Part 24 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

‘Exegol’ is ‘log.exe’ backwards. I don’t think this can possibly be a coincidence. This is the biggest lazy naming scandal since Dash Rendar. These Star Wars bozos have gone too far this time.

I don’t recall if there was ever a bit of dialogue describing the nature of the red goo they have to fly through to get to Exegol. There may have been one. It gives the strange impression of a Fantastic Voyage-style trip for these various jaunts to visit the old man and his fleet, a delving into the very body of Palpatine where a thousand tiny hooded Sith operate all the levers that make him shoot lightning.

This is the scene that introduces the lone feature of interest on the surface of Exegol, that radio tower that briefly controls the infinite fleet that can’t shoot quite right as they try to fend off Poe Dameron and his expositionary force. Amusing to imagine the robed technicians and black-painted droids who had to hoist that thing up and climb it to configure the array. Really any thinking about the material concerns of Exegol ends up being pretty amusing, like picturing how Dracula finds the time to iron his cloak.

I’m sure this has been long since hammered into the dust of discourse, but it’s striking how unbounded the scope of the problem the Resistance face here is. Even the Death Star, the point of which is to grant the Empire seemingly unbeatable power, is circumscribed within that big, simple circle. If you can X that out, the rebels win. Here it seems like even if the Exegol fleet just flopped out of the sky it’d be a mammoth job to mop up the pieces – there’d be a trove of only slightly scuffed materiel just lying around that maybe wouldn’t be as impressive as a completed fleet for the First Order but surely would be a concern. There’s just way too many of them, and what are they doing? Hovering? Something went very wrong in the conception of this climax but it’s hard to imagine what because the rolling infinite fleet is the very concept, there’s no obvious way to handicap it that would make the Resistance fight against it seem even plausible. It’s meant to be the arrival of the also-infinite Lando fleet, I guess, but those two things don’t just cancel each other out.

What I do appreciate is Palpatine’s Sith architecture. I like that Rey’s approach up to the door here visually references the revised entrance to Jabba’s Palace from the Return of the Jedi special edition, that’s a fun touch. I also like the extremely video-game-coded hexagonal floating elevator (though as we have discussed ad nauseum, Rey does possess the skill of unaided flight). The whole section is very video game, in fact, from the load-screen-hiding narrow passage Rey enters to the cloning machines which appear to have been slapped down in the caverns by a very casual Factorio player. Sheev’s been down here gaming, he’s been playing Star(Wars)dew Valley. He’s been toying with some pets, he’s been placing some decorative statues, he’s definitely had a relationship. All that controller time has been hell on his fingers.

Next: The Power of Two

Part 23 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

It’s simple stuff, to be honest – they’re star-crossed lovers, fates inexorably tangled. They’ve defeated the great evil but at huge personal cost and one lies dead in the other’s arms. They make a quick choice. The deal is done. A life for a life, with just long enough to share a single kiss before their fates are reversed. Driver and Ridley are in their element here, mucking around on the floor like it’s a black box theatre room. As with all the other instances, I’m a big fan of this. Could do without Kylo Ren’s already slightly bathetic fade away smash cutting to Maz Kanata standing over the Leia shroud as it does the same. I believe you should take art as you find it and trust that decisions were made sincerely and with real intent but also whichever editor made that cut belongs in clown school and not the editing bay.

Kylo Ren fading away is an odd one because it doesn’t really read as an act of Jedi transcendence or whatever, despite being paired with Leia disappearing which definitely is. It’s more suggestive that his passing of all his life mana through the force dyad has turned him into a being of pure energy or some such. I don’t know and the film doesn’t particularly care to explain. Obi-wan’s physical form disappearing at the end of his duel with Vader was always a strange quirk of A New Hope. You can’t remove it, because it’s the stinger to “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”, in death Kenobi has very literally escaped Vader’s grasp. Vader is reduced to that very pitiful shot of him poking the empty robe with his boot. Crucially, it’s quickly followed up with Kenobi’s spirit in the force yelling at Luke to make it plain what has happened here – Kylo just exits stage centre. Yoda vanishing feels like an unnecessary coda to his already pretty elongated passing, and Vader didn’t vanish – he still looks pretty substantial on that funeral pyre.

Luke turning to dust on the wind in The Last Jedi is logical enough in context, I guess – his teachers were Obi-wan and Yoda, so he kinda has to follow suit. But Luke is a character who ultimately follows a spiritual path (even if there’s plenty of adventuring along the way). It’s easy enough to read his passing from the mortal plane as a metaphor of transcendence, as with Obi-wan. He escapes Kylo and the First Order like Ben escaped Vader. Leia’s death, however, is much harder to explain. Unable (by virtue of the method used to keep her in the film) to explain what she’s attempting or why, she dies and subsequently vanishes like Leonard Nimoy in the Simpsons, a flat statement that the time for Leia to be occurring is over now.

