Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

In which there be medium-level spoilers.

When Lando Calrissian (played by Billy Dee Williams) triumphantly appears piloting the Millenium Falcon, during a deus ex machina moment in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, you can almost feel J.J. Abrams, who directed this ninth installment in the series, saying with tears in his eyes, “Look what else I’ve got for you!” Abrams assumes the role of a desperate father trying to captivate an impish, bored child. Rise of Skywalker is a weird mixture, in fact, of placation and reverence, in which sacred relics from the Star Wars universe are unsubtly trotted out to gin up the adulation of the fans, or to appease them. (They got so mad at Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, after all.) You can feel the lazy cultishness of the movie: Here’s the original X-wing jet that Luke flew in The Empire Strikes Back, here are some Ewoks, gazing wondrously toward the sky contemplating the end of the Dark Side, here’s Darth Vador’s mask, melted and crumpled like a rotted, fruit fly-infested jack-o-lantern a week after Halloween. 

I could get behind the Star Wars mania if its creators truly began treating it like a religion. (And yes, there apparently are practicing Jedis, but let’s ignore them for now.) Talk about a bold new direction for the Star Wars franchise! 

If only the Pope had allowed LucasFilm to premiere The Rise of Skywalker at the Vatican. And then, LucasFilm could buy up churches and convert them into Jedi sanctuaries, where every day is Star Wars. Come one, come all, and genuflect to the stations of the Star Wars cross. “May the Force be with you. And also with you. We lift up our hearts. We lift them up to the Force.” After you’ve demonstrated your zeal, you can purchase bits of Princess Leia’s chainmail bikini from Return of the Jedi at the gift shop, or debate the canonicity of The Mandalorian in the Skywalker Reading Room. No cash for the offering plates? You’re in luck! There are ATMS in all corners of the lobby.  

But sadly, this “final” entry in the franchise is far too careful for its own good. It yearns for approval. Stripped of its embarrassing need to please, The Rise of Skywalker might have had a chance. But there are still moments that work: Daisy Ridley, as the series’ rising Jedi apprentice, exudes a commanding presence, and when she delivers the line, “I have all the Jedi with me!”, there’s enough conviction to save it from being laughable. There’s a little bit of Rian Johnson’s visual poetry, such as the scene of Leia’s hand dropping as she breathes her last; moments later, as she is covered with a white sheet, the scene assumes a kind of Lazarus-in-the-tomb gothicness. 

Many of the sets possess an entrancing grandeur: the sleek blackness of the newest Death Star (a tired old trope nonetheless), the earth-toned grunginess of Kijimi, Poe’s old stomping grounds, the tempestuous ocean sequences where Finn (John Boyega) meets Jannah (Naomi Ackie), a warrior on horseback, at the edge of a cliff. But it’s Ridley who holds this film together, even as much of it falls apart around her from sheer sloppiness. (The return of the Emperor Palpatine, played by Ian McDiarmid, feels desperately tired.) 

Few of its dramatic moments (and there are many of them, too many it seems) land with any real weight. Adam Driver, returning as Kylo Ren, somehow seems muted, although he also displays a tenderness in this film that deepens his character, as well as the tension between he and Rey. Even the death of Leia feels somehow undernourished, perhaps because we had already experienced the death of Carrie Fisher in real life, before The Last Jedi. 

Sometimes, a Star Wars movie remembers that a character is better off, during an emotionally charged moment, saying nothing. But just as often a Star Wars movie forgets this, and we get such risible moments of overacting as Luke’s “That’s impossible!” (after D.V.’s big reveal in Empire) or even his “But I was going to go to the Toschi station to pick up some power converters!” in A New Hope. Rise of Skywalker hits about 50% of its marks in this category. Much of the worst dialogue feels insidiously didactic: Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) seems to tell every other character in the Rebellion how much he needs their help, as if the movie is trying to teach us how to behave. Be nice, be inclusive, don’t be arrogant. But, to channel Yoda, good life lessons do not good entertainment make. It’s cheap moralizing to match the film’s cheap sentiment, as the resistance fighters seem always poised to embrace in friendship. Cheap sentiment is grating and wasteful because it sabotages any possibility of an earned moment of feeling. 

