Part 30 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

She doesn’t say it though. Maz Kanata says it. The weird thing is that this whole concept would surely have more impact if it actually came as a shock, if the fight between Kylo and Rey was just suddenly interrupted by them both detecting a disturbance in the force. Instead, we get this awful teeing up with Maz Kanata talking into the camera and Leia shuffling off to die, that saps the momentum out of what otherwise continues to be a very enjoyable laser sword fight.

The lightsaber battle has teleported slightly from being dry, inside and up many floors to being outside, extremely wet and down at sea level. I can only presume that Rey used the power of unaided flight, which as we all know she possesses. Perhaps Kylo Ren also has the power of unaided flight, it would surely come in handy for a man in his position. It doesn’t matter how cheaply it has been acquired, the image of Kylo and Rey fighting in the sea spray is just fantastic.

The visuals repeatedly reference the duel between Anakin and Obi-wan on Mustafar which is a really pleasant surprise, with crashing waves of water taking the place of lava as the duel progresses down a series of narrow bridges. The editing is a bit of a mess – there’s one particular zoom on a giant tidal wave that appears to simply vanish? The water in general never poses much of an obstacle to the duellers. John Boyega is doing some excellent “no don’t!” howls at Rey, who is matching Kylo move for move and ferocity for ferocity. Much as with the tiny lead in from Scene 28, there’s a story being told visually here about Rey giving in to impulse and to violence that doesn’t really go anywhere after this scene. It’s a shame.

And so it actually comes together quite well – Leia dies, and Ben (of the two duellists) is the one who is given pause. In that pause, Rey seizes his lightsaber and impales him on it, taking the villain’s place in the arrangement as realisation and horror cross her face. Wracked by guilt, she saves his life using the force, betraying the Resistance and probably messing up whatever plan we might think Leia was trying to pull off here. Good.

Next: I think I’d remember having a ‘best friend’

Part 29 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Rest in peace to the Knights of Ren, hanging out with Constable Zuvio and Ochi of Bestoon in “characters who were basically edited out” heaven. They were an odd bunch, a naked attempt to bottle the lightning that was the bounty hunters summoned up by Vader in Empire Strikes Back. Obviously their major flaw in this film was that in the final cut they never did anything beyond standing menacingly at the edge of scenes, but even if they’d had all sorts to do it’s hard to imagine they’d have the devoted fanbase that, say, IG-88 does. They lack whimsy, for want of a better word. They lack spirit. They’re too coordinated, too manufactured – like someone’s violence-themed backing band. Sorry, Knights of Ren. It’s not me, it’s you.

This is the second half of the fights that started all the way back in Scene 6, one between Kylo Ren and his knights and one between Rey and some guys. Neither half of the fight here is particularly memorable, but Kylo’s opponents are at least individuated and are attempting hand-to-hand combat, while Rey is forced to try and last out the scene doing long-distance force shoves on what were always some very ceremonial-looking red cloaked guards. Kylo Ren has changed into a particularly fetching black sweater since we last saw him.

Once that’s all wrapped up it’s Sheev cackling for the next few minutes as he hoovers up Rey and Ren’s force telephone credits to regenerate his fingers and presumably legs, because he’s walking again after this. The great mechanical arm that’s been supporting him through all the scenes before this point is a lovely bit of design, absurdly oversized as befits this grandiose interpretation of Palpatine with his black lips and hollowed eyes. It’s a real shame they didn’t go one even further and have him swoop around on it a bit like a vampire bat. The suction effect looks pretty rough – notable in a film which has every other marker of being rushed, but where the visual effects are normally still very sharp.

Meanwhile it’s going badly for the Resistance fighters, as we see Poe suffer the loss of that one guy from Heroes who takes the classic Porkins death, splatted in an X-Wing to let us know that the stakes are now high. So long, space cowboy.

What’s striking at this point is how many stages there are, cumulatively, to this climax. Of the 29 scenes that I’ve gone through in the movie so far, 7 of them have been set on Exegol – and we’re not even done yet. Palpatine is talking to Rey for a proportionally quite significant period of the movie, without really having anything to say. He just sort of wins in lots of different ways, then loses in exactly one. The film is leaning really hard on Ian McDiarmid’s ability to chew scenery, it’d be in serious trouble if he weren’t so up to the challenge.

Knights of Ren status: Severed 🔪

Next: Leia has a funny thought

Part 28 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

A great bit of editing here by the randomiser – if the original scene of Rey disappointing everyone by leaving in the skimmer had immediately flowed into the line “Finn, there’s another skimmer” it would have been a pathetic choice that drained all energy out of the scene. Here it’s like we’ve returned after the week’s break between episodes and the old cliffhanger is being swept under the rug so that we can move swiftly onto the next big problem, namely how Rey (who we must remember possesses the power of unaided flight) can possibly scale the Death Star ruins to find her Sith Holocron Wayfinder. By doing some sick space-bouldering, is how.

