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Part 34 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Palpatine: Snoke trained you well.
Kylo Ren: I killed Snoke. I’ll kill you.
Palpatine: My boy, I made Snoke.

It’s not strictly fair to complain that the opening scene of this movie features no speaking until well into the third distinct location. It could be 100% a creative choice, not at all motivated by last minute changes to the plot which meant this whole sequence couldn’t retain even a handful of words. Maybe Adam Driver is remaining silent as a method acting choice! Perhaps this was JJ Abrams’ vision for a stylised introduction to the final film in the Skywalker Saga™! There are dozens of plausible reasons.

So Kylo Ren is killing a troupe of large forest Jawas in what seems like a total rout until the camera pulls back and all the First Order Stormtroopers are dead as well. He pops open an item chest and retrieves the Sith Wayfinder we’re all so very familiar with now, then in a beautiful match-cut he’s in his TIE Fighter navigating the large blood vessel you need to fly down to get to Exegol. Once arrived, he heads into the large inverted pyramid by hopping down the great octagonal elevator and the booming voice of Emperor Sheev Palpatine finally breaks the silence. “I made ‘Snoke’”, he exclaims. “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head.” It’s not his finest dialogue, but take note of the obvious talent the erstwhile Supreme Chancellor has for doing impressions. That’s going to come up again.

“I made Snoke” is a curious line. The intent, clearly, is to tie the start of this film to the climax of the last one. Given that little else in this film is hugely concerned with the events of the previous one though (and often in thematic conflict with it), it sticks out. And the effect it has is to complicate the plot of both this film and the trilogy as a whole, rather than streamline it: uniting the galaxy against a surprise return from Palpatine is self-contained if a little uninspired. Having the whole thing be the continuation of Sheev’s grand plan from the start raises too many questions about what it all meant that this film has no interest in answering. The motivations of everyone involved suddenly go from indistinct to baffling.

My best guess is that they thought audiences would be dissatisfied if they didn’t answer the Snoke question, but Snoke would work infinitely better as a bizarre, alien interjection in the sequel trilogy than as whatever this is trying to imply about him. McDiarmid absolutely nails the intonation though.

Next: All your favourite old cast members are here

Part 33 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

At long last we arrive, safely, to the start. The Rise of Skywalker opening crawl.

The dead speak! The galaxy has
heard a mysterious broadcast,
a threat of REVENGE in the
sinister voice of the late
EMPEROR PALPATINE.

GENERAL LEIA ORGANA
dispatches secret agents to
gather intelligence, while REY,
the last hope of the Jedi, trains
for battle against the diabolical
FIRST ORDER.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
KYLO REN rages in search
of the phantom Emperor,
determined to destroy any
threat to his power….

Picking up exactly where I left off with Scene 32, this opening crawl is notable for the tiny little arms it reaches into the story surrounding it. Each paragraph links to exactly one scene and one scene alone – first, to the Fortnite tie-in, second to Boolio (RIP), third to the scene immediately following the crawl where Kylo Ren slaughters some anonymous goons. The one thing about text is that it is extremely fungible; there’s no other scene in this film that could have been so easily replaced or reworked. So to a certain extent we can assume that this crawl represents the matters in the forefront of the creators’ minds at the very end of production: Fortnite, Boolio, the opening scene.

“The dead speak!” is a great opener, obviously. Similar to Revenge of the Sith‘s “War!”, it’s immediately staking a claim for the mood this film is going to strike, full of campy horror and melodrama. Full marks. We then have the perplexing-in-context description of Sheev’s Fortnite appearance, then a cloying, sentimental all-capitals invocation of Leia – who will be appearing in this film, you can be sure – and then an utterly bare-bones description of what Rey’s been up to.

Finally the most evocative part of the opening crawl, setting up a tense conflict between Kylo Ren and the revived Emperor that the film then immediately quashes. It’s hard not to feel a little robbed, even if the version of the film where Kylo Ren quests in search of the Emperor instead of Poe, Finn and Rey doing the same thing probably never existed. It’s also very perplexing – if you were wildly trying to simplify your film, why keep this detail that Kylo is originally against the Emperor, quests to find him, then immediately turns? Why not just have Sheev summon him hither and send the coordinates himself?

