The Emperor returns to take control of the First Order and lead an onslaught on the Resistance.
To paraphrase the tagline of another Fox studios properties, whoever wins, the audience loses.
I was looking forward to watching the sequel era Star Wars movies. I had not watched the previous four since they came out, and I had never seen The Rise of Skywalker before.
I thought it would make for an interesting series of reviews. Maybe time would give me a new perspective on these films, particularly as someone who has not kept up with any new Star Wars media since this movie came out.
This review is not going to be long. I have nothing to add.
Going straight from The Last Jedi to this was a bad idea.
Even then, I doubt this movie would go down easier without the run up.
The opening crawl is a disaster. I heard of its ridiculousness before, but there is nothing like the sudden jolt of this mass of words sliding off into the distance.
Rather than setting the scene, it feels like a whole movie of characters and action.
And when the movie proper starts, it never stops moving.
The whole film feels powered by fear, racing towards the finish line.
It is as if the filmmakers believe that fast pacing will help paper over the lack of character development or a coherent story.
It is a crime what they do to the characters in this movie.
Kelly Marie Tran goes from a major character to a non-ironic take on the exposition-spewer that Sigourney Weaver sent up in Galaxy Quest.
Rey’s retconned ancestry is a cheap move that completely undoes the series’ best storytelling decision.
After watching the trilogy in a row, it is John Boyega which is the franchise’s biggest waste - after the promise of his introduction, Fin is… what?
Who cares, we need to get to the next plot device!
The introduction of rogue stormtroopers inspired by Fin’d example is a neat idea, one of a couple that filmmakers throw into the pot.
This film is a rush of sound and fury, a blender that reduces story, character, theme, even basic set-pieces, to bland slop.
Disastrous.
The touching story of how those dice showed up on the Millennium Falcon.
Solo is kinda fun at first.
When Han is a scrappy kid with a chip on his shoulder, running through the back alleys of Corellia.
We get a bunch of unique creatures - the alien singers duetting in the villain’s space yacht are a unique touch.
But the movie never gets going.
I remember thinking it was pointless when it came out, and those feelings did not change on this viewing.
After the fun opening, you start to realise that the movie is never going to shift up a gear.
The biggest issue with the film is how stilted and flat the characters are.
I have not read the script, but the film as executed seems to shave off any rough edges of its characters.
Woody Harrelson’s Becket is meant to be a mentor and ultimately an antagonist.
I found it hard to track any shift in his character - he loses his lover but does not seem to maintain any kind of remorse, or resentment toward Han.
He does not even seem that mercenary.
Qi’ra is set up as a survivor who does not share Han’s infatuation. Emilia Clarke is fine, but there is nothing interesting about their dynamic, no underlying tension or sense of ulterior motive.
An easy highlight is Donald Glover.
So easily charismatic, he manages to evoke the character without feeling too much like an impersonation.
Alden Ehrenreich is a fine actor, but his Han never really grows beyond being a cocksure young con artist.
It is hard to tell the difference between how he is at the beginning and at the ending of the movie.
One wishes the movie was more defined in terms of its characters and their dynamics.
As an adventure flick, Solo feels strangely small. It never escalates in terms of stakes, and the characters are never confronted with major decisions.
The movie just kind of chronicles a series of events and that is it.
Not a terrible movie, and perhaps with time and more movies, it will gain its own profile. But Solo never steps out of the shadow of the series or the star the character is associated with.
Following the destruction of Starkiller base, the First Order are hunting down the Resistance fleet.
In an attempt to save his comrades, Fin leaves the fleet accompanied by young rebel Rose (Kelly Marie Tran).
Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) struggles to pull Luke Skywalker out of exile, while trying to learn more about her past.
That journey puts her on a collision course with Kyle Ren (Adam Driver), who is on his own mission to confront his past and remold himself.
The Last Jedi.
A defining movie of its era - for reasons external to the movie, as well as what it did for the franchise. Or what future movies sought to undo.
This is the one time it feels like this series has settled into itself and is figuring out its own course.
The Force Awakens is enjoyable - but this movie feels like the key ingredients being sorted into a new, unique recipe.
With distance, this movie gains an added poignancy.
Not just for Star Wars.
But for pop culture.
For established stories and characters.
A group of filmmakers came up with a movie that cleared the runway, blew open the concept of what this franchise could be.
And every choice after it came out feels like the franchise being forced into a box - and not even the box it was originally delivered in.
The Last Jedi feels like a story. With a beginning, middle and end. You can watch it on its own, and the ending does not require any kind of follow up.
The film’s staying power is its focus on character growth.
Rey’s realization that she is not predestined for greatness is the film’s greatest asset. While Kyle Ren is the product of legacy, struggling to find his own path, and taking the wrong lessons, Rey is gifted with an opportunity to make her own way.