It’s interesting how much this motif of Imperial ruins recurs in modern Star Wars; Jedi: Fallen Order plays with it, as did the Ahsoka show, both showing the decommissioning and dismantling of Star Destroyers. The physical matter of Lucas’ Star Wars was usually ephemeral, from Alderaan’s destruction to the Death Star disappearing in a puff of smoke to Obi-wan turning into an empty robe. We see droid factories and cloning facilities but not droid disposal or clone funerals. The closest we get is Luke and the gang finding themselves trapped in the Death Star garbage disposal, a handful of wobbly metal poles apparently the sum total of Imperial wastage. Or the Jawa walker, rolling through the desert full of old, outdated droids who are nonetheless turned over and resold. It’s not a big galaxy for waste.

It’s a little different if we’re considering flesh, where Luke’s hand was tossed into the void of Bespin and Darth Maul, Boba Fett and the Emperor are dealt with by being hurled down pits. All three of them (and the hand) have been fished back out in various bits of continuation media, so perhaps there should be less surprise that we’re going back for the inert.

It’s curious as well that so much about this film is spiritually revisiting the original films and yet this sequence, which is literally revisiting where the ending of Return of the Jedi took place, somehow feels very fresh. We really don’t see very much in Star Wars that is derelict, despite the reputation it has for not being a gleaming-surfaces kind of future. Lived-in, yes, but not derelict. Piles of muddy Stormtrooper helmets are actually a little uncanny, as is the throne room set with great holes blasting daylight into it. There’s no template for what kind of thing happens in Star Wars in a place like this.

What does happen is very strange: Rey steps into the vault to collect the Wayfinder, and has a spiritual experience akin to Luke’s entering the cave on Dagobah: facing a malign version of herself with two lightsabers and a set of shark teeth. Sadly it’s over before it’s begun though, a victim of some reworking or loss of faith in the concept. Rey is literally ejected back out of the vault into a different scene where she’s contending with Kylo Ren, who casually crushes the precious Wayfinder like it’s a giant cookie. Rey is mad as hell, and this duel is pretty good even with Kylo Ren’s little hop down the tube that he does, but it’s a shame that we immediately abandon the weird, off-putting nature of the Death Star ruins to go do some more homage.

Meanwhile, back at Resistance HQ, Leia has had a funny thought.

Next: Sheev fixes his fingers

Part 27 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

An extremely brief sliver of movie here, where the cast collectively do a handbrake turn from what was going on at the start of the movie (Boolio, Jedi training) into what will be going on shortly in the film (sand planets, Sith Wayfinders) while delicately navigating how thin the motivation is here – a long time ago Luke was looking for someone somewhere, but stopped – and the need for Leia to somehow engage in the planning of this despite all the issues with Leia’s involvement in any scene that requires her to do more than sagely nod.

Daisy Ridley is working hard to inject energy, energy, energy into this but it just isn’t coming. Of all things, it’s a bit of a riff on Indiana Jones, with the dramatic slamming open of books and need to get on a plane to a remote location now and fast to find a forgotten artifact – but of course Indiana Jones is setting off to places that are exotic in real life. Rey is already an alien, presently on an alien planet. In fact, by travelling to a sand planet she’s actually returning to the exact kind of place we know she grew up in – and that’s before you get to the bait and switch where sandy Pasaana is so un-forbidden and un-forbidding that Lando is already there, hanging out on a bus.

Similarly with the ancient Jedi texts and the Sith Wayfinder (and by extension the Sith dagger that leads you to the Sith Wayfinder): this is Star Wars. Every item here is already from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. It’s not clear as a viewer what the meaning of something being ancient is in this context, what we’re meant to take away from it. The Republic stood for a thousand generations we were told, giving a notion of stability with an undertone of stagnation. That’s the setting of Star Wars: there’s the Republic (before) and the Empire (now).

The sequel movies never managed to establish much of a distinction between the Empire and the First Order as settings; while the First Order was nominally at war with the New Republic nothing ever happened in that setting – it’s all the Resistance, which is effectively the same as the Rebellion. It’s the flip side of the Old Republic and High Republic settings both collapsing without too much trouble into the tropes of the prequels: to make something that was decidedly not Republic or Empire you’d have to go so far that what you were making might not read as Star Wars, and that’s scary if you’ve just paid billions of dollars for the right to make Star Wars.

And without wishing to press the point too hard, the need to go back to Leia is stretched to the breaking point here. Every technique is brought out to try and make her function in these fast-paced dialogues: pregnant silences, vague aphorisms, Maz Kanata reading her lines instead. It’s awful. End it now.

Next: Extreme boating 2: Return of the skimmer