But ask too many questions like this and the whole edifice unravels: if Sheev spoke a message to the universe (in Fortnite), why would Poe et al need to hear it from Boolio? This is a film of parts rather than a whole, and that is the only way to love it.

Next: I made ‘Snoke’

Part 32 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

One of the interesting things about watching this movie in a randomised form is how little the energy of each scene changes. Aside from some minor jolts going to and from specific scenes of Palpatine blasting lightning at the sky or interminable spaceship combat with lasers going blip blip, everything is mostly proceeding at the same pace. Part of what makes that possible is that so many scenes are like this one, what you might call functional scenes – scenes that proceed from point A to point B in a mostly self-contained fashion. It’s rare that anything depends on something than hasn’t happened in the last five minutes.

Consider this scene, where the protagonist gang are reeling from the apparent death of Chewbacca immediately before, find out that C3P0 contains a secret message in his memory banks and decide to go get a shifty droid technician to extract it. You could take a pen to the script of Rise of Skywalker and remove the characters of Luke, Leia, Han and Lando and not have to change a word of this scene. You could remove Sheev and replace him with Snoke, or cut Kylo Ren. The only events this scene depends on are those which happened immediately before it.

It gives the film something of the property of JC Denton’s infamous monotone in Deus Ex – chopping it up generates something very self-similar to the original work. There are surely many films where chopping up the scenes at random would quickly render the whole incoherent. Even something deliberately non-linear like Nolan’s Memento would suffer from a totally arbitrary order. But here, where the individual scenes are so self-reliant, you just don’t lose very much from jumping about.

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All that aside, both halves of this are a swing and a miss: Hux’s presentation of Chewie to Richard E. Grant achieves little more than really driving home that Chewie isn’t dead, and thus that the protagonists are being idiots in their subsequent scene where Oscar Isaac really strains his acting muscles to pretend he has an issue with going to Planet Kojimi to get C3P0’s mind wiped. I don’t know if this is all reshoot material, but it’s interesting to note that the set is now dressed in a really half-assed manner with a bunch of fake spider webs and Oscar Isaac has suddenly grown a five-o-clock shadow.

Rise of Skywalker is not sending its best here. ‘For Chewie’ indeed. And look, to really nit pick, how are all these spiders getting into a spaceship anyway?

Next: The dead speak!

Part 31 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’

Remember Scene 25? This is the second half of Rey’s deeply obnoxious interaction with the ghost of Luke Skywalker on that island full of Porgs he secluded himself on. That was bad, if anything this is worse, all the smug satisfaction of Luke’s hectoring reappearance condensed into him standing ramrod straight, holding himself like a playing card monarch and moving his grotty old X-wing around like he’s conducting a symphony. Why isn’t Rey, the protagonist of this movie, performing the great feat of conquering your inner demons and silencing the mind? Is it common for the ultimate goal of a teacher to be the adulation of their students? Yet another reminder why his awful school failed.

Then it’s back to the Resistance base, because it’s time for C3P0 to get his memories back. Of the film’s many fake-out deaths, this one bothers me least: It’s exactly C3P0’s kind of misfortune to have bravely sacrificed himself in a way that’s trivially undone, and for it to happen at the hands of his knowing little friend R2D2 is appropriate. The dialogue between them is also simple, funny and well done, not going too hard on C3P0’s arrogance or dimwittedness as he wildly misinterprets the recent events of his life.

The purpose of returning to the Resistance base is so we can see their mild excitement at receiving a transmission from Luke(‘s X-Wing.) I’m not surprised that they don’t seem too blown away by what seems to be the ghost of Luke sending them radio messages. He certainly seems to be able to do everything else.

But it’s Rey of course, Rey has shrunk herself down to the size of a cell and is flying through a giant blood vessel to get to Exegol. All the bozos back at base are going to follow her. Brief shot of people running around the Resistance base set – how many times did they film people running around this set? Lando’s here! Presumably in recognition of the implausible nature of sending Maz Kanata out to inspire hope, this time it’s Lando filling in what should obviously be Leia’s role here, of doing some political canvassing for support back at whatever central galactic community exists that we never see in this film.

Next: ‘For Chewie’