreck which is such a badass shot it may have been worth the rest of the film just to get that. In a small irony it almost looks like something out of Sorcerer, the film that got infamously steam-rolled by Star Wars at the box office in 1977. Sadly there’s a quick cut away and when it cuts back the cool shot has been replaced by a different one, a perfectly crisp wide shot with mediocre composition. The Rise of Skywalker experience again, flashes of greatness immediately torn away.

Oh yeah, and then Rey shoots Chewie.

To be continued.

♞ Knights of Ren status: 🛏️ Stationary

Next: Rey shot Chewie. In the last scene I watched, I mean. In this scene they steal something that looks like a pod racer. But wow, am I still thinking about how Rey shot Chewie.

Part 37 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

It’s starting to feel like I’m trapped in a hall of mirrors: is this the first time Palpatine is explaining his plan to Rey? Surely that has already happened, once if not twice. She has come to him; they are kin; she’s going to strike him down and take his place in a literalised re-staging of Return of the Jedi. She won’t do it: she has the force of the Jedi behind her. He has the power of the Sith. The battle between the largely impersonal Resistance and the totally impersonal Final Order fleet rages in the skies above them. This is some kind of purgatory – the purgatory that Palpatine fell into after being thrown down that pit perhaps, a purgatory where the cycle of Star Wars episodes never ends and each victory is dissolved into the next failure. Luke becoming more and more self-satisfied with each loop, Leia more abstract. Lando more present.

There’s a part in Shadows of the Empire (sorry) where Palpatine thinks about picking out his favourite throne to sit on, the one that sits a meter higher than the rest of the room. That must be this throne, a great spiky monstrosity with more than a touch of Game of Thrones about it. As we noted in Scene 33, Rise of Skywalker pitches itself as Star-Wars-as-horror, the gleaming sci-fi aesthetic of evil here given way entirely to an aesthetic that looks like if The Pit and the Pendulum was given the lighting designer from a Prodigy set. Ian McDiarmid has never looked so viscerally unpleasant as he does hanging off that great dangling arm, death’s grin on his face as he assures Rey that everything is going according to plan.

Of course you can’t remove aesthetic from content, and what’s gained in the thrill of making this a monster mash is lost in the part where this is nominally a story about Empire, but let’s be honest: this movie isn’t even slightly about Empire. It has no idea what Empire is. Even the real Star Wars Holiday Special knew you had to show an actual crying Wookie to drive home that this system produces huge dickheads. Here, although we see people doing Holiday Special nonsense, going door to door looking for fugitives, they don’t do anything specific. And then they blow up the whole planet, because as an organisation they’ve decided they love blowing up planets. Where in Revenge of the Sith we had a great Republic senate cheering for autocracy, here we have an arena full of cloaked nothing characters in the same role. You don’t have to think Star Wars is a great satire to recognise that something has been lost here in terms of ambition.

Next: The Trailer