This is it. The culmination of 42 years of galactic storytelling. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone to crack. However, while I don’t think The Rise of Skywalker really stuck the landing, it is a fun movie with a wild ride. Here is my review of Star Wars Episode 9 The Rise of Skywalker.

Just a warning of Spoilers from here on out. Don’t read if you don’t want things spoiled.

I’ve Got a Bad Feelings About This

My Star Wars history

I wasn’t alive when the first trilogy came out. Luckily, I had older siblings that brought me into the Force and the Jedi. I read all the books, played all the video games. Star Wars was life when I was in elementary and middle school. In fact, the first thing I ever tried to write was a Star Wars story.

So when the prequels came out I was super excited. My brother bought me a midnight premier ticket to go with to see it and that started a new tradition.

The Prequels

But the Prequels were rough.

The story was interesting, but the dialogue and the over-dependence on CGI didn’t thrill me in the way that the storytelling did in the Original Trilogy. Still, I enjoyed them for what they were.

I just wish that someone had stepped in and helped Lucas instead of just letting him run wild. The story definitely has some edges to it, but the dialogue is awful.

I think Lucas is a great storyteller. He has come up with some of the greatest stories in my history. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow, hell even the Ewok movies are part of who I am.

A More Civilized Time?

Then The Force Awakens came out. While there are some major issues with that story, namely that its almost beat-for-beat A New Hope, it was really the first Star Wars movie that I truly enjoyed in theaters. I would probably put The Force Awakens in my top three favorite Star Wars film, right behind Empire and A New Hope.

Then The Last Jedi came out. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I had some issues with it. For the most part, I felt like the story tried to make some good changes to the mythos, but they were all executed very poorly. It is the main story Star War movie that I’ve seen and liked the least. It lands at the very bottom of my list, but it has grown on me a little with age and as I watched it in preparation for The Rise of Skywalker.

Then there are the side stories like Rogue One and Solo that really just didn’t land very well. Rogue One didn’t give me any attachment to any of the characters and while the last scene was pretty awesome, the rest of the movie didn’t cut it for me. Solo came and went before I actually got to see it in the theater. I don’t know if it was fatigue or just lack of excitement. It also isn’t that great of a movie – but I wouldn’t be against a sequel if they scaled things down a bit and just told a good story without worrying about answering everything.

Then the trailers for The Rise of Skywalker came and it got me excited again. JJ Abrams was back in charge of the story and directing and I felt like things were in good hands. I was ready, but I had been burned so many times now that I tried to temper my excitement.

The Rise of Skywalker

This was a fun movie.

More than anything, I felt like the feeling of Star Wars was back. The characters were on the move. There was action everywhere. This felt like the fairytales that the story was meant to be.

That doesn’t mean that the story was perfect.

Still, this movie had excitement. Part of my issue with The Last Jedi – which I didn’t realize until looking at this review – is that not much really happens while everything is happening. I made mention of how the entire movie is the slowest chase in the world, but while the Resistance/Rebels are being chased, there is no real worry or urgency.

Skywalker keeps the action moving. Characters are in danger – although we know nothing will happen because of plot armor – still, we are along for the adventure instead of just waiting for things to happen.

The Force Is With Them

With the action comes some of the coolest lightsaber fights in Star Wars history. Building on the Force connection- which was made by Supreme Leader Snoke in the last movie but is still around- Rey and Kylo Ren battle each other in close-quarter combat while being in different locations.

This battle was stylistically, visually, and storywise amazing. I’m sure the scene was complicated to film, but it really paid off at the end. It also set up a part of the ending of the movie in a brilliant way.

All of the action set pieces were larger and grander in a scale that fits a movie of this magnitude.

The Dark Side of the Force

That said, there were some huge flaws that I felt detracted from the movie.

The Emperor Strikes Back

My first issue comes from the opening crawl and flows throughout the entire movie. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie yet!

The text tells us that the Emperor has broadcast a signal that he is back.

The opening crawl of a Star Wars film does usually tell us what has gone on since the last movie, but I can’t really remember the crawl just glancing over a plot point so big.

I personally didn’t feel satisfied with the way this happened. Just imagine if Kylo Ren had been looking for Rey and the Rebels and the signal came through. That would have been a much more impactful reveal than just saying he is back.

Also, I feel like bringing him back kind of takes away a lot of what this trilogy was trying to build. Kylo Ren had made himself into a pretty fearsome bad guy by the end of The Last Jedi. Why do we have to bring someone else in to take over the bad guy spot? It knocked his character down a peg and also brought in the redemption arc, which I’m not sure that we needed.

