Part 35 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

It’s the big moment, the climax of the movie. The chips are down, everything looks desperate, Rey is flat on her back seeing an evil electrical storm mildly inconvenience her friends. But here to provide her with moral support is the spirit of all the Jedis past, speaking to us with familiar, learned voices. Inspired, she rises.

And I’m really struggling here because this is the point at which my approach to the film where I’m trying to take it as a complete work in itself, and not as the culmination or even continuation of anything, breaks down completely. You could perform some mental gymnastics and declare that this is just regular film nonsense, after all it is a hammy old plot element most often seen in children’s cartoons, where everyone gets together and wishes the hero onwards. But it’s impossible to ignore that in a universe where this is the only Star Wars film that exists, we would have no idea who these people are.

If these voices aren’t the voices of Star Wars characters then they’re just maddening random voices. No other character has even suggested that a voice in your head might be a good thing or worth listening to. Nothing in the movie has contributed to an expectation that the resolution might involve a chorus of ancestors wishing Rey good luck. On its own terms it’s totally left field. Within the context of this movie, the only thing we have to interpret this scene is what Palpatine said in the very last scene to Kylo Ren: “I was every voice that ever spoke in your head”. If Kylo hadn’t fallen down that hole maybe he could have warned her.

And if we break with the rules and accept that this scene has to have the wider context of the Star Wars universe to make it intelligible? The meaning you get is that every bozo in Star Wars history has made a comeback to stand behind Rey. The people who failed the Republic wish her on. The guys who wanted Luke to kill Vader want to chip in. Vader himself wants to have a word. A bunch of people from the cartoon want to sound off. And Luke himself, who raised his hand against his own kin and caused this mess – and as if he hasn’t been in this film enough already – he wants to sign his name right at the bottom.

Regardless of whether it’s a Sith trick or a clown car of ghost failures, this performance inspires Rey back onto her feet; from here all the way back in Scene 17 she used the power of two lightsabers to turn the old man to dust. In a sense, it’s right that Obi-wan and Yoda are here because this is the scene where their approach is vindicated, where Palpatine does have to be defeated by a warrior of faith armed with a big stick (two sticks). Mace Windu was right to say that Palpatine was too dangerous to be left alive. Qui-gon Jinn was right to… wait, why was Qui-gon Jinn here? He died before Sheev became Chancellor!

Next: Rose Tico taking time out to work on her Youtube channel

Part 34 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Palpatine: Snoke trained you well.
Kylo Ren: I killed Snoke. I’ll kill you.
Palpatine: My boy, I made Snoke.

It’s not strictly fair to complain that the opening scene of this movie features no speaking until well into the third distinct location. It could be 100% a creative choice, not at all motivated by last minute changes to the plot which meant this whole sequence couldn’t retain even a handful of words. Maybe Adam Driver is remaining silent as a method acting choice! Perhaps this was JJ Abrams’ vision for a stylised introduction to the final film in the Skywalker Saga™! There are dozens of plausible reasons.

So Kylo Ren is killing a troupe of large forest Jawas in what seems like a total rout until the camera pulls back and all the First Order Stormtroopers are dead as well. He pops open an item chest and retrieves the Sith Wayfinder we’re all so very familiar with now, then in a beautiful match-cut he’s in his TIE Fighter navigating the large blood vessel you need to fly down to get to Exegol. Once arrived, he heads into the large inverted pyramid by hopping down the great octagonal elevator and the booming voice of Emperor Sheev Palpatine finally breaks the silence. “I made ‘Snoke’”, he exclaims. “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head.” It’s not his finest dialogue, but take note of the obvious talent the erstwhile Supreme Chancellor has for doing impressions. That’s going to come up again.

“I made Snoke” is a curious line. The intent, clearly, is to tie the start of this film to the climax of the last one. Given that little else in this film is hugely concerned with the events of the previous one though (and often in thematic conflict with it), it sticks out. And the effect it has is to complicate the plot of both this film and the trilogy as a whole, rather than streamline it: uniting the galaxy against a surprise return from Palpatine is self-contained if a little uninspired. Having the whole thing be the continuation of Sheev’s grand plan from the start raises too many questions about what it all meant that this film has no interest in answering. The motivations of everyone involved suddenly go from indistinct to baffling.

My best guess is that they thought audiences would be dissatisfied if they didn’t answer the Snoke question, but Snoke would work infinitely better as a bizarre, alien interjection in the sequel trilogy than as whatever this is trying to imply about him. McDiarmid absolutely nails the intonation though.

