The Rise of Skywalker: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

How Episode IX sticks the landing (s)

(For those up for some additional reading about The Rise of Skywalker and how I feel about it, I direct you to this article I wrote for Humugus with lots of editorial help from the wonderful John Devore: “I’ve Seen ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 15 Times.”)

So, let’s get this right out in the open: the general consensus is that The Rise of Skywalker was not great. I know life-long fans that say they literally hate Episode IX. What I’m writing below isn’t really meant as a refutation of anyone else’s view: people can think what they like. I just feel pretty differently about it than most. (Or maybe differently than the most vocal, which wouldn’t actually be all that new for Ahch-To Baby.) I also think, to be frank, that our consensus-building tools are pretty flawed. Lots of films that were dismissed upon release have been reclaimed or reassessed over time. I have little doubt Episode IX will undergo that same reassessment eventually. But, I thought it was worth acknowledging where the film stands as of this writing in esteem of many critics and fans.

So, with that out of the way…my thoughts about Episode IX.

2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was burdened with a to-do list as long as a Super Star Destroyer. It had to reach a satisfying conclusion to the story set up by The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi; present an original story of its own; and complete a nine-picture, 42-years-in-the-making, central-to-popular-culture saga, too. That’s a lot to accomplish - it’s kind of everything to accomplish - even under ideal conditions. Conditions, though, were not ideal: the original director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow was replaced just before shooting commenced, and the film’s spiritual center, Carrie Fisher, passed away prior to filming as well.

Especially considering the impossible expectations and behind-the-scenes challenges, to my eye, The Rise of Skywalker rises to the occasion. Episode IX connects dots, delivers surprises, and weaves narrative threads. It deftly uses technology and existing footage to maintain General Leia Organa’s presence in the picture. It does all this while committing to the traditional structure and language of Star Wars. Yes, it’s as distinct from The Last Jedi as Return of the Jedi was from The Empire Strikes Back, maybe even more so, but it has its very own theory of the case of Star Wars, and delivers it with verve.

Here are a few ways I think the film works.

JEDI VS SITH

First, I would say the success of The Rise of Skywalker rests on its properly identifying the Saga’s final, unresolved conflict, which is the struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. The preceding chapter, Episode VIII, leaves quite a lot of the surrounding story all-but-concluded. We've seen Snoke defeated, Rey trained, Luke Skywalker pass into legend, we even see proof that there are force sensitive children out there, ready to become the next generation of heroes. The penultimate chapter feels very ultimate in that respect. But Episode IX reasserts that the Sith are the central antagonists of Star Wars, that their battle with the Jedi is the meta-text of original nine episodes, and it is still lingering. To truly complete the trilogy of trilogies, the Sith must be overcome and the Jedi triumphant. The conflict between the Jedi and Sith was the final piece of the narrative puzzle.

How was this puzzle piece put in place? The return of Emperor Palpatine.

Yes, it’s the meme’d-to-no-end Somehow Palpatine Returned Moment. But, honestly, I think a lot of that eye-rolling is in bad faith. It’s no more expedient for Palpatine to return than Leia to turn out to be Luke’s sister: they’re both late-in-the-game revelations that made sense thematically.

Palpatine’s return, in fact, illustrates a stark difference between the Jedi and the Sith. Lots of our heroes have lived long past their deaths, some because they have become one with the Force (Obi-Wan, Anakin, Yoda, Luke, Leia, and the original Force Ghost Qui-Gon Jinn), and even as a memory (Han). The Sith do not become one with the Force. There are no Sith Ghosts. The Sith cheat death. They reject it, they refuse it, they unnaturally prolong their lives. The Emperor does not return in spirit, he is a corpse attached to crane, a revolting example of a creature that refuses to die. He is the antithesis of the Jedi. Exactly as he should be.

There are those who think Palpatine returning was a creative rehash, but I thought it made sense in another way: our new heroes had confronted all the legacy characters from the original story except him. We’d reconnected with Han, Luke, Leia, Lando, Chewie, C3-PO, Artoo, Yoda, the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi, even the mask of Vader. The Emperor, the final boss of Star Wars, was just waiting in the wings to be brought into the story, to resolve the story that started with his emergence in Episode I.

