I saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on opening weekend, and I walked out of it beaming through a tear-streaked face. Here is a partial list of the times that I cried:
1. Rey hugs Leia after training
2. Chewie's big, manipulative, fake death
3. Leia calls to Ben and then dies, followed quickly by
4. Rey heals Ben ("I wanted to take your hand. I wanted to take Ben's hand."), followed quickly by
5. Han Solo appears to Ben
6. Ben
7. Chewbacca finally gets his medal
8. Rey's entire final scene at Tatooine
Basically I was a live version of that sobbing emoji, with rivers pouring from both eyes.
I'm still reading opinion pieces and watching the cast in talk show interviews and playing my favorite scenes over and over in my head. I think I made out with Kylo Ren in a dream the other night. Might've been Finn or Poe; who can be sure? I liked the movie a lot, is what I'm saying.
I do have a lot of nits to pick and things that I wish they had done differently, so I'm going to get those out of the way first before I talk about all the things that I loved.
A WASTE OF A GOOD ROSE
I wish that Rose had a bigger storyline, or really any storyline at all. And I wish that Finn had romantically pursued either her or Jannah. Both are potentially interesting matches for him, instead of the vague, unrequited crush that he's had on Rey since The Force Awakens.
MORE FORCEY PEOPLE
Speaking of Finn, it looks like he's Force sensitive, right? Can we explore that, please? Especially in light of Janah's account of a huge group of storm troopers feeling it en masse and defecting. That's a cool idea, and I wish the movie included more detail about non-chosen ones using the Force. Remember how Buffy figured out how to share her powers and make all the potentials into Slayers at once? I'll bet Rey and Maz Kanata could work that out.
CHEWIE DIES (jk)
It was a cheap shot to fake us out with Chewbacca's death. I gasped and then literally sobbed, both because I love Chewbacca and because of how heartbreaking it was that Rey accidentally killed him with her own hands. Then a couple minutes later when he turned up alive, I was annoyed. I kept waiting for a reasonable explanation for how he didn't die, other than, "Oh, there was another transport that y'all didn't see and that's the one he was on". That's cheaty storytelling. And not the good kind of cheaty.
NONSTOP LIGHT SPEED
The timeline was crazy. This all happened in 16 hours, right? Because near the beginning of the movie, I believe right after Poe's dizzying round of light speed leap frog, the emperor's transmission said they would destroy a planet the very next day. The pace overall felt rushed: hop to a planet, learn or do a thing, leave 15 minutes later, hop to another planet, etc. etc.
THE REBIRTH OF HELMET
What was with the rebuilding scene of Kylo Ren's mask? It was like a baby delivery: Will the doctors be able to save Helmet? Will Helmet pull through? Get some warm towels ready; Helmet is almost done. Bleh. Move along.
WE CAN DO IT
How did the Emperor create a fleet of ships, each one of which is a death star on speed? I mean the actual logistics of it. Did he have a bunch of factories? An army of machinists? All I saw were a couple of witch doctors keeping all his life support hoses in place. Well, that and a whole coliseum full of hooded Sith dudes. Were they the work crew? Maybe the emperor was like, "You guys, if we hit our quota by the end of the month, we'll have a big party and I'll let you watch while I transfer my life force into the unwilling body of a young woman who will become your new evil empress. So get welding!"
SPACE HORSE IN THE SPACE FORCE
How and when did Finn round up all of those shaggy horses to bring into space? (Side note: horses always look uncomfortable to me when I see them in a trailer on the highway. Surely they didn't like that space ship ride.)
FINN DROPS IN
How did Finn and Jannah hop onto the Millenium Falcon and then basically ride on top of it like a surfboard as it was zooming away from an exploding ship? I'm willing to suspend disbelief about the horses, but space surfing? Come on.
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Now that I've aired some of my grievances, I'll shift to some of the things I loved. It's basically my version of The Chris Farley Show, where I just go "Remember that part where [fill in the blank]?...That was awesome." Don't say I didn't warn you.
I'll start with the most shallow of my thoughts.
THERE'S A LOT OF PRETTY.
LIKE, A LOT.
The main characters are massively attractive people. I saw The Rise of Skywalker on a giant IMAX screen, and it was a real visual feast. Close up on Finn, close up on Poe. Thank you very much, IMAX screen. Even in the intense fight scene, there were all these close ups of Rey and Ben and their giant, beautiful black eyes. And then at the end, Poe wagging his eyebrow suggestively at Zorri, like, "So, you wanna go celebrate saving the galaxy by making out in the forest?" How she turned that offer down is beyond me. That man is HIGHLY appealing.
Besides the hotness, there was also a lot of cuteness sprinkled throughout: The little guy who worked on C3PO! (Just googled it: he's Babu Frik) That new robot! (Googled: D-O) A glimpse of Porgs! A glimpse of Ewoks!
RETURN OF THE QUEEN
A couple things you should know about me:
1. I get really emotionally invested in fictional characters.
2. I love Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia.
3. I'm a huge crybaby.
So you can imagine that my reaction to the Leia scenes was emotional. I love her, I love that she trained Rey, I love that she and Rey together were able to break through and finally turn Kylo Ren back into Ben Solo, I even love all the back of the head shots that were obviously some stand-in with a good chignon. I wish we could have had more of her, but I appreciate that they did the best with the leftover film scraps they had from the other movies. RIP, Carrie.
