Star Wars – Rise of Skywalker. A Review. No Spoilers.

Well, the Rise of Skywalker is here. It is the concluding episode from that galaxy far, far away. At least until the next one.

Although there is the sense that Star Wars, despite its resurgence, is disappearing to lick its wounds over the underperforming Solo, and the (possibly unfairly) battered The Last Jedi, which released a plot hole the size of a MC85 Star Cruiser jumping to hyperspace through a Mega-class Star Dreadnought, and Luke Skywalker breastfeeding from trunkless sea-elephants, or whatever they were called. For all those who shook early 1980s Christmas presents hopefully listening for the rattling of a Tauntaun, or a Land Speeder, well, part of your childhood is finally coming to an end.

There’s something about Star Wars that you either love, or think is sci-fi space twoddle of the lowest order. For all those who prefer their science fiction with generous scoops of Russian intellectualism matched only by the minimalism of the sets, there’s those busily calculating how much it would cost to build the franchise’s favourite spaceship, which is effectively a character. The Millennium Falcon would apparently cost £1,988,348,881 to build, even if technology like its hyper-drive have yet to be invented.

So, JJ Abrams having wrestled the franchise back from Rian Johnson, is back in the directing seat. There’s the sense that after Johnson took the helm and changed the direction of the trilogy Abrams is now wrestling the wheel of the car from a someone who apparently hadn’t seen a Star Wars film before, and thought a self-exiled jedi required fish nuns to do his steam-press ironing.

It’s a worrying start to Rise of Skywalker, as the familiar word crawl – a long time ago.. reveals an exclamation mark. I mean really? However, in contrast to recent outings, this time the set up is actually intriguing. It pulls no punches. (slight spoiler): but the suspected continued existence of the Emperor Palpatine pulls you in. You’re interested, as opposed to wondering why you should be interested in tax evasion in the outer rim.

The worst thing about the Last Jedi was nonsense like municipal droids such as BB8 blowing up high-grade military hardware like AT-STs. I know that sounds geeky, but it always felt like your burglar system chasing the perps down the garden path and arresting them. There’s so little of this buffoonery in episode 9 that you want to personally thank JJ Abrams for not being a dick. I mean the fact I’m even saying that tells you all you need to know about how far Star Wars had drifted from the hands of its fans. Abrams’ restraint is admirable, although that’s not to say that the fleet of hundreds of star destroyers floating in close planetary orbit doesn’t take your breath away; it does, and rightly so. The shadows threat of the floating fleet is utterly awesome in the old sense of the word, as opposed to simply liking a YouTube channel a lot.

Abrams has the challenge of wrapping up three trilogies, whilst undoing some of the events of previous ones so they fit together. There’s the appearance of so many characters that he manages to throw ten balls up before finding another 10. There’s some new characters, an early droid model called D-O, or Cone Head, and this time around there’s even purpose for C3-PIO, who has spent the last two films wandering around muttering to himself, much like committed Star Wars fans who had very different ideas of what should happen, but without access to Disney script meetings.

The Star Wars cinematic matte paintings were always impressive and the scope of this film takes so many references and scenes from the other films that it’s almost a guided tour of the ruined universe; Star Wars ruin porn if you will. And it doesn’t suffer from criticism aimed at the Force Awakens, which was seen as a re-run of the original A New Hope. This story feels new. There’s no bar scene this time, it’s replaced by a sort of Burning Man festival, and thankfully no stupid CGI horses, although there is a slightly idiotic cavalry charge along the decks of a Star Destroyer.

It’s far from perfect, some of the new characters still never really take hold, although Poe Dameron finds his feet, Daisy Ridley can barely act her way through a door, although she’s much better in this. Meanwhile Adam Driver finally gets to grip with the point of Kylo Ren, which at times is mesmerising. It’s also impossible to know who’s piloting the Millennium Falcon, and it’s prescient arrival when needed is no longer holds the surprise it once did as Han Solo hollered: ‘You’re all clear, kid! Now let’s blow this thing and go home!”

Previously there were too many crowd-pleasing scenes, if your crowd consists of 5-year-olds, but the Rise of Skywalker does a good job accepting its audience is now mainly adults, albeit ones that still collect toys and sketch Tatooine’s moisture evaporators during executive meetings. The gormless and cluttered prequels are all but buried by this film. And what’s probably most impressive is that the final predictable space battle is outshone by the events between Kylo Ren and Rey, which leads to an unexpected emotional finale concluding not only the nine films, but also the childhood of those who were once mesmerised by the events in a galaxy far far away.

The WHSmith Fresh Talent novel the Life Assistance Agency, and it’s follow up Unfinished Business, as thoroughly recommended for winter reading and can be purchased from Foyles here:

https://bit.ly/35Svcrj

and from Amazon here: https://amzn.to/37VnsGP

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A version of this post was previously published on LifeAssistanceAgency and is republished here with permission from the author.

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