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.