Mark Reviews Movies: STAR WARS: EPISODE IX

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2019

Since the first one, the opening text crawls of the Star Wars films have set up the plot in the most basic of terms, but none has done as much heavy lifting or created such a sense of dread for what's to come than the one in Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. It yells at us, "The dead speak!" Then, the real shock arrives: A broadcast from the long-dead emperor, whose dominion rose and fell (Well, reverse that, since we saw the stories of the rise after the stories of the fall) over the course of the six films before this new trio of sequels, has been heard across the galaxy.

This new installment, a disappointing and wholly anticlimactic finale to both this sequel trilogy and the whole of the nine-episode saga, was co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams. Abrams, of course, displayed more than a bit of unwillingness to take these stories in a new direction with Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. In a way, that was fine, considering the film had to introduce new characters and find a way for their journeys to fit within the big picture of an epic saga, as well as specifically within the lives of the characters from the original films.

Writer/director Rian Johnson actually made the debate between the old and the new the heart of his Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. That film cared so deeply about the characters—old and new—and the mythology of these tales that the filmmaker put them to a test with his expectation-matching-and-shattering story. The old characters, especially Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker, were given new depth, and the new characters finally seemed to be charting their own course—part of the old tales in terms of plotting but also very much their own journeys. Johnson found the right balance.

With the opening exposition and the movie's dialogue-free prologue, Abrams puts a decisive end to the debate between the old and the new, as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), slaughtering and flying his way across the galaxy, discovers an ancient, hidden world. There, he meets Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid)—who seems in pretty good health, considering our last image of him, falling into a great pit within a planet-killing weapon just before it's blown up—in the flesh. Palpatine wants to begin his empire again, and he believes that Kylo will be the perfect right-hand man for that job.

Everything about this final chapter, then, is defined by the old, even going so far as to resurrect a dead villain (without any explanation beyond a throwaway line about evil science and magic, mind you) just so Abrams, his co-screenwriter Chris Terrio, and the audience can feel comfortable in knowing exactly where this story will go and how it will unfold. The plot itself has our heroes, now just pawns with bland personalities in a world-hopping adventure, fetching assorted relics in their quest to find Palpatine and, once again, to put an end to his reign of seemingly immortal terror.

Rey (Daisy Ridley), who is preternaturally strong in the Force and whose destiny was an open question at the end of the previous film, has undergone training with Leia (the late Carrie Fisher) and is still drawn toward the dark side of that mystical power. She's the most fascinating character here, although that's certainly not on account of the fact that we learn her true lineage (which just raises many more questions). Her inner fight between good and ill continues, although it's put on hold for a while so that all of those clues to Palpatine's location can be found.

As for our other protagonists, Finn (John Boyega), the reformed stormtrooper, has become a devoted hero in the Resistance against the First Order (which Palpatine had controlled, apparently, meaning that the villainous organization is now just what it always seemed to be—a generic copy of the Empire). Poe (Oscar Isaac) has become a leader and still remains reckless in his ways. The three characters set off on their search for a compass to Palpatine's location, and aside from some early bickering between Rey and Poe (as well as Finn wanting to tell Rey something that, since it's never spoken, must not be too important), there's nothing to these characters or their relationships that shows much personality, let alone growth.

The action sequences, at least, are broadly entertaining. We get a couple of neat chases. One has Poe outrunning fighters in the Millennium Falcon by repeatedly jumping to light speed, putting the ship in assorted dangers, and another on a desert planet, against hovering ships and rocket-powered soldiers, is familiar but dynamic. A couple of duels between Rey, who wants revenge, and Kylo, who wants her to turn dark and join him, keep making us question on which side of the good/evil coin either one will land.

This shouldn't seem like a coin flip, though. That's what can happen when characters, their development, and their choices take a backseat to spectacle and misguided nostalgia. Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker latches its existence to the past, and in doing so, the movie fails its own characters and story.

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