Next: All your favourite old cast members are here

Part 33 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

At long last we arrive, safely, to the start. The Rise of Skywalker opening crawl.

The dead speak! The galaxy has
heard a mysterious broadcast,
a threat of REVENGE in the
sinister voice of the late
EMPEROR PALPATINE.

GENERAL LEIA ORGANA
dispatches secret agents to
gather intelligence, while REY,
the last hope of the Jedi, trains
for battle against the diabolical
FIRST ORDER.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
KYLO REN rages in search
of the phantom Emperor,
determined to destroy any
threat to his power….

Picking up exactly where I left off with Scene 32, this opening crawl is notable for the tiny little arms it reaches into the story surrounding it. Each paragraph links to exactly one scene and one scene alone – first, to the Fortnite tie-in, second to Boolio (RIP), third to the scene immediately following the crawl where Kylo Ren slaughters some anonymous goons. The one thing about text is that it is extremely fungible; there’s no other scene in this film that could have been so easily replaced or reworked. So to a certain extent we can assume that this crawl represents the matters in the forefront of the creators’ minds at the very end of production: Fortnite, Boolio, the opening scene.

“The dead speak!” is a great opener, obviously. Similar to Revenge of the Sith‘s “War!”, it’s immediately staking a claim for the mood this film is going to strike, full of campy horror and melodrama. Full marks. We then have the perplexing-in-context description of Sheev’s Fortnite appearance, then a cloying, sentimental all-capitals invocation of Leia – who will be appearing in this film, you can be sure – and then an utterly bare-bones description of what Rey’s been up to.

Finally the most evocative part of the opening crawl, setting up a tense conflict between Kylo Ren and the revived Emperor that the film then immediately quashes. It’s hard not to feel a little robbed, even if the version of the film where Kylo Ren quests in search of the Emperor instead of Poe, Finn and Rey doing the same thing probably never existed. It’s also very perplexing – if you were wildly trying to simplify your film, why keep this detail that Kylo is originally against the Emperor, quests to find him, then immediately turns? Why not just have Sheev summon him hither and send the coordinates himself?

But ask too many questions like this and the whole edifice unravels: if Sheev spoke a message to the universe (in Fortnite), why would Poe et al need to hear it from Boolio? This is a film of parts rather than a whole, and that is the only way to love it.

Next: I made ‘Snoke’

Part 32 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

One of the interesting things about watching this movie in a randomised form is how little the energy of each scene changes. Aside from some minor jolts going to and from specific scenes of Palpatine blasting lightning at the sky or interminable spaceship combat with lasers going blip blip, everything is mostly proceeding at the same pace. Part of what makes that possible is that so many scenes are like this one, what you might call functional scenes – scenes that proceed from point A to point B in a mostly self-contained fashion. It’s rare that anything depends on something than hasn’t happened in the last five minutes.

Consider this scene, where the protagonist gang are reeling from the apparent death of Chewbacca immediately before, find out that C3P0 contains a secret message in his memory banks and decide to go get a shifty droid technician to extract it. You could take a pen to the script of Rise of Skywalker and remove the characters of Luke, Leia, Han and Lando and not have to change a word of this scene. You could remove Sheev and replace him with Snoke, or cut Kylo Ren. The only events this scene depends on are those which happened immediately before it.

It gives the film something of the property of JC Denton’s infamous monotone in Deus Ex – chopping it up generates something very self-similar to the original work. There are surely many films where chopping up the scenes at random would quickly render the whole incoherent. Even something deliberately non-linear like Nolan’s Memento would suffer from a totally arbitrary order. But here, where the individual scenes are so self-reliant, you just don’t lose very much from jumping about.

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All that aside, both halves of this are a swing and a miss: Hux’s presentation of Chewie to Richard E. Grant achieves little more than really driving home that Chewie isn’t dead, and thus that the protagonists are being idiots in their subsequent scene where Oscar Isaac really strains his acting muscles to pretend he has an issue with going to Planet Kojimi to get C3P0’s mind wiped. I don’t know if this is all reshoot material, but it’s interesting to note that the set is now dressed in a really half-assed manner with a bunch of fake spider webs and Oscar Isaac has suddenly grown a five-o-clock shadow.

Rise of Skywalker is not sending its best here. ‘For Chewie’ indeed. And look, to really nit pick, how are all these spiders getting into a spaceship anyway?

Next: The dead speak!