Part 13 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’
Moreso even than some of the infamous big hitters like ‘Somehow, Palpatine returned’, this is the scene that had me wondering what on Earth went wrong here. Rise of Skywalker is a constant curiosity, for sure, and there’s strange gilts to every crease and edge. Nowhere else is it this poorly made. The setup, like many set piece sequences in this film we have discussed, is a riff on a Lucas original: specifically breaking Leia out of the Death Star in A New Hope. The gang land in a hangar bay, ambush some Stormtroopers, and are setting off to break out a prisoner when the most sage one of the group feels a psychic tremor that they simply must go investigate, separating them from the group.
It looks awful. The high-definition glossy sets are lit with garish colours, giving the ship the feel of a laser tag arena. The camera is in full long-shot swoop mode, which might help the action feel smooth if the blocking weren’t so awkward and stilted: ‘Cameras!’ shouts Rey, letting loose a shot. We wait; the camera moves just long enough for you to reflect that at least one camera is getting a good long look at Poe; he too shoots. If you watch a classic TV sci-fi like Red Dwarf, one of the tricks they pull is cutting shots of the same sets together from different angles to create the illusion of a larger, coherent spaceship than the five square meters of painted chipboard they had access to. Here we have the opposite problem: the set they’re running around on is huge, looks like a million dollars, and yet somehow feels tiny and incoherent because we see all of it in these long tracking shots and it doesn’t suggest anything. It literally is a bunch of corridors that don’t go anywhere.
I guess it’s important to note that if it weren’t for the actors, none of this would be working in the slightest. John Boyega, Oscar Isaac and Daisy Ridley are all genuinely talented and have good chemistry with each other – Boyega’s cry of anguish when Poe gets shot is perfect. They’re reading their characters out in basic physical movements, Poe with his over-tense look down the barrel, Boyega with his swift and precise movements, and Ridley’s calm, confident pacing. But everything else is thoroughly half-assed: Stormtroopers gamely limping up an inexplicable ramp in a sad, meandering march.
There’s a momentary interlude with Kylo and his guys down on Planet Holiday Special which does nothing. After Poe and Finn get captured, their scene closes out with the shock reveal of Stormtrooper-with-Female-Voice – truly we have broken through every ceiling. And we get just a little snippet of Rey in Ren’s trophy room, gazing with intense equanimity at Vader’s frazzled helmet as the Imperial March drones in the background. What does Vader (a conspicuous absence in this film where Kylo Ren most closely mimics his character) mean to Rey, the woman who will so proudly adopt his name? We never find out.
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