MOVIE REVIEW: STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more as Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron's journey continues. With the power and knowledge of generations behind them, the final battle commences.

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams

Release Date: December 13, 2019

Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action

Runtime: 2h 21min

Review:

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a hefty checklist of things it needs to accomplish while closing out the Star Wars franchise at least the Skywalker saga.  For some reason, J.J. Abrams decides to do it in the most perfunctory way possible.  Massive reveals, which come out of left field with regularity, occur throughout but none of it is particularly engaging.   It would have been nice if there was some sort of mystery or intrigue but Abrams and the screenwriters seem strangely disinterested creating any sort of tension at any point during the proceedings.  As such, we move from set piece after set piece where we get some well choreographed Star Wars action, rinse and repeat for 2 and half hours.  Sadly, after this happens a few times you really just don’t care anymore.  The dialogue shuffles between believable to outright corny leaving the characters feeling more artificial than organic.  The cast does what it can with the characters delivering infrequent moments of life.  Daisy Ridley who seems continuously sweaty leads the film as best she can.  Her character has always been a bit of cipher mainly because she never feels like anything more than rehash of Luke’s story line, something compounded by story choices here.  Ultimately she’s nothing more than a Luke clone in Capri pants and space Uggs.  Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is even more uninteresting this go around.  The insistence on having his angry emo boy be the primary menace in this trilogy has always left me confused.  There’s never been much intrigue in his character much less any sort of palpable sense menace or real threat.  John Boyega and Oscar Isaac do what they can with their screen time but suffer from poor writing that never let them develop memorable characters.  You can sense Isaac trying bring a spark of life to Poe in this film but it’s never maintained for a sustained amount of time.  As such, we watch everyone go through the motions and move the plot from one spot to another with a sense of inevitability as opposed to wonder. Sure it’s great to see the late Carrie Fisher on screen one last time but even her scenes aren’t nearly as moving as they should be, possibly because you can feels Abrams building story around these bits of old footage for the sake of inclusion.  All this should have been moving but it never hits with the emotional impact much like this final entry overall. 

C-