Nerds That Geek Movie Review – ‘Star Wars: Episode XI – The Rise of Skywalker’

Written by Joel T. Lewis

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM. YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I don’t know what it felt like May 25, 1983 when Return of the Jedi was released. I can’t remember disappointment, or elation, or apathy because I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been born yet. ROTJ was just part of the trilogy, it existed, without question. It belonged there because that’s all of Star Wars that existed. And it was the end of Star Wars. 
 
I do remember what it felt like coming out of Revenge of the Sith. I experienced that on the walk from the theater to the car with my family. I remember I was sad. Like a light had gone out in the world. Not because I thought the movie was bad, I remember enjoying it quite a lot. I enjoyed all the prequels as they came out. It was Star Wars. It was brand new Star Wars, and it was awesome. As I walked to the car, and on the ride home, right up until we put our VHS copy of A New Hope in the VCR, I felt like it was really over. That we’d never have Star Wars again. 
 
I can’t really pin down what it felt like coming out of The Rise of Skywalker. I know the first review I sent was a text to my friend: a GIF of a shrugging Tony Stark and the words, “It’s not bad but I rolled my eyes a lot.” And as I poured over the impressions of others on Twitter last night and skimmed a few review videos this morning, searching in that millennial way for validation of my feelings I said to my partner what I’ve said a thousand times before in relation to Star Wars, “I hate this thing I love.” 
 
I think we all do, and I think Star Wars is perhaps the most visual fandom where this is the case. I think we feel such extreme emotion, such acute dejection, because they’re stories that touched our soul. They showed a world that never was, in which magic and adventure, friendship and hope could win out, spur us on, and make the impossible attainable. And when that promise, that light falls short of what we’ve projected it to mean, to be about, what it’s supposed to do, we feel betrayed, misled, abandoned. I don’t know that I’m reviewing a movie, or diagnosing fandom disappointment, or doing both very poorly, but I hope that my reflections here ring true, or at the very least come across as earnest as they are intended. 
 
The Emperor is back, and he’s spent the years since his fall amassing a fleet of superlaser equipped Star Destroyers which he calls the “Final Order.” Supreme Leader Kylo Ren travels to the unknown regions of the galaxy to the lost planet of Exegol where Palpatine reveals that he was indeed behind Snoke and strikes a deal with Ren, exchanging the might of his fleet for the death of Rey. Finn, Poe, and Chewie retrieve a message from a spy embedded in the ranks of the First Order revealing the return of the Emperor and the fleet. Rey continuing her Jedi training under the tutelage of General Leia Organa recognizes the planet Exegol from a journal of the late Master Luke Skywalker who had tried to find the mysterious Sith world before shutting himself off from the force. Poe, Finn, Rey, Chewie, and C-3PO set out to the last planet Skywalker had visited in search of a clue which would lead him to a map to Exegol. 
 
The adventurers discover a Sith dagger inscribed with the clue, but in a rare moment of ineptitude, C-3PO is unable to translate it because of some outdated security software. Before leaving the planet, Chewbacca is captured by the Knights of Ren and Kylo and Rey fight a force pull tug of war over the troop carrier the Knights are departing in. Frustrated and incensed by Kylo’s presence, Rey inadvertently destroys the ship with the all too familiar blue lightning made famous by the Emperor himself. Shaken by the loss of Chewie, the crew head to an old haunt of Poe Dameron’s in search of a droid technician with the ability to bypass C-3PO’s security measures. 3PO (who shines throughout this whole movie) agrees to the dangerous procedure with the knowledge that doing so will wipe out his memories. While attempting to sneak past the First Order on the planet Kijimi, Poe is confronted by an old flame Zorii Bliss who decides to help the crew find the droid tech (rather than blow Dameron to smithereens). The dagger inscription is decoded revealing that the map to Exegol is in the Emperor’s chambers in the wreckage of the second Death Star on one of the moons of Endor. 
 
Once 3PO’s mind has been wiped, Rey senses Chewbacca’s presence on Kylo Ren’s command ship above the surface of Kijimi and they rocket toward the ship to rescue him. Rey separates from the group in search of the Sith dagger and speaks to Kylo through their connection in the force. Ren reveals that her parents were no one because they chose to be, but that her parentage is not so obscure as she believes. Poe and Finn manage to rescue Chewie only to be caught themselves and sentenced to death, but General Hux who happens to be the spy that sent them the warning about the Final Order fleet, saves them. Poe, Finn, and Chewie escape via the Millennium Falcon, and Kylo confronts Rey on the landing platform of his command ship. Rey demands to know her parents’ origins and Kylo tells her that she is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine whose son and daughter in-law left Rey on Jakku to protect her from her grandfather’s machinations. Floored by this, but not destroyed Rey jumps from the landing platform to the lowered ramp of the Falcon and escapes. 
 
They then travel to the moon of Endor and Rey uses the outline of the dagger to pinpoint the exact location of Palpatine’s chambers. She enters them and finds the map to Exegol but is then confronted by a force vision of herself, turned to the Darkside, wielding a dual-bladed lightsaber. After crossing blades with this apparitional representation of her worst fear, Rey escapes only to be confronted again by Kylo Ren. As the two dual dodge the crashing waves of the second Death Star’s watery grave, General Organa has an epiphany and reaches out to her son through the Force for one last time trying to save his soul. Her call out to him gives him pause, long enough for Rey to plunge her saber through his chest. Leia passes from this last exertion, and Rey instead of allowing her enemy to die, heals Kylo’s wound with the force before leaving him stranded and taking his ship. 