As well as all this we get a facsimile of the parts of the celebration from Return of the Jedi we hadn’t already covered: a slightly obsequious montage with Ewoks and Bespin shown with cracked Star Destroyers floating about them. Guess they couldn’t really show a destroyer wrecked over Kojimi. As a scene overall though I’m forced to give this a cruel two thumbs down. You might think this is a harsh judgement on a fairly inoffensive bit of melodrama but cut away from my Adam Driver/Daisy Ridley scene to Maz Kanata again and I will fucking kill you.

Next: log.exe

Part 22 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Of all the scenes in the movie Rise of Skywalker this might be the most difficult one to write about. Not because it’s particularly awful, because it isn’t, and not because it’s particularly good. It’s just straight down the middle. Default Star Wars. And don’t get me wrong, Ahsoka wishes it could put together an action sequence as tight and casual as this, with the Falcon deftly out-manoeuvring TIE Fighters through some squiggly sheets of ice that were probably derived from the most stunning concept art you have ever seen in your life. It’s all to acquire some forbidden intel from Boolio, a horned blue chap who’s been passed it along by a secret, unnamed spy from within the First Order (it’s Hux). Honestly this pretty much just works.

Even Boolio, voiced as he is by Mark Hamill in a decision made specifically to irritate me personally, is hard to fault: he’s a big blue muppet man. He’s got a giant chunky data cable that you just know is incredibly satisfying to plug into R2D2’s side-socket. And his big bouncy head just looks so… separable. I’ll bet Kylo Ren couldn’t resist. He actually stands out as a memorable bit of design for an alien species in Disney Star Wars, which has often suffered from a lack of ambition in this regard.

Even the downtime part, with Finn and Poe accusing Chewie of cheating at space Warhammer, is charming and efficient. The pedant in me wants to mark down the naked appeals to nostalgia, the flickery stop-motion figurines from A New Hope being hauled out again (and not for the last time) despite being a wholly inconsequential part of that movie; it’s weird that it’s the same, that we never see a different space board game. Where’s space Settlers of Catan, maybe Chewie sucks at that. Maybe he gets all the bad dice rolls. Still, it’s all charming and it makes something of Chewbacca’s mostly unremarked-on status as the elder statesman of the group – this guy knew Yoda, was involved in the destruction of two Death Stars, and introduced his mother to Han Solo for Christmas. They should give him a medal.

The slug guy is here! I can’t hate the slug guy, although it was mentioned to me that it’s somewhat awkward that there was space for the slug guy to ride along on this adventure but not Rose Tico, who is stuck back at base talking to the Leia automaton and hanging out with Merry Brandybuck. I think they both could have come along.

So this is an acceptable default level of Star Wars. Okay, not great, but pretty good. And that’s pretty positive! If the whole film was on this level I think you’d end up with something like Solo, enjoyable but a bit unremarkable. So it feels appropriate for this to fall where it does, dead centre of the 43 scenes.

Next: The End.

Part 21 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

It’s touching, really. C3P0 is the very first character to speak in a Star Wars film, and he’s present in every instalment, old and new. For much of the runtimes he serves in a comic relief role, pottering around with his diminutive friend R2D2, the pair of them inspired by the underclass peasants from The Hidden Fortress, one of Lucas’ original inspirations for Star Wars. Threepio (as he is unfailingly dubbed in supplementary material) is prissy, uptight and ill-adapted to the adventurous environments he always seems to find himself in, but with the death of Leia C3P0 is in fact the last remaining Skywalker – Rey’s nominal brother.

Given his central role in the series – assembled by a young Anakin Skywalker using one of those magazine subscriptions where they send you one part every month – it’s odd that Threepio has not really had a moment to take centre stage in the movies at least (he was the nominal star of the Droids cartoon). The closest he comes to the role of protagonist in the original trilogy is when Luke sends him in to Jabba’s palace to deliver his threat, which would perhaps be a noble self-sacrifice were C3P0 actually aware of it. And he has a specific history with memory wipes, given Bail Organa casually ordered him returned to a blank slate after the events of the prequel trilogy. Bail apparently unaware of this droid’s proximity to all the major events of the preceding decade, and his close connection to the man about to become Darth Vader.

So it’s nice that despite everything else about the script for Rise of Skywalker, here it allows C3P0 the genuinely heroic act of choosing oblivion for himself in service of the Rebellion (as-was) and in service of his friends. Eternal robo-butler, first to Anakin and Padme and later Luke and Leia and Han, here C3P0 is his own droid and makes his own call. It’s a moment of sincerity that the movie around it doesn’t seem quite able to believe is taking place.

Also – it’s just very fun when his eyes go red. Much more fun than when his arm was red for some reason.

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Meanwhile, Rey is very excited to finds out that Chewie is still alive. Hope nothing bad happened to him!

Next: Hello, Boolio