Conclusion
For any reader unaware, in 2021 I released an essay titled Sixteen attempts to talk to you about Suicide Squad in which I picked apart that film, the decisions made which resulted in the end product, and how I gradually came to love it through understanding it. In many ways, Rise of Skywalker is another Suicide Squad, a film that is less than the sum of its parts, but one where within those parts are little pearls of quality, little markers of the great effort that went into building it. In another way the films are very different: Suicide Squad was about so many things that it felt like there was a kaleidoscope of ideas in competition for every scene. Rise of Skywalker does not have that.
It’s not a film with anything to say about family, other than to avoid having an evil wizard for a grandparent. It’s not a film with anything to say about camaraderie, other than that if you save someone’s life they may return the favour. What does it have to say about leadership? About calcified power structures or the people who serve them? Nothing, more or less. The original Star Wars trilogy was not the most sophisticated story ever told, but it made its point at the climax of Return of the Jedi regardless: the hero discarding his weapon and turning the other cheek, a bagatelle of radicalism in the hero’s journey. Rise of Skywalker is not a film with a concealed radicalism. You can justify each and every decision that was made, but at the end of the day it’s more interested in puppeteering Leia about to make sure she gets her due than it is in anything Finn or Poe or really even Rey does. If it’s about anything, it’s about retreating into the known. About choking back any interesting decision for fear you won’t be able to withdraw it.
In short, this is an unlikeable film. But the flame still burns. By thinning out the plot to nothing, by removing the ability for themes to emerge over time, we can more readily discover the parts within the whole. And while they don’t cohere, they don’t build into anything more, there is something to love. Talented actors in the prime of their careers spinning rushed-off material into gold. Unimaginable amounts of money spent on turning vast concept art into physical spaces. Laser swords. It’s something.
I don’t think they could have ever made a satisfying Episode 9. I don’t think the project of making a sequel trilogy is really coherent – the original six films already contain the last word on anything tried in Episodes 7 or 8. Trying to come up with one film that would stitch all of that together was and remains a doomed endeavour. I don’t think you can watch a scene from The Last Jedi and then watch a scene from Attack of the Clones and really feel like they’re in dialogue in any way. So maybe it’s better this way. A total burnout rather than a fizzle, Star Wars going out with an explosion of cool imagery without trying to be the last word on how Luke, Leia, Anakin and Rey Palpatine all form a unit.
Or maybe not. I never wanted to watch the Disney sequels, although the other works have been of varying levels of interesting to me. I watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi out of mild curiosity and received very little for the effort, outside of recognising that Rian Johnson wanted everyone to know how much he loved classic sci-fi. But with Rise of Skywalker I think with the full context now I regret watching it. It was better to remember Star Wars as something that drifted away from me, rather than as something that ended poorly. Hearing all the silly little things that happen in the film was better than experiencing them first hand, and the good things I found by watching were thin soup versus what I’d have gotten from a scene from The Creator, or a scene from Rebel Moon, or a scene from Avatar: Fire and Ash, or a scene from The Acolyte. Ultimately I watched Rise of Skywalker because it was the thrilling conclusion of the ‘Skywalker Saga’, and I got exactly what I deserved.