One wonders how the death of Carrie Fisher impacted this film. I was curious to see firsthand how the filmmakers repurposed her scenes from The Force Awakens. The Fisher archive footage works surprisingly well considering the sad reality, but the scene in which the Rebellion reacts to news of Princess Leia’s passing, feels hastily executed and falls flat. “She’s gone,” a resistance fighter informs Poe and Finn and Rey when they return to home base. Somehow, the vagueness of the word “gone” doesn’t feel right. I kept wanting one of them to mutter  aloud, “Where did Leia go?” Is saying, “Leia has died” too dark for the viewers of Star Wars?

There are worse Star Wars movies than The Rise of Skywalker and there are better ones. Maybe the pressure alone–to produce a showstopper–dooms this movie from the get-go. But, all things considered, this movie is fine. It works about half the time. Even though much of it runs on autopilot, the film’s lazy pandering is maybe a relief: Would it kill me if The Rise of Skywalker were a masterpiece? No. But, is some part of me a little bit happy that the movie is only mediocre? Probably.

How will the world think about the three newest Star Wars films in ten years? In fifty years? They are not terrible films by any means. And they are lucky in at least one respect, because they followed the prequels, which seem to be universally reviled except by people who saw them as children, before the mythology of the original films could permeate them. The mass audience yearns for the past even as newer, less publicized movies continue to surprise us with their relevance for the present. In this era of nostalgia saturation, at what point will we feel the itch has been scratched, if ever? I wonder. 

Forced: The New Adventures of Old Star Wars

Note: I have made no attempts to conceal spoilers in this review, so read at your own risk.

After the last three films in the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens had nowhere to go but up. While all the superfans were still basking in their space opera reverie from opening weekend, I managed to see an afternoon showing of the latest Star Wars. Here’s my history regarding this franchise, in a nutshell: I resisted them until 4th grade because everyone else was so into them; then I really loved them for a few years, until one of my best friends—a Star Wars devotee if ever there was one, who made Star Wars home movies with his brother—scared me straight. I wasn’t going to be that cultish about it. (There were so many other things to be cultish about.) The Force Awakens is a relatively clever and entertaining jaunt into space opera, but it hits all its predictable beats with such self-satisfaction that you know what’s coming before it happens. This is pure nostaglic giddiness on the part of director J.J. Abrams, pure “Look-at-me-getting-to-direct-a-Star-Wars-movie!” 

Nostalgia is the wind in the sails of The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams has genuine affection for these movies, and he deftly adheres to all their idiosyncrasies. Force mirrors Star Wars (as in A New Hope) in a number of ways: it establishes new, young heroes Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), a new (old) threat in the form of Han and Leia’s corrupted Jedi son Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). And now Luke Skywalker has taken on the Ben Kenobi aura of mystery, having fled civilization in despair. (His attempts to train his nephew backfired, and he feels responsible for Kylo Ren’s conversion to the Dark Side.)

Rey is essentially the new Luke Skywalker, although Finn may sort of share that credit. Rey is a scavenger living on a bleak desert planet called Jakku, where she awaits the return of her family. (It's not quite clear what happened to them.) Her existence is very Mad Max. We see her trading machine parts for food and sitting with watchful yearning (like Luke did in A New Hope) for something better to happen to her. She's pulled into the drama of Star Wars via an adorable droid named BB-8, who's carrying important information regarding Luke Skywalker's whereabouts. (Another mirror-plot checkpoint.)

Let’s remember that the original Star Wars was itself a nostalgia trip, culled by George Lucas from serials he remembered watching on Saturday mornings as a child. That makes The Force Awakens a nostalgia trip within a nostalgia trip; add to that the fact that the kids who grew up on the originals have now lived long enough to spawn their very own Star Wars-loving progeny, and you’ve essentially got third-hand mythology. That was why, about an hour into the movie, I began to pull away from it. The new characters’ stories are compelling, but Abrams cannot fully overcome the ring of familiarity. And he’s too much in love with the series to really want to, try as he might.