There is no real explanation about how he survived or where he has been this entire time either, which I felt like was needed with the way the screenwriters revealed him.

Rey, I am your (Grand)father!

One of the other things that this movie did was undo much of what The Last Jedi set up. Ironically, I don’t like that this movie did that even though I didn’t like The Last Jedi.

I’ve said it many times, that I liked what The Last Jedi tried to do, I just didn’t like how it did it. That didn’t mean that I thought it should be undone.

That starts with Rey’s heritage. We find out that Rey is the granddaughter of the Emperor. Um, what? When did he have kids? When did those kids have kids? There are so many questions that I have about it.

I really didn’t like that after having said that Rey’s parents were nobodies, they go and strong-arm her family into this new story. I know so many people thought about who her parents were after The Force Awakens. Then saying come from no one was a huge let them down. When they ended up saying she was a Palpatine, it wasn’t a good character change. If Rey had really come from nobodies, it would show that it didn’t matter what family you were born into you could be a hero.

Instead, now Rey comes from one of the biggest family names in the Galaxy. Sigh.

If Rey hadn’t had her family changed, would the ending have really been much different? I don’t think it would have had to change much.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Rose got the shaft.

When I wrote my own draft of what I wanted Episode 9 to be, I struggled to find a great spot for all the characters that had been introduced in The Last Jedi like Rose and the Code Breaker, but I didn’t leave them out.

This movie pushes Rose to the side and gets her out of the way for the most part. While the Code Breaker doesn’t even make an appearance.

Seems like there could have been a way to force them in (pun intended) instead of just pushing them to the side.

Perhaps the cast was getting too large, but then JJ went in and added more. The Knights of Ren make an appearance (I’m not sure why), there are smugglers and a new droid. I just don’t think they knew what to do with them so they cut them out.

The Force is Strong with My Family

So… Leia trained with Luke to become a Jedi at one point? Interesting that no one ever mentioned that before. Nor that Leia knew that her son would turn bad. Which didn’t really make much sense to me in the grand scheme of things? Why would you send him to be trained at all if you knew that his training would turn out that way? There seems to be a lot of missing details from that time period between the movies that could be explored and expanded upon. Maybe a Disney Plus series?

Maybe part of this was to explain Leia’s spacewalk in the last movie. Or to explain how Rey continued her training without Luke.

But these movies have always been about the Skywalkers and redemption. So of course through the course of the movie, Ben Solo gets redeemed. It was a safe choice if you ask me, but I’m sure that things were going to spiral that way. The signs had been there since The Force Awakens. I really wish that they had tried to come up with something different than Anakin’s story again.

I think it would have been better to follow the trail of The Last Jedi and push Kylo further. Don’t redeem him until he’s been defeated or something.

But, these choices don’t detract from the movie. It is still entertaining and left me wondering where they were going with it. It is just a shame that they didn’t take more chances.

I will say that I loved the end of the film where the character asks Rey who she is and she looks to Luke and Leia’s Force ghosts and then says that she’s a Skywalker. Unlike the walking back of her parents are nobodies, this line shows us that we can choose to be who we want to be. It brought a big smile to my face.

Cloudy the Future Is

I wish that The Lucasfilm powers that be had the foresight to plan out the trilogy in advanced. I think that they took a chance and let the directors break their own story. But it just created a mess because of the different visions.

It’s cool when a director can bring something new to the franchise, but for a cohesive story like this, you need to really hit the beats and be on the same page instead of reacting to the previous movie. And that is where this trilogy was ultimately let down.

I wonder what the story would have been like had JJ and George sat down and planned out the entire thing. Would everything be stronger if JJ had directed all three movies? I’m not sure, things could have fallen apart.

That leaves me excited that Kevin Feige will tackle a Star Wars movie. Feige is the mastermind behind the Marvel movie franchise. If someone with his foresight comes in, I think this universe could really expand and get to profitability. There really is so much potential.

So What Do I Really think of The Rise of Skywalker?

I really enjoyed the movie. I’m ready to go back and see it. The actions, characters, and plotlines come together in the end. It is hard to always go bigger and better than the previous stuff. It’s hard to raise the stakes higher than Jedi and you can’t really have a character turn like Revenge of the Sith.

Will everyone love the movie? No. The Star Wars fan base is rabid and can be pretty sith like. just remember that this is just a movie. There will be another eventually.

But when I left the theater I was happy. I was planning to go back and see it again, unlike The Last Jedi.

And one last note: Thank you to all that have been a part of this series. While I haven’t loved everything, I respect the hell out of the people that can create this stuff. I’d love to do it myself one day.

What did you think of The Rise of Skywalker? Let me know in the comments!