The Rise of Skywalker Review

Star Wars-Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker

While I may not be the biggest Star Wars fan, I do enjoy watching the movies. My favorite being Empire Strikes Back, but I really enjoyed The Force Awakens. I don't hate The Last Jedi, but I feel it has a lot of problems. So I wasn't sure how I would feel about The Rise of Skywalker, especially after hearing some negative reviews. However, I'll say this, the movie has problems, sure, BUT, I actually enjoyed this movie. Is it the best? No. Is it better than some other Star Wars movies? Yes.

While the return of the Emperor, didn't make a lot of sense, and Rey's lineage was stupid, to me the journey of this movie is what I enjoyed. What I like about Star Wars movies are the journies and adventures of the characters interacting with each other. I enjoyed having Rey, Poe and Finn on a quest together, epecially if they are to be our new trio of SW characters. I did not like what Last Jedi did with Poe and Finn's characters, mostly because I think their stories are pointless and don't actually move the overall SW story forward. I also, have not liked the use of comedy in episodes 7& 8. I feel that The Rise of Skywalker does a lot for the new characters and has a better use of comedy.

I also enjoy a lot of the action in this movie, and I liked seeing Lando in there, plus I enjoyed the new characters. While not having much to do, I enjoyed Keri Russel's Zorri character, I really liked the Jannah character (I totally support her and Finn as a couple), and I loved Babu Frik! He and C-3PO provided good humor in the movie. And I did like the use of C-3PO, I don't like the use of R2D2 in the new trilogy. And speaking of droids, I do like BB8, but with this new one Dio, it's getting too crowded with the droids. So, there's a lot of good stuff that I enjoyed in this movie, even though the overall plot doesn't hold together well.

As for the Leia character, I think that because of the passing of Carrie Fisher, I don't think all of us were going to love what they do with the character, it was a tough choice for the film makers to make. I think for me, it works well enough, but still not fully satisfying. I think we all wish they would have had the orginal cast interact together, unfortunately because the characters are now dead, that's not going to happen. I don't mind what they did with Luke in this movie, and I was surprised to see Harrison Ford show up for a scene.

In regards to the Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo character, I had no problem redeeming him since they killed him off immediately, similar to what happened with Anakin. But I never really felt his motivations to want to switch to the “light side”. This is a character that, much like all the new characters, was never fully realized and developed to a point where I care about what happens to him. I think that is the biggest criticism of this new trilogy. It doesn't feel like a cohesive story arc. While most people hate the prequel trilogy, they did have a cohesive story arc that played out across three films.

So, while I do enjoy this movie, I acknowledge that it has a lot of problems, but they don't bother me as much as they do some people. I think the good in this outweighs the bad, and that's just the subjectivity of movies. I would put this somewhere in the middle of ranking all the Star Wars movies, it's not great but I don't think it's bad either. Having watched the show The Mandolorian, it's not as good as that either, but it's a movie I would watch again, above The Last Jedi and Solo. Where do the Star Wars movies go from here, we will have to wait and find out, but let's hope that they plan the movies out better and tell fun, new and exciting stories within this massive universe.