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So, we have arrived at the end of this new Disney trilogy. The end to a saga of 9 films all with varying degrees of quality ranging from garbage to cinema masterpiece. With those extremes in rating could this film stick the landing? Well no, or maybe, or it did, or let's be honest, it never could. That's a lot of pressure placed on a film within a franchise that suffers from the diametric extremes of the Internet opinions-trolls.
For me it was as good as it could be given it had to follow what I consider the worst star wars movie. The Rise of Skywalker is messy, predictable and has some fun in places.
I don't think it's mediocre and it's not as bad as TLJ. There's plenty of new exposition, macguffin-quests and Russian doll-stype plot development, but most of it is rushed through, left open for a comic or book to explore later, etc. Which I'm not a massive fan of.
And even with all this new exposition pushing the plot along there's just no surprises... except for the biggest surprise in that there's a massive leap in 'plot logic' contained within the opening paragraph that you either have to go with or what follows you'll not accept. That happens again a few times across the span of the movie where you just have to say 'OK, whatever' and go with it... or not. Just keep remembering that, from a certain point of view, TLJ ended with either a completely blank slate for the next director to go anywhere they like, or in a place with nowhere else to go with all the characters. Now add on to those 2 opinions that Disney are terrified by the previous backlash, are no panicking from the realisation that they had no plan for these films, etc, and you'll understand why they have to write everyone out of the corners they were left in at the TLJ finale.
Look, I didn't hate it, so that's something. It's a complete mess of a film, but I had fun. Maybe I enjoyed it more because of the things it was doing to try and rewrite all the mistakes of TLJ? I believe the Germans call this 'schadenfreude' (pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune)... either way this 'saga' is over whether it earned that ending or not.
What I'm Watching: Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker
Posted by Matt Young on