Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Review

This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review every movie I see.

This is a really weird movie for me to review. While I personally really enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, I also have to acknowledge there are a LOT of structural flaws throughout the course of the movie. It's another one of those instances where I want to give it a four subjectively and a three objectively, but unlike Timeless, where I ultimately decided my objectivity outweighed my subjectivity for that movie, this time, it's smack-dab in the middle and doesn't lean one way or the other. While I wouldn't say this is a better film than The Force Awakens, I might have personally preferred it. But, okay, I've talked about my general opinion on this movie, what are my specific opinions?

Well, the sound design and visual effects are beyond outstanding. The cinematography and scenery in this film are absolutely gorgeous, the actions sequences are epically choreographed and incredibly intense, and the CGI is just incredible. There's a fight sequence or two that takes place on a ship crashed in the middle of the ocean, waves crashing all around the characters, that had me on the edge of my seat. In fact, most of the actions sequences had me tensed up in my chair. They're a ton of fun and really well-executed. There's some de-aging CGI used on a character in one brief sequence that looked absolutely phenomenal as well, and the movie perfectly captures its space settings really well.

I also thought the performances were really good. Daisy Ridley is the bests she's ever been, John Boyega is charming as always, the integration of Carrie Fisher's unused footage into this movie is pretty much seamless, and Oscar Issac's Poe is the most interesting he's ever been as a character. C-3PO, R2-D2, BB-8, and Chewie are just as charming as they always are and it's great seeing quite a few returning characters and hearing small snippets of surprise return voices throughout the course of this movie.

That being said, throughout this entire film, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something off about a lot of the development. For the first half an hour or so of the movie, for some reason, I had a lot of trouble keeping track of the story. I was trying to keep what happened in The Last Jedi fresh in my mind and I think that just screwed me over from the start because I had a hard time following what was happening for a while. In fact, it got to the point where I wondered if I would have to give this movie 2.5 stars because I wouldn't know how to feel about it by the end. After a while, I got into the rhythm of the story being told and it felt much more fluid, but there are still a lot of story elements that don't make any sense. Ray and Kylo can do things with the Force like move entire ships and transport items between each other that don't make any sense. The Force has never been established to be able to allow the teleportation of items, and there's no way in hell I'm buying that Ray is strong enough to move an entire ship.

There's a moment where something seemingly happens to a character, but then they quickly write it off by saying that something different must have happened, which didn't make any sense. There's also quite a few rushed arcs in this movie as well. A new droid is brought onto the team in a minute-long introduction sequence at most, and the main team leaving the planet they've been hiding out on didn't feel like it was given enough emotional weight because the dynamics between the characters weren't set up well enough. Also, in my opinion, the third act of this movie really starts to falter. It tries to juggle so many subplots and character arc resolutions and it never fully commits or delivers to any of them. As a result, the sequence as a whole feels choppy, rushed, and sometimes hard to follow, despite the incredible special effects and action sequences. I thought the actual ending of this film was brilliant and resolved the primary arc probably as well as they could have, but the climax of the film just had too much to focus on at once and just felt so jumbled.

So, overall, where do I stand on this movie? Well, I'm still not the biggest Star Wars fan in history after seeing this movie. Big surprise. I will say, though, that this film was the most engaging for me out of any of the rest of the trilogy, and there's part of me that can't help but wonder if I may like it more if I see it again. There are so many choppy character arcs and there is so much choppy editing in this movie, but overall, I thought that this ended the new trilogy about as well as it could have, given the weird plot developments that The Last Jedi introduced into the series. In my opinion, the visual effects and action sequences alone are enough for me to recommend this movie, especially to Star Wars fans. Of course, I still think the original trilogy is much better than this trilogy, but The Rise of Skywalker definitely pleasantly surprised me. Now I've just gotta figure out when to watch the prequels... and Rogue One... and when I should re-watch Solo. Oh, boy, I'm not gonna enjoy that one.

Letter Grade: B+