Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
May. 20th, 2020 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSeveral months later, I finally watched this last installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. And well, my opinion is similar what I have osmosed by now the mainstream opinion is: Rise of Skywalker cements that Abrams went into this trilogy with no idea other than "the same as the OT, only bigger! With lense flares!" as a concept, didn't coordinate with Rian Johnson for The Last Jedi, and it shows.
I mean, I'm as sure as can be that despite all claims to the contrary, Lucas when releasing Star Wars - A New Hope had no idea that Vater was Luke's father and that Obi-Wan was, in fact, lying, excuse me, speaking the truth from a certain point of view. But the reveal in Empire Strikes Back still worked perfectly, and Return of the Jedi built on that instead of trying to work around/negate it. Similarly, when the prequels were made Ahsoka was not yet a glimmer in Dave Filoni's eyes, but due to the way The Clone Wars took Lucas' "Anakin has a padawan - go with it" suggestion and ran I now can't think of the entire prequel trilogy without the Clone Wars context, the Anakin & Ahsoka relationship and the Clones as individual characters whose tragedy Revenge of the Sith is as much as anyone's.
Whereas I have no problem writing off the entire sequel canon. Not because I hate it. It just did not give me anything that grabbed me the same way, and the few truly interesting things it did, it ended up either not exploring at all, or undoing. When Jannah told Finn that she and all her people, too, were former storm troopers, I was briefly thrilled and thought, was I wrong, are the sequels finally prepared to do something with the premise that Finn was a storm trooper when growing up, not the boy next door, and what that means? That the various guys (and girls) in standard white armor just might be able to go against orders, too, if given a chance, instead of being treated as disposable cannon fodder? But no.
(Incidentally: no complaints about Hux becoming a mole for the Resistance out of sheer pettiness against Kylo Ren, out out of any flickers of decency. That was hilarious.)
Same with Rose, whom I'm really liked in TLJ and whose actress was treated amominably by the worst parts of fandom. It's hard not to read her minimal role in this one as in response to it. The idea that capitalist exploitation is what greatly feeds the dictatorship and is why so many people go along with it, which was the point of the entire casino trip segment? Gone. Instead, resurrected Palpatine somehow managed to built a fleet full of planet killing star destroyers without anyone noticing until he cackles on the holonet. How did he pay for it, I wonder? With all the bitching among prequel haters about Phantom Menace - not a movie that can be accused of hardcore economic realism - opening with a trade dispute, I have to say the prequels - and of course the Clone Wars series - did actually take the trouble to show who Palapatine's financial allies were before he becomes Emperor and thus can command resources.
Even more crucial is the retcon from Rey as the daughter of nobodies, in a movie that ends with showing that force sensitivity can be found in the downtrodden and forgotten and is not tied to a bloodline, to Rey as Palapatine's granddaughter. Mind you, since the entire SW saga is one big fairy tale, I can buy it on that level, but I thought her being someone without any blood connection to the previous generation had been the more powerful narrative choice. Also, the retcon means that Rey has to go through a similar emotional arc for three movies in a row, each time realising it doesn't matter about her biological background and who she chooses to be with the people she makes connections with counts.
Speaking of connections: this movie finally gave us some interactions between Rey, Finn and Poe at the same time and some impression of their dynamic early on, but alas it remained that way, just an impression. And it's hard to feel for them as friends when Rey has only just met Poe at the end of the previous movie and we only see a few minutes of the three of them interacting here. It reminds me of how Abrams in his two Star Trek reboot movies essentially wanted the audience to be invested in the Kirk/Spock relationship because of the history the original Kirk and Spock had and the love fandom had for them and their relationship, not because he bothered to give us enough to ask the same kind of emotional investment on screen. Similarly, here in theory Rey, Finn and Poe are the new trio of main characters. But you know, Luke-Leia-Han worked because we saw Luke with Han, we saw Luke with Leia, we saw Han with Leia, we saw the three of them together at various points through all three original movies. No matter whom you shipped with whom as an original viewer, it was clear there was a connection there between all three.
Whereas The Force Awakens is the only one of the sequel movies which bothers to provide us with on screen emotional scenes showing us the growing friendship between Rey and Finn, and, much briefer but there, Poe's bonding with Finn during their escape. Even in that movie, though, Rey's other big emotional relationship is with Han, and that turns out to be the more foreshadowing, because taking all three movies into account, Rey's main emotional scenes and connections are with the previous generation characters - and with Kylo Ren - rather than with Finn and Poe. It's not that I'm bored by the result, anything but. I liked Rey's scenes with Han in TFA, with Luke in TLJ, and they got all they could out of the footage of Carrie Fisher in RoS to provide us with the impression of a connection between Rey and Leia. (Leia/Poe, otoh, is actually there on screen through the trilogy.) I thought her scenes with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in TLJ both worked as their own thing and were a clever inversion of Anakin/Vader's arc. And no, I'm not mad that he got to repeat Vader's emotional beats from RoJ in RoS after all, complete with death after life saving and becoming one with the Force, because Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are good together, and also I loved Star of the Guardians with the Maigrey and Sagan force bond, excuse me, mind link working in a very similar way. But I thought that this final choice, too, meant that the sequels in the end flinched from being anything but a nostalgia fest with more tech.