I did not mention Adam Driver’s performance in The Force Awakens. He adds a sense of menace all his own. And he gets some real meat to work with here.
After killing his father, it is a logical next step that he would eventually remove Snock, to finally stand as the captain of his destiny, rather than beholden to others.
Poe Dameron’s battle with Admiral Holdo is ultimately about the character realizing his blasters-first approach has to take a backseat for the welfare of the people around him.
And then there is Luke Skywalker. Driven to isolation by failure, he finally is able to ascend to a higher level of consciousness by accepting it.
I am not a Star Wars guy.
My fandom dwindled to a natural death in the early noughties.
Mostly I put it down to burnout (I was way too into it) and when puberty came around, Star Wars was too sexless to keep me interested.
It is a testament to The Last Jedi that I could enjoy it, be not just engaged but inspired by it.
I left the movie actually excited for what could come next.
The final image of a child hoisting a broom handle like a lightsaber felt like the ultimate rejection of the series’ focus on the Skywalkers, and bloodlines. Frankly, it felt like a reset to the original Star Wars, pre-Empire Strikes Back.
The Force was for anyone, everyone.
It is hard, even all these years later, to write about this movie without taking into account the online reaction. And it was mostly an online reaction - a 1.3 billion gross puts the lie yo do the idea that movie was divisive.
Rogue One’s success felt like an after effect of the 2016 election (let’s go watch the movie about resisting an evil empire!).
Released a year into the Trump presidency, The Last Jedi became the locus for the online bile which has continued to this day.
It was not the first (Ghostbusters 2016, and John Boyega’s experience post-the release of the first TFA trailer would have a word).
But it has become the poster child for the dark side of online fandom, and the way online platforms like Twitter and RottenTomatoes have been weaponised.
Related
Resurrected after centuries, witch Jennifer (Veronica Lake) renews her campaign against the people who executed her - the Wooley family, especially their most contemporary descendent, Jonathan (Frederick March).
I used to read Empire magazine, and loved to read their big historical pieces at the back. They would cover a specific topic - like script-doctoring or the history of a specific person or trend.
One of these pieces was a biographical essay on Sturges. This was the early noughties, and Sturges was undergoing something of a revival thanks to the success of fans like The Coen Brothers (O Brother Where Art Thou? takes the title of the titular character’s pet project in Sullivan’s Travels).
I started catching Sturges' movies late at night. One of the main broadcast channels played older movies late on Friday nights.
This was how I was introduced to Sturges’s comedies, Universal horror movies and Hitchcock’s British movies.
This was my introduction to Veronica Lake, in Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels.
Lake is so beautiful and so gloriously naturalistic in Sullivan’s Travels, she steals the movie. Joel McCrea is great, but the movie loses Lake’s wild, unpredictable energy.
I did not have access to Lake’s other movies, so I did not get to see her other vehicles until later.
And I only watched I Married a Witch recently based on listening to the You Must Remember This podcast episode on Lake.
I had not thought about her in years.
Watching this film reinforced what a unique presence Lake was, and you can look forward to more reviews of her films in the future.
Produced by Sturges (who refused screen credit after a breakdown in relations with Rene Clair), I Married a Witch is a spritely, wicked takedown of Wasp America.
Opening in the puritanical past, we dropped into the middle of a witch burning.
The grim occasion is offset immediately by a salesman selling snacks to the spectators.
With the tone established, the film advances rapidly through time with a montage showing Woolley’s ancestors unlucky in love.
Frederick March is perfectly cast as the straight man. There is something vaguely theatrical about his delivery that clashes with Lake’s unstudied naturalism. He works for the character of a stuffed shirt.
Cecil Kellaway is also hilarious as Jennifer’s father, giving a diabolical self-regard that makes him more of an antagonist.
He is also key to the comic highlight of the movie, the wedding - the time bomb of Wooley’s society friends and would-be bride finding Jennifer is further complicated by the added variable of her father.
The film treats Wooley and his milieu as the punchline - a world of wealth where everyone is still forced to hide their true feelings and desires, like Wooley’s fiancé (Susan Hayward).
The movie sends up WASPiness, highlighting how the representation of their ancestors endures - the only desire permitted is the pursuit of wealth and power.
Without its star, I Married A Witch might have worked.
But Lake takes it into the stratosphere.
There is no one quite like her, then or now. There is nothing frothy about Lake as a bombshell. She can trade repartee but there is a pathos to her. It always seems like she has more edge than the films intend. Even as Jennifer, she is playful in a way that feels more knowing the character lets on.
One wishes the film was a little more adventurous - the film ends with our central couple in wedded bliss, with only the comic threat of Jennifer’s father in the wings.
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