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.
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