There are little moments of humor that really pop, and the performances of the three young leads are winning. Acting has improved so much over the years that they’re leagues ahead of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill when they first debuted in 1977. Those three, naturally, return for this new installment, with varying degrees of screen time. (Hamill seemed like a no show for most of the film, but Abrams pays it off smartly at the end.) 

J.J. Abrams has a knack for tweaking pop culture iconography into his own re-packaged product. But I’m not sure that qualifies him as a storyteller. It’s perhaps good enough that Abrams is better than George Lucas. But as a director—of movies, particularly—Abrams is erratic. Some of the action (meaning plot development, not merely fight scenes and explosions) is well-structured, like the climactic lightsaber showdown between Rey and Kylo Ren. At other times, Abrams fails to fully set up a scene. When Rey is attacked by some stormtroopers in a marketplace, we see it from afar through the perspective of Finn. The scene doesn't really work unless we're up close, watching Rey's reaction, watching her fend off the stormtroopers, rooting for her. Of course, the purpose of putting it from Finn's perspective is to have him rush to save her, only to get there after Rey has dispensed with her attackers on her own. She doesn't need his help. It's a cool, enlightened moment for a Star Wars movie, and yet the scene doesn't totally work as structured.

Likewise, the dialogue fluctuates in quality. Abrams wisely goes for silence in two key dramatic scenes: when Rey and Leia embrace after the death of Han Solo, and when Rey hands Luke Skywalker his lightsaber at the end. It’s hard to imagine any dialogue that wouldn’t have sounded cheesy in those moments. But in other scenes, the dialogue is laboriously clunky, like a laughably bad moment when Han Solo and Leia discuss their son’s temptation to the dark side, like they’re expounding on the ingredients of a chicken soup recipe. It’s some of the worst dialogue in the movie: utterly lacking in emotional truth, and utterly functional. (Perhaps it’s an ode to George Lucas’s hackneyed dialogue.)

Pauline Kael once said that Star Wars was like a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes. J.J. Abrams has adopted a similar storytelling method. He doesn’t have the patience to let the weighty moments in the story be earned. They’re revealed quickly and haphazardly—like when Kylo Ren removes his mask. (Remember it took us three movies to see Darth Vador’s face.) And when the young man kills his father—the beloved Han Solo—it feels both too late and too soon. (Harrison Ford apparently wanted Lucas to kill his character off in Return of the Jedi, but Lucas balked at shooting such a dark ending.) It’s the right choice, but a misplaced one. Perhaps it should have happened in Part Two, but without Solo’s death, The Force Awakens would have no dramatic weight to it.

But despite all my quibbles, I basically enjoyed The Force Awakens, even if I was expecting more from it. It's certainly better than the previous three installments, although that's not saying much, and Abrams has potentially laid the groundwork for a really first-rate middle section just like the original trilogy did with/for Empire Strikes Back. We'll have to wait and see.

With Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Lupita Nyong’o, Domnhall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Max Von Sydow.

Star Wars

Star Wars (1977) is really a lot of fun to heckle. When Luke Skywalker whines, "I wanted to go into town and get power converters," I laughed hysterically and re-wound it to listen again. When Carrie Fisher's voice slips into that horrible English accent--slightly evocative of Julie Andrews--I couldn't help myself, even though I love Carrie Fisher. "Thah rebellion will slip through yoor feen-guhs." I recalled listening to the audiobook of Fisher's wonderful memoir Wishful Drinking, where she makes fun of her role in Star Wars and especially at that tyrannical madman George Lucas, the creator of this monstrous franchise. Fisher took acting lessons in England, where she learned elocution techniques that served her well in the first 30 minutes of Star Wars. But as soon as some real crisis emerges, the blowsier Carrie Fisher--with the less pretty, decidedly un-mid-Atlantic tongue-- emerges. That's the Carrie Fisher I love. The one who plays an alcoholic has-been sitcom writer that terrifies Liz Lemon in an early episode of 30 Rock. (I highly recommend Wishful Drinking. If you like Carrie Fisher, you'll like her even more. If you dislike George Lucas, you'll have even more reason to jeer at him after you hear about his strict no-underwear policy for Princess Leia's costume.) But don't let me catch you bashing Ms. Fisher. She always seems to be the butt of jokes because of her very public struggles with addiction and mental illness. But I find her honesty and her humor truly uplifting.

