Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker review – death becomes them

The swirl of reviews and is up, opinions swooping and swarming, crashing into each other, firing their laser vigour out into the deepest galaxy of internet space; many keen to shout “It’s shit!” as loudly as possible, others to go “It’s fine, I don’t know what they’re on about,” none yet that I’ve seen to say, “Really great, necessary addition to the canon.” I don't know why I feel obliged to add my tuppence; I wouldn't really call it a review as much as to say I guess I've got observations and you, you lucky reader, are good to get em. Merry Christmas!

Put it this way: I might watch it again, but not so much for pleasure as to see whether my opinions hold over a second viewing. And I won’t be doing that for at least, oh I don’t know, maybe 40 years. No, maybe I will, but probably not, because the chief impression I had watching this was that they have sucked the franchise dry, sucked it completely dry, reanimated the corpse through some incredible film-making sorcery, and then sucked the whole fucking thing dry again.

I mean, Emperor Palpatine. Are you having a fucking laugh?

So yeah, the storyline was fucked. I mean how much emotion are you supposed to invest in the question of whether the heroes will kill the dude that was already fucking killed three films ago. Now, he’s being kept in a state of seemingly undead, on some sort of afterlife support system and it turns out he’s been propelling the bad guy (who’s not really a bad dude, just a bit upset) using his ability to psychically talk to anyone in the universe and see what’s going on, sort of like God then, and more than that, while in hiding he’s conjured, apparently out of his undead arsehole, a gigantic fleet of about a kajillion star destroyers that all zap planets like Death Stars. Like get the fuck out of here.

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to be worrying about whether our young, considerably-more-posh-than-I-remember hero Rey is going to be able to resist the entreaties of the bad dude and the undead bad dude who happens to be her grandad to become a superfucking real bad girl and let her friends die and all this jazz, storywise it fucking stinks no two ways about it.

(Seeing her as much posher all of a sudden might be something to do with a newspaper article I read about Daisy Ridley showing she understood fuck all about her class privileges, but it also might be the film-makers up-poshing her for her royal reveal, because it turns out that in 2018, they produced a book championing Rey as evidence that anybody could make it, no matter how humble their origins, in the Star Wars universe; only now it turns out, as before, that the whole thing is basically a spat among princes.)

Furthermore seeing as the bad dude is basically a god, and the story hinges entirely on whether Rey defeats him or not, why do all these other people have to die? The other films (not the prequels which don't count) seemed to find a better balance between the interfamilial drama plotline and the swarming armies of imperial and rebel fleets. This had just as much laser blasting, but it was never clear why any of it had to happen, seeing as Rey wanted to get to the emperor and he wanted her to come.

My feeling is that previously the story might have been hookum but the charm carried it over, but the charm has been clinically and expertly sucked the fuck out. They played around well in Eps 7 and 8 between the new characters and the old, especially keeping Luke back and seeing Han get appendectomied into the next life, plus there was just a huge sense of relief that someone who really loved the originals was in charge after the aforementioned unmentionable prequels, but here it’s just all too much, the nostalgia has worn off and seeing Luke’s family home, for example, or the Emperor’s Death Star throne room, or Billy Dee Williams, it’s like yeah we get it, past references, no one cares any more; and then you’re just left with a storyline that doesn’t engage you.

In place of an engaging story, they do a lot of heartstring tweaking. Here they have got something going on that might bear a second watch, because there were a lot of moving moments, especially to do with Carrie Fisher. I was uncomfortable about the CGI Carrie Fisher mainly because it strikes me as incredibly disrespectful that when one of your actors dies, instead of writing around it, you resurrect them and have them cavort about pretty much as if you were pushing the cadaver around the stage – and in a film where more or less the same thing has happened to literally the most evil character in the universe. I did not like it one bit, but at one point when Rey goes to leave Leia and they have a loving hug and you sense this is the last time they will meet – you kind of hope that maybe this is the last time you see Leia cos it’s so uncomfortable, but it wasn’t – and then there’s a moment when Billy Dee Williams says something along the lines of “Tell Leia how much I love her”, and you get it: they really did love Carrie Fisher and she died and they’re really fucking sad about that. I think, but maybe that's what they want us to think.

And for the first time ever, I was suddenly worried by the question: does Star Wars have a race problem? There’s been some chat about how Kelly Marie Tran had barely any lines in this episode; this after her bigger part in Last Jedi drew a load of internet grief from couchfucking types. But for me, it was something about the way they portrayed the gap yah posh white girl visiting the Indian-looking festival and getting a necklace off the friendly local that gave me the shivers; something about the way the rodent who tweaked C3PO’s brain seemed to be another jolly foreigner type. Both as if they were using aliens to get away with some pretty carefree orientalism. And then there was the way that Finn found his soulmate, another ex-stormtrooper who just happened to be played by a black girl from London, as if they were saying, don’t worry that he seems to fancy the royal big potatoes, he’s going to end up with someone suitable. I dunno, I’m no race theorist, but there was something off key going on there, even while there's progress that they did have some good roles for black people and they don’t even have to die.

The other interesting thing they seem to be getting at is that they keep saying to each other: “Stick together, if we stick together we’ll be able to beat this all-powerful enemy” and I couldn’t help imagining maybe they mean us. Maybe they mean if we stick together, remember our friends, try to work together, we can beat this fascist menace, this far-right monster growing in the black darkness, steadily getting stronger and more confident, coming on ready for its big reveal. Maybe they’re trying to indoctrinate the kids to believe that they can take this thing on. I hope that they did – and I hope that they do. That would be one good meaning of A New Hope, I suppose. But it seems just as likely that they are telling us that we the plebs can’t do anything about the fascist onslaught and have to hope a royal princess takes up the challenge.

It was a film seemingly very preoccupied with death. Lots of people died, lots of supposedly main characters as well, but for most it was time to die (plus they can all come back as fucking ghosts any time so it’s not much of a hindrance). And the truth is that for Star Wars, too, it is, I’m afraid, time to die.