Speaking of tech. Good lord. As with TFA, the planet killing thing just is not emotionally effective when you do overdo it like that. Alderaan, which we the audience never got to know, being blown to smithereens works because the movie shows us Leia reacting to it and makes us feel how devastating this is to one of our main characters. So a fleet of star destroyers, each of which can do what the original Death Star could, isn't chilling to me, it's just groanworthy in a "good lord, Abrams, must you?" way.
And lastly, good old Palpatine. Look. I love Ian McDiarmid as much as the next fan. And handwavium as to why he's around again after being killed is probably better than technobabble telling us how exactly he got resurrected. But otoh: it's hard to regard this latest death as definite if the previous one wasn't. Once you play the resurrection card for supervillains, their deaths just don't have the same effect. What's more, he really suffers from villain decay in the brains department, too. Prequel Palpatine goes about his manipulation and seduction of Anakin in a clever way and one which until the very last moment, when Mace Windu dies, leaves him plausible deniability. The Emperor in the OT has two decades of absolute power under his belt and is correspondingly more hammy and overt, but still, while he badly miscalculated with his Skywalkers, his trap for the Rebellion was quite effective. This latest Palps incarnation, otoh, tells Rey in a villainous monologue his exact plan of how her killing him in anger will allow him to take over her body instead, you know, of letting her kill him in anger not knowing he'd then bodyswitch. What? And you know, while TLJ acknowledged that there is such a thing as institutional corruption and that one Snoke or one Kylo Ren is not the entire problem, and the prequels did demonstrate the way the Republic and the Jedi Order both contributed to their own doom (which is not the same as excusing the villains, btw), here we're back to "The Emperor is dead, happy ending!". Which, you know, might have worked emotionally for RoJ, but since the sequels went out of their way to show that the galaxy two decades post RoJ was just even more oppressed, and never bothered with depicting a new functioning republic - why should be believe it's better this time?
In conclusion: don't let J.J. Abrams near a franchise he liked as a kid. He's exactly the type of fan who endlessly writes canon rip-offs with ever higher body counts as a consequence. Let him do his own franchises instead.
P.S. Ahsoka as one of the voices Rey hears when finally accessing all the Jedi that came before here was cool, though. #movie canon
I mean, I'm as sure as can be that despite all claims to the contrary, Lucas when releasing Star Wars - A New Hope had no idea that Vater was Luke's father and that Obi-Wan was, in fact, lying, excuse me, speaking the truth from a certain point of view. But the reveal in Empire Strikes Back still worked perfectly, and Return of the Jedi built on that instead of trying to work around/negate it. Similarly, when the prequels were made Ahsoka was not yet a glimmer in Dave Filoni's eyes, but due to the way The Clone Wars took Lucas' "Anakin has a padawan - go with it" suggestion and ran I now can't think of the entire prequel trilogy without the Clone Wars context, the Anakin & Ahsoka relationship and the Clones as individual characters whose tragedy Revenge of the Sith is as much as anyone's.
Whereas I have no problem writing off the entire sequel canon. Not because I hate it. It just did not give me anything that grabbed me the same way, and the few truly interesting things it did, it ended up either not exploring at all, or undoing. When Jannah told Finn that she and all her people, too, were former storm troopers, I was briefly thrilled and thought, was I wrong, are the sequels finally prepared to do something with the premise that Finn was a storm trooper when growing up, not the boy next door, and what that means? That the various guys (and girls) in standard white armor just might be able to go against orders, too, if given a chance, instead of being treated as disposable cannon fodder? But no.
(Incidentally: no complaints about Hux becoming a mole for the Resistance out of sheer pettiness against Kylo Ren, out out of any flickers of decency. That was hilarious.)
Same with Rose, whom I'm really liked in TLJ and whose actress was treated amominably by the worst parts of fandom. It's hard not to read her minimal role in this one as in response to it. The idea that capitalist exploitation is what greatly feeds the dictatorship and is why so many people go along with it, which was the point of the entire casino trip segment? Gone. Instead, resurrected Palpatine somehow managed to built a fleet full of planet killing star destroyers without anyone noticing until he cackles on the holonet. How did he pay for it, I wonder? With all the bitching among prequel haters about Phantom Menace - not a movie that can be accused of hardcore economic realism - opening with a trade dispute, I have to say the prequels - and of course the Clone Wars series - did actually take the trouble to show who Palapatine's financial allies were before he becomes Emperor and thus can command resources.