THE DRAWING OF THE THREE

The second reason The Rise of Skywalker succeeds is that it provides satisfying conclusions to the sequel trilogy character arcs. Each trilogy exists as its own story: one should be able to watch VII-IX and get a total story in the way you do IV-VI. And I think Rise of Skywalker provides that closure for its characters.

Think of where each character in Episode IX lands in the story. Poe Dameron begins in The Force Awakens as a one-dimensional, if charming, purveyor of derring-do. He’s a pilot and he’s having a ball shooting down TIE Fighters. In The Last Jedi, we seem him go through a crucible. In The Rise of Skywalker, he emerges as a man with a past, and the leader of the Resistance at last. Finn’s begins as a number, FN-2187, wearing a mask. After his awakening, the namesake of the first film, he’s a man on the run, more afraid of The First Order than driven to defeat it. By the end of The Last Jedi, he’s committed to the Resistance cause. Finally, in The Rise of Skywalker, he has shaken off other people’s clothes, embraced his swagger, has become his own man. His awakening in The Force Awakens goes from literary to literal, not just sensitive, but Force-sensitive.

There are those who take issue with Rey’s path through this film and believe this movie fails to “yes, and” the last film in terms of her story. And, yes, I loved the idea that Rey is ‘no one,’ and wished that they had reinforced that idea in the final film. Still, there’s an elegance to the idea that Rey is, in fact, connected to the ultimate evil in the galaxy. If you want to prove blood isn’t destiny, one way to establish that is to make Rey’s own bloodline a horror.

Also, if you don’t quite buy Rey as a Skywalker, I would say first, that character names in Star Wars are often fluid and adopted: Ben Solo changed his name to Kylo Ren, Darth Vader has two names, Han Solo’s last name isn’t really Solo, Finn’s name wasn’t Finn until Poe called him Finn, Princess Leia is a Skywalker and her last name is Organa, and don’t even get me started on the number of names Padme Amidala has. So, there’s plenty of firm textual foundation for a character adopting a meaningful name to them. (Skywalker, in this way, becomes the opposite of Darth, in a sense, a moniker of the light.) And, I mean, I think it’s pretty clear that Rey Skywalker was always going to be her name by the end of this trilogy, no matter how they landed on it. (If you didn’t see that coming when The Force Awakens came out, I don’t know what to tell you, you just kind of need to be a closer reader.)

So, the trio are given the right endings. But they are also, for the first time, treated like an actual trio.

Remember, at the end of The Last Jedi, Poe and Rey meet for the first time on screen. We do not see them meet in The Force Awakens and they’re on separate paths in Episode VIII. These characters are on parallel journies, but they’re not a true trio the way Luke, Han and Leia are until this very last movie. The Rise of Skywalker remedies that with quick scenes that provide shorthand history, giving them a squabbling intimacy at the beginning of the film and sending C3-PO, Chewbacca, Poe, Finn and Rey all out in the Millennium Falcon together. The Rise of Skywalker completes their journey towards one another.

FASTER MORE INTENSE

The third reason that The Rise of Skywalker hits its marks is that it fully embraces the speed of Star Wars. It flies through the action as if it’s running out of time. (To be fair, it is.) George Lucas famously (and apocryphally) only gave actors one note: faster and more intense. The Rise of Skywalker tastes that note to heart.

Most contemporary franchises break their formats with their finales. For better or worse, endings tend to be a super-sized with an order of extra fries: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was broken into two movies, clocking in at a collective four and a half hours together. The Avengers: Endgame is three hours alone, but if you treat it as part 2 of Infinity War, the ending of The Avengers first full saga has about five and a half hours of runtime. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has long movies regardless, and The Return of the King all by itself has a good five endings before it fades to black for the last time.

The Rise of Skywalker, though, remains stubbornly, steadfastly dedicated to the structure and length of rest of the saga. Episode IX clocks in at 142 minutes. That’s exactly the same length as Attack of the Clones and ten minutes shorter than The Last Jedi. Instead of expanding beyond the usual borders in order signal this is the Big Finish, Episode IX recommits.