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Rey retreats to the planet of Luke Skywalker’s exile, Ahch-to, and destroys the ship she stole from Kylo, and as she moves to throw her lightsaber into the fiery wreckage of the fighter, the Force ghost of Luke appears to stay her hand. Rey explains her desire to follow from Luke’s example, to cut herself off from the force in order to prevent herself from living up to her family name. Luke imparts to her that the cause for which he and Leia fought, the cause that Rey is now fighting for is more powerful than blood and gives her Leia’s lightsaber, his old X-wing, and points out that Kylo had the map to Exegol in his ship. 
 
Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base of operations and are told that Leia has passed, and that Poe has been named as commander of the Resistance. As they are reeling from the weight of their new positions of command, they receive navigation instructions from Rey who is making her way to Exegol. They devise a plan to knock out the navigation tower on the planet’s surface to prevent the deployment of the Final Order fleet and send Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian to call for help from the major systems to make their final stand against the Emperor’s forces. As Rey enters the subterranean lair of the mechanically sustained Emperor, we cut back to Kylo Ren who, shaken by the mercy of his rival and the plea of his mother is then confronted by the memory of his father. Han Solo returns, not as a Force ghost but perhaps just within the mind of Kylo and gives his son the opportunity to replay their last encounter, and this time Ben Solo emerges and rejects the cruel weapon of the dark side. 

Rey confronts the Emperor at the center of his legion of Sith cult followers and it is revealed to her that it was never his intention to kill her. His plan was to have her kill him and absorb the power of all of the Sith that had come before so that she might sit upon his throne, the Empress Palpatine by birthright. Ben arrives, defeats the Knights of Ren and stands by Rey’s side as a huge number of ships arrive to render aid to the despairing Poe Dameron whose plan seems to be unraveling. The Emperor then saps the life from Rey and Ben, restoring himself to his former abilities and turns his awesome might skyward, ripping apart the ships of the Resistance with crackling tendrils of blue lightning. Rey calls out to the Jedi of the past, calling for them to “be with me” and hears the voices of Anakin, Luke, Leia, Mace Windu, Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Qui-Gon Jinn who rally her to confront the Emperor, rebounding his lightning with the crossed lightsabers of Luke and Leia. The Emperor defeated and the fleet halted, Rey collapses, dead by all accounts until Ben heals her through the Force and takes her place dissolving into the Force, redeemed at last. 
 
Rey returns to the Lars moisture farm on Tatooine and lays the Skywalker lightsabers to rest, sporting her own yellow bladed weapon, and as she turns to leave a weather-beaten traveler asks her, her name, and she responds, “Rey Skywalker.”
 
Look, it’s far from the worst Star Wars Film, and if I’m honest there aren’t many things, I would prefer to watch over even a bad Star Wars film. As a staunch defender of The Last Jedi and its cavalier rejection of much of The Force Awakens’ mysteries, my gut reaction to the damage control J.J. Abrams does throughout this film is disgust. There are so many efforts to discount and reject the stance of Rian Johnson’s film and since I liked all those things, it frustrated me. But if I’m honest with myself it’s just Abrams doing the same thing to Johnson that Johnson did to him. I can’t really fault Abrams for giving the finger to Johnson just because I liked the philosophy behind the finger that Johnson gave to him. 
 
What was so disappointing in this film for me was how safe all of the choices were, but also how non-committal some of the pretty shocking and interesting choices were. Teasing Chewie’s death at the hand of Rey, which was such a gut-check moment and would have been such an interesting and conflicting character development is utterly pointless and frustrating when it’s revealed to not have happened. It feels like Abrams himself couldn’t decide which lane to choose. Also, General Hux turning out to be a spy really goes nowhere and was ultimately just an excuse to move the plot along. Finally, with Rey’s stabbing Kylo, seeming to kill him only to heal him seconds later just seemed to undermine the finality, the darkness that Rey had demonstrated in trying to cut him down as his mother called out to him. It seemed to put Rey in a position where her actions had no real consequences. 
 
I’m also frustrated with the “follow the journal to find the clue, to find the map, but translate the clue, and the outline of the dagger is also part of a map, to find the map” McGuffin inception nature of the plot, which I think stems mainly from Abrams attempting to cram two movies worth of quest and discovery into one film. There were just too many deviations and qualifications to the search for Exegol to engage with where no leg of that journey seemed useful or necessary to the extent that it should be a major plot point. I also need to just say briefly that Rey being a Palpatine (as confusing and unlikely as Palpatine having children would be) really adds nothing to her character and seems like a pretty ham-fisted attempt to explain away her strength in the force. I know this is one of the main theses of Last Jedi and Abrams is “correcting” it but it’s an example of those course corrections that I like least. 
 
On the positive side, this is the most I’ve liked C-3PO. I have to give that to Abrams and Anthony Daniels. I think the character dynamics in this film are really solid. I liked Poe, Finn, and Rey all together and quipping back and forth. I love the film visually. The lightsaber battles were solid, and Palpatine’s Sith lair was really creepy and ominous. I’m disappointed and deflated but its Star Wars. I’ll most likely see it again in theaters because why wouldn’t I? It was safe and I think it will likely be a crowd pleaser, but I just don’t think that it pushes any boundaries or works to surprise you. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or on Twitter @JoelT18. Until Next Time, Geek On!

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