Even more crucial is the retcon from Rey as the daughter of nobodies, in a movie that ends with showing that force sensitivity can be found in the downtrodden and forgotten and is not tied to a bloodline, to Rey as Palapatine's granddaughter. Mind you, since the entire SW saga is one big fairy tale, I can buy it on that level, but I thought her being someone without any blood connection to the previous generation had been the more powerful narrative choice. Also, the retcon means that Rey has to go through a similar emotional arc for three movies in a row, each time realising it doesn't matter about her biological background and who she chooses to be with the people she makes connections with counts.
Speaking of connections: this movie finally gave us some interactions between Rey, Finn and Poe at the same time and some impression of their dynamic early on, but alas it remained that way, just an impression. And it's hard to feel for them as friends when Rey has only just met Poe at the end of the previous movie and we only see a few minutes of the three of them interacting here. It reminds me of how Abrams in his two Star Trek reboot movies essentially wanted the audience to be invested in the Kirk/Spock relationship because of the history the original Kirk and Spock had and the love fandom had for them and their relationship, not because he bothered to give us enough to ask the same kind of emotional investment on screen. Similarly, here in theory Rey, Finn and Poe are the new trio of main characters. But you know, Luke-Leia-Han worked because we saw Luke with Han, we saw Luke with Leia, we saw Han with Leia, we saw the three of them together at various points through all three original movies. No matter whom you shipped with whom as an original viewer, it was clear there was a connection there between all three.
Whereas The Force Awakens is the only one of the sequel movies which bothers to provide us with on screen emotional scenes showing us the growing friendship between Rey and Finn, and, much briefer but there, Poe's bonding with Finn during their escape. Even in that movie, though, Rey's other big emotional relationship is with Han, and that turns out to be the more foreshadowing, because taking all three movies into account, Rey's main emotional scenes and connections are with the previous generation characters - and with Kylo Ren - rather than with Finn and Poe. It's not that I'm bored by the result, anything but. I liked Rey's scenes with Han in TFA, with Luke in TLJ, and they got all they could out of the footage of Carrie Fisher in RoS to provide us with the impression of a connection between Rey and Leia. (Leia/Poe, otoh, is actually there on screen through the trilogy.) I thought her scenes with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in TLJ both worked as their own thing and were a clever inversion of Anakin/Vader's arc. And no, I'm not mad that he got to repeat Vader's emotional beats from RoJ in RoS after all, complete with death after life saving and becoming one with the Force, because Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are good together, and also I loved Star of the Guardians with the Maigrey and Sagan force bond, excuse me, mind link working in a very similar way. But I thought that this final choice, too, meant that the sequels in the end flinched from being anything but a nostalgia fest with more tech.
Speaking of tech. Good lord. As with TFA, the planet killing thing just is not emotionally effective when you do overdo it like that. Alderaan, which we the audience never got to know, being blown to smithereens works because the movie shows us Leia reacting to it and makes us feel how devastating this is to one of our main characters. So a fleet of star destroyers, each of which can do what the original Death Star could, isn't chilling to me, it's just groanworthy in a "good lord, Abrams, must you?" way.
And lastly, good old Palpatine. Look. I love Ian McDiarmid as much as the next fan. And handwavium as to why he's around again after being killed is probably better than technobabble telling us how exactly he got resurrected. But otoh: it's hard to regard this latest death as definite if the previous one wasn't. Once you play the resurrection card for supervillains, their deaths just don't have the same effect. What's more, he really suffers from villain decay in the brains department, too. Prequel Palpatine goes about his manipulation and seduction of Anakin in a clever way and one which until the very last moment, when Mace Windu dies, leaves him plausible deniability. The Emperor in the OT has two decades of absolute power under his belt and is correspondingly more hammy and overt, but still, while he badly miscalculated with his Skywalkers, his trap for the Rebellion was quite effective. This latest Palps incarnation, otoh, tells Rey in a villainous monologue his exact plan of how her killing him in anger will allow him to take over her body instead, you know, of letting her kill him in anger not knowing he'd then bodyswitch. What? And you know, while TLJ acknowledged that there is such a thing as institutional corruption and that one Snoke or one Kylo Ren is not the entire problem, and the prequels did demonstrate the way the Republic and the Jedi Order both contributed to their own doom (which is not the same as excusing the villains, btw), here we're back to "The Emperor is dead, happy ending!". Which, you know, might have worked emotionally for RoJ, but since the sequels went out of their way to show that the galaxy two decades post RoJ was just even more oppressed, and never bothered with depicting a new functioning republic - why should be believe it's better this time?
In conclusion: don't let J.J. Abrams near a franchise he liked as a kid. He's exactly the type of fan who endlessly writes canon rip-offs with ever higher body counts as a consequence. Let him do his own franchises instead.
P.S. Ahsoka as one of the voices Rey hears when finally accessing all the Jedi that came before here was cool, though. #movie canon