And I know a lot of people are complaining about excessive pandering to fans (fandering?) but I totally cried at Chewbacca's sad reaction to learning about Leia's death, and then him finally getting that medal.
RETURN OF THE SCOUNDREL
Like I said, that whole scene where Leia helps Rey defeat Kylo was so good, and while I was still reeling from all that, who showed up but my boyfriend Han Solo? What a delightful surprise. That moment in The Force Awakens when Kylo killed Han was ROUGH, and it helped mend my still-broken heart to see them play out a similar scene with a hopeful ending. Love, forgiveness, family, resolving to be better. It's all so good.
Shall we take a two minute break to enjoy Han and Leia's first kiss? They are both, in the words of Eleanor Shellstrop, legit snacks, and their chemistry is hot like fire. "I'm nice men."
YOU'RE A WIZARD, REY
Maybe it's because I recently started reading the Harry Potter series with my six year old, but I was getting strong HP vibes throughout.
Rey grows up as an orphaned nobody, then it turns out that she's the chosen one with a deep connection to the Big Bad. She's Harry!
Rey healing that giant snake? She's practically a parselmouth. By the way, I totally thought it would reappear later and show its gratitude by doing something like eating a storm trooper who was about to capture the good guys.
The emperor was nearly killed but came back in a not-quite-human form and then got himself a new body with the help of some creepy henchmen, then tried to kill the one person with a connection to his past, who he truly feared could be his undoing. He's Voldemort!
During the final showdown, when Rey was channeling all the past Jedi, I half expected them to appear as a line of ghosts behind her and promise to be with her to the end, a la the resurrection stone scene in The Deathly Hallows. How great would it have been to see Leia, Luke, Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi Wan Kenobi, etc. as blue ghosts flanking her? And when she was pushing the emperor's attack back at him I kept thinking of the graveyard duel in The Goblet of Fire, with the twin core wands.
ENDGAME AND GOONIES, TOO
When Poe & Co. were nearly defeated, but then Lando was all, "I'm here, and I brought a thousand friends", did anyone else get a flashback to the "on your left" scene in Endgame when everyone came out of the portals to join the fight?
Also, "I am all the Sith"/ "I am all the Jedi" was totally "I am inevitable"/"I am Iron Man" right?
I even got a whiff of the Goonies: the gang falls into a cave while searching for clues and stumble on the skeleton of the guy that went before them. He has an artifact that lines up with the skyline to point the way. It was Chester Copperpot all over again.
THE REYLO CONNECTION
Kylo and Rey's fight scenes are always excellent, whether they are fighting each other or working together. Remember in the throne room in The Last Jedi, when they teamed up against the red guards? It was so well done. There's a lot of good fighting here in Rise of Skywalker as well.
The fact that these two can not only communicate telepathically now, but also slip into each other's physical space is a cool bit of trickery, with the the ripped off beads and the smashed Vader helmet. Is that a new use of the Force? The coolest moment was when Rey was facing the emperor, and Ben, weaponless, was facing the knights of Ren. There was a close up of her face, followed by his face, then at his tiniest nod, she teleported him the light saber and pulled the other one out for herself. That's some super teamwork.
FORCE HEALING
This might be my favorite thing about the movie. I believe that Force healing is a new concept, at least for the mainstream movies, and I love it. The only thing that Kylo had ever used his incredible power for was to dominate others and gain more power. When Rey healed him, he was shocked, maybe because he had thought he was about to die just a minute before, but maybe it was also because it never occurred to him to use his Force powers to help rather than harm.
Rey is awesome for many reasons, but one is that she is good and kind, even to giant snakes and skittish little droids. She opens up a whole world of possibilities when she shows Ben how to use the power of the Force for the good of others. It was so perfect that he came back and healed Rey after she had done the same for him. I love that he learned about that from her and used it as his final sacrifice.
I've been waiting to watch those two make out forever--they have mad chemistry--so I was glad that they at least kissed once before he disappeared. I wish there had been time for more of it, but it was definitely right that he died. I love to think of him reuniting with Han and Leia and Luke.
One small quibble here: Force healing is one thing, but Force resurrection is a bridge too far. Resurrection is a false promise that Palpatine used to seduce Anakin to the dark side. I wish that Rey hadn't been completely dead yet. Couldn't they have made her right on the verge of death? Mostly dead? As we all know, mostly dead is slightly alive, and that would've been better.
FULL CIRCLE
I loved the final scene on Tatooine. All of it: Rey, in a rare lighthearted moment, sledding down the dunes, then burying the light sabers, seeing Luke and Leia, calling herself Skywalker, and finally the beautiful shot of her in the sunset, with the shape of BB-8 mimicking the shape of the two suns.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m here for the fandering. My 14 year old son and I watched this together, and in order to explain how much that meant to me, let me remind you what else is out there. My kids and their friends tend to watch millionaire twenty-three year old youtubers do videos like "Whoever sits in this pool full of dog food the longest wins a thousand dollars!" On the other hand, Adam Sandler is going the tried and true route to an Oscar nomination in Uncut Gems by wallowing in the seedy underbelly of humanity. Gross. Hard pass. Give me a strong female lead who still feels like a regular, good person, a satisfying redemption arc, some well choreographed fight scenes, a Jedi mind trick, and my favorite princess/general, and I’m here for it.
Did you really read all the way to the end? Here's a picture of Han and Leia on my wedding cake as a reward.
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