The Last Jedi spent time thinking about what Star Wars is and what mythology is and what it all means. The Rise of Skywalker is not a meditative movie, it’s a movie about time running out (a J.J. Abrams favorite) and racing to victory against insurmountable odds. It’s got an old-fashioned MacGuffin (A Sith Wayfinder!), a penchant for near-deaths, and an engine for a heart. In some ways, it’s the most Star Wars-y Star Wars film of all except the first, weaving together and remixing familiar tropes, ideas, and characters into a final film that is as much as summary of Star Wars as an attempt to unpack it.

WILD SPACE

… and then it goes a little wild.

For all the ways The Rise of Skywalker stays within the vernacular of the series (speeder chases, lightsaber battles, X-Wings versus Tie Fighters), it also rents an apartment in crazytown. It’s a movie that is simultaneously painting within the lines and is occasionally straight up bonkers.

Bonkers, you ask? Define bonkers. How about Klaud. Or how about that, in the first few minutes of the film, we are presented with Supreme Leader Snokes in a Jar. The Supreme Leader of the First Order, the head honcho of the stormtroopers of the Resistance Trilogy, Andy Serkis’s whole eight-foot corpse that dresses in gold? He’s made in a lab. Note I say Snokes. Plural. That’s bonkers.

Think of what else they could have done here. The obvious choice would have been Kylo Ren as the Final Battle of the story, a kind of Vader-as-Emperor. That’s where The Last Jedi left things. They could have even had The Emperor return though some Kylo-Cloning-Chicanery; a final tribute to grandpa.

Instead, Snoke is treated as a generic, lab-produced stand-in for Palpatine himself, a mask. Personally? I loved this. Partially because, frankly, Snoke always felt a little like exactly that: Palpatine’s stand-in. Partially because he looks reanimated. And partially because it’s just plain bold. You know that guy you were so scared of? He’s a science experiment. That’s a big choice. It’s kind of nuts. As Tim Walz would say: these people are weird.

Weird abounds. The Millennium Falcon lightspeed skipping sequence that seems like it belongs in Doctor Strange? Nutso. (Where even are some of those places?) C-3PO asking if Droids are allowed in the afterlife? WHAT DID HE JUST ASK? D-O, the traumatized droid who has very firm boundaries about being touched? Okay, that’s a lot. Rey with pointy teeth? Kylo Ren and Rey being able to literally pass physical objects across space to one another? This is not a creative team playing carefully with the rules, it’s just going for it. Damn the photon torpedoes.

There is some weird shit in this movie, folks. As a lover of the idiosyncratic and woolly, I love that. I like it when writers and directors go all in and let the chips fall where they may. Life is messy. I honestly believe movies that are messy connect on a deeper level than movies that feel airtight. We debate and remember them more, they leave a deeper impression for good or ill. Say what you want about The Rise of Skywalker, it’s not being careful of you. It’s creatively expansive, even if its occasionally walking on cracking thin ice.

THE DEAD SPEAK

Finally, The Rise of Skywalker has a very telling relationship with death. It probably deserves its very own essay. But if you want to find a mission statement for the film, look no further than the first three words of the crawl. The Dead Speak! In this movie, The Emperor is a zombie, Chewbacca is presumed dead until he’s found miraculously alive, Snap Wexley dies, Hux dies, the Tantive IV dies with Nien Nunb inside it, Kylo Ren is mortally stabbed and brought back to life, deceased hero Han Solo has a whole scene with his son that resolves and mirrors their confrontation in The Force Awakens, C-3P0 is basically killed and brought back to life, Rey dies until Kyle trades his life for hers, Force Ghost and recently deceased Luke Skywalker has an extensive scene with Rey, Rey hears the voices of all the Jedi who have come before in the Force, meaning its literally a parade of ghosts whispering to her, and last, but not least, the film features an actor, Carrie Fisher, who became one with the Force right before filming began. This is a movie about endings that is allergic to them: it’s defiantly anti-death.

After all: no one’s ever really gone.

And, although The Rise of Skywalker is an ending the defies death, I am all about a good ending. This marks the end of my write ups of each of the Saga films. I hope you enjoyed reading them! For those who are keeping track, here’s where to find all the rest.

Episode I The Phantom Menace

Episode II Attack of the Clones

Episode III Revenge of the Sith

Episode IV A New Hope

Episode V The Empire Strikes Back

Episode VI Return of the Jedi

Episode VII The Force Awakens

Episode VIII The Last Jedi

Thanks for reading!

Be gentle in the comments!

May the Force be with you!