Instead, I want all of you haters to channel your rage at George Lucas, the man who destroyed American cinema, a man so full of himself that he has succeeded in coasting on the success of Star Wars for nearly 40 years. He made another "classic"--American Graffiti--before that. It's nothing more than a bland nostalgia trip to the America of the 50s and early 60s. Likewise, Star Wars is a kind of nostalgia trip too. A trip to boyhood adventure-land, where men battle each other and say, without irony, "it always helps to have a blaster at your side." Guys like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas turned cinema into their own personal childhood playgrounds.  

Star Wars grabs all the classic story archetypes and throws them into one big pot. There's plenty of corny dialogue too. What results is an admittedly compelling story of very, very big proportions. But most of the good stuff doesn't come until the sequel. One cannot deny George Lucas's vivid imagination. He obviously spent a lot of time thinking up side characters and names of planets and other aspects of this world. (Perhaps it was all part of the marketing plan. Why else would characters who got three seconds in the film get turned into action figures for sale to the kiddos?)

One can, however, deny Lucas's ability to do anything with actors. (See Portman, Natalie and McGregor, Ewan.) Pauline Kael said it most deliciously, that they were educated at the "Ricky Nelson School of Acting." The performances aren't embarrassing, and they do improve over time. But the first installment is pretty banal. Star Wars is still kind of exciting in a cheap way, and there are lots of colorful characters, like all the slimy creatures the farm boy Luke Skywalker meets in that sleazy bar. But this movie is essentially an empty-headed adventure tale. Mindless entertainment is certainly not a crime. There are a lot of wonderful examples of it. But Star Wars is a double sinner in this regard: it's mindless and cinematically pretty uninteresting. Nothing is ever really dangerous enough to keep you in suspense. It's the kind of bland, safe entertainment that parents think is good for their kids. (A good example of the opposite: the novels of Roald Dahl, whose young characters were never spared the horrors of life. Those stories are marvelously colorful and smart.)

As a child I resisted watching the Star Wars films for what I thought was a long time. It wasn't until 4th grade that I sat down and viewed them all. By then all my friends were well-versed in the lore. My brother (five-and-a-half years older) had the action figures. He was old enough to be taken to Return of the Jedi and then promptly removed from the theater after Jabba the Hut scared the living hell out of him. So I was certainly aware of Star Wars. I was just trying to hold out for as long as possible. (Does this make me one of those wretched hipsters?) When I finally watched them I was captivated. I spent a few years being a Star Wars nerd, even writing a Star Wars novel in 6th grade. But eventually I grew out of my Star Wars mania and went on to other kinds of mania. I'm so happy I did. I can't quite figure out why so many have chosen to linger behind. Come to us. It's wonderful over here where other movies besides Star Wars exist.

Of course, you already know who plays who, but here are a few notes on the cast: Harrison Ford's sarcastic mugging is weirdly reminiscent of Chevy Chase's. Ford has that same rugged, scruffy look but with a shorter face and of course a stronger on-screen persona. As the farm boy who gets caught up in galactic-sized political struggles, Mark Hamill is upstaged by just about everyone around him, but he's plucky enough to be likable, and likability is enough in this movie. Peter Cushing is great fun as the wicked general who's leading the dark empire against the small but feisty rebellion. The generals talk and look like Nazis, and the rebels act like Americans fighting the British for independence. James Earl Jones gives the most magnetic performance, providing the voice of Darth Vador. With Alec Guinness as an aging wizard who wants to pass his mystical religion onto Luke, Peter Mayhew as the endearing fuzzy giant Chewy, and Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker as the bickering robot couple.