The Rise of Skywalker Episode 9 Header 1200x676 1 Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - Huh? Is This a Movie?

Star Wars Rise of Skywalker – Huh? Is This a Movie?

I’m watching Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (Episode 9), and I’ll be honest here. What… what is it exactly that I’m watching? Is this supposed to be a movie? It doesn’t at all feel like I’m watching a movie. This feels like a 2 hour “Previously on Star Wars” recap sequence. Like, you know how on TV shows they have the ‘previously…’ part that plays before the episode, and it’s all these quick cuts that show the main plot points relevant to the upcoming episode?

That’s what this whole movie is. How much did this cost?

Who let them make this?

Clearly they just gave up on the whole idea of this trilogy after The Last Jedi fiasco, because Rise of Skywalker has ‘one foot out the door’ written all over it. What a bizarre turn of events. Remember the palpable excitement everyone had, including Disney, when they first acquired Star Wars? And now this movie just feels like “Yeah, fuck it, just one more guys, then we can all go home.”

Obviously this is nothing on Carrie Fisher, but her presence in this movie is bizarre. It feels like one of those parody interviews they do on comedy shows sometimes, where they take a real interview and cut in the comedian asking a stupid question so it looks like the interviewee is reacting to it. Since we all kind of read that format as a comedy beat, its presence in this movie is just fucking wacky.

Secondly, and this is the most important point to be made about this movie. What is this movie? Why is this movie? Rise of Skywalker feels like a midseason episode of Star Wars Rebels, not like the epic conclusion of a 9 movie trilogy. This movie should feel like Avenger’s Endgame and it absolutely does not. It’s clear The Last Jedi had no impact whatsoever on the greater plot, thus making it totally useless as a “part 2” of a trilogy (it’s more of a gaiden or a side story, I guess), but The Last Jedi had more grandiosity and higher stakes than this.

It spends all of its time having fanservice moments and retconning nonsense from The Last Jedi, but it doesn’t actually fix any of the problems. Rey is still ridiculously overpowered for no reason. They do this weird lightspeed jump thing at the start; if I’m remembering right, didn’t The Last Jedi famously establish that lightspeed jumping into things is a kamikaze move? Doesn’t feel like this movie’s wacky logic is even internally consistent across just 2 movies.

It feels like a bad Star Wars fanfic. I think… I think… and I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t really care, Disney should just have someone wake up and be like “holy shit it was all a dream” and go back to the drawing board on everything that happened after Return of the Jedi.

Remember when people loved Star Wars, and they loved all the expanded universe content and it was full of all these beloved characters like Dash Rendar, Mara Jade, Darth Revan, Admiral Thrawn, etc., etc.? They threw all that stuff out and gave us… this, and now Star Wars went from being something special to just being another washed out corporate franchise with all the edges sanded off and all the magic and originality sucked out. This franchise is just so… milquetoast now.

Like, I don’t know, I’m sure they’re going to keep making Star Wars stuff, but I almost feel bad for them. Like, you paid $4 Billion dollars or whatever for the goose that laid the golden egg, then you immediately dropped it on its head and gave it brain damage. No one made you drop it. Totally unforced error. It’s just kind of sad, and a little pathetic.

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  • Ryan Night

    Ryan Night is an ex-game industry producer with over a decade of experience writing guides for RPGs. Previously an early contributor at gamefaqs.com, Ryan has been serving the RPG community with video game guides since 2001. As the owner of Bright Rock Media, Ryan has written over 600 guides for RPGs of all kinds, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Tales of Arise.

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