The Rise Of Skywalker

The Last Jedi is the most divisive movie in the Star Wars universe. The middle of the sequel trilogy turned director/writer Rian Johnson into a lightning rod for either profuse scorn or effusive praise, depending on what segment of the fandom was speaking up at the time. The subversion of convention, the hints of romance between "the Jedi and the Jedi Killer," the abundant humor--these were the elements that won new fans disinterested in the OT/PT methodology while simultaneously pissing off the diehards who swore by the lore of Lucas.

Dissatisfaction with pacing, comedy and characterization--these are all legitimate reasons to not like any film. The loudest, longest excoriations of The Last Jedi reeked of a vicious hatred, a shameless disgust at seeing a more inclusive, diverse Star Wars universe. Which is not a legitimate reason to dislike a movie.

Once entrusted to Colin Treverrow, the ST finale was handed over to J.J. Abrams, whose re-imagining of Episode IV pulled the nifty trick of pleasing both critics and audiences. Could he do it again?

WHAT HAPPENED (Fair warning: I left the Blue Milk on the counter in the stereolab.)

My personal expectation: a flashy, gorgeous, and derivative experience thick with fanservice. The shaggy-haired, finely-muscled fuckboy who grabs your attention despite the warning signs because, well, who doesn't like watching a good fucking? I sure do.

Oh, who me? Born late '77, youngest of seven, most married and moved on by the time I was desperately seeking entertainment beyond peek-a-boo and Poky Li'l Puppy. My big brother (only eleven years older than me) boasted a formidable collection of VHS/Betamax tapes filled with movies he'd recorded off of our tank-like TV. Dozens of hours of escape, none of them pulled me in like Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Fairy tales in space, Kurosawa with lasers, it was like nothing I'd seen or heard. I quit counting sheep, choosing instead to recite ESB dialogue from line one. The Glo Worm and the X-Wing were my favorite toys. Princess Leia was my favorite character.

And I was the only girl I knew--in a town full of people who worshipped fantasies of the past while vilifying fantasies of the present--who loved Star Wars.

Maybe there were other girls my age in the theater when Mom took my brother and I to the Valley Mall on May 25, 1983. I don't remember much about the first time I saw the "last" SW movie, save for the Imperial Guards, the Ewoks, and Leia kicking ass.

When the prequels were announced, I felt a sense of duty to buy tickets for all three. Same with the sequels. I never, though, felt a sense of entitlement. Whatever expectations I harbored, I tempered. The thrills resonated longer, the disappointments puttered out in the life of a sigh, and I never once reacted with the fervor of a loon, distraught over moving pictures on a screen not matching up with the moving pictures in my head.

This is a neat little trick I've far from perfected, and one the fans degrading Episode 9 (and 8, for that matter) would do well to practice.

The most interesting characters in the ST are scavenger-ass Rey and Vader-wannabe Kylo Ren. The young woman struggling with issues of identity and family, the young man doomed since conception to defy the expectations of his parentage. Searching is the vital verb, and so it proceeds both Rey and Ren are leading charges to locate Emperor Palpatine. Sheevy Baby's 'bout as dead as Pearl Jam's breakout single, and havoc-wreaking is in the stars! Training, trio and traitors, oh my! For an offering that aims to "tie it all together" (meaning all eight preceding films), TROS revels in adding new customs and characters. This works well…mostly.

Rey's training (as overseen by Leia, who has a saber now, y'all), is pretty fun until Kylo ForceTimes himself into it and BB-8 finds out what happens when a tree decides to initiate the hugging. The Emperor is out there, on the Sith planet of Exogol, and Kylo's found him, and now Rey has to find the Emperor, but she won't be alone thanks to her insistent Resistance chums. Enter shenanigans with Poe, Finn, C-3PO, Chewie and Rose! Wait, not Rose? Huh, okay, 'cause last film she was all gung-ho about staying in the fight and emphasizing love and now she's a pessimist?

Trio adventures are better late than never, packed with plenty of laughs and fake-outs and important reveals. Then Kylo drops the twist (twists the drop?) and either the shit becomes incredibly real or the real becomes incredibly shit, that's one I gotta leave up to y'all.

The final fight between scavenger and trash is fantastic, since Kylo finally remembers who he is and whoops ass. Only to remember who he is--again. The Resistance, led by new General Poe Dameron, battles the First Order while Palps and Rey-Rey powwow.

That Rey and Ben Solo were connected by the Force (a "Dyad" per Palpatine) isn't a surprise. I'd assumed this would play a part in the third movie, during their climactic final fight. Instead, Sheevy Baby exploits this bond to gain UNLIMITED POWA and end the Skywalkers. Which he both succeeds to do, and fails to do.

Celebration on Endor, the established party planet! Burial on Tattoine! Spotlight on John Williams, y'all!

AND HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED?

The female protagonist kicked ass. Just like in the last two. Get mad, stay mad. Sure, there was resurrection via dead Jedi pep talk, and the wide-chested Solo boy escaped to the World Between Worlds before sliding into second base, but fuck me, she's got a cool new saber!

Ben showing his inner Han ruled, incidentally.

What's even cooler than ship porn? The one, the only, the Richard E. Grant, born to be a villain in a galaxy far, far away.

All right, enough bullet point writing. From the moment I sat my butt down in the theater, my nerves were crackling. Audibly. Like my partner pointed out more times than three that I should calm the entire fuck down, the previews haven't even started yet, ya antsy cunt. Then the movie started and I calmed most of the fuck down. The fate of Leia tested the tensile strength of my blood vessels, and each time she popped on screen, a curious admixture of gratitude and trepidation poured itself into my esophagus, and I rode every curve of the journey with pale knuckles and florid face. (Mad Luke bit it? Mark Hamill's still alive and ghosting. Mad Ben 'n' Rey won't bump pretties? Y'all got a kiss.)

The thoughtful utilization of archival footage aside, Episode IX became hypothetical
on December 27, 2016, when Carrie Fisher passed away. VII was Harrison's sendoff, VIII was Mark's sendoff, and IX was to be hers. Then real life intruded, denying audiences (and performers) the emotionally satisfying mother-son conclusion the whole damn story demanded.

Well, Disney hates Moms anyway. Enter Han Solo to make sure Harrison Ford keeps up with Samuel L. Jackson in all-time box office. Oh, and also to provide his son with the needed absolution to chuck the best lightsaber ever constructed into the water, drop the act, and save the girl. Between this, and the announcement of Leia's death, the Solo-Skywalkers provided the most emotional moments in TROS.

(Poor Chewie, all his old friends were lost to this stupid war. Least his girlfriend gave him a medal.)

Glad to see more of horndog pilot/pusher Poe, whose past with Zorii Bliss interested me far more than Finn's frantic inability to tell Rey something ostensibly significant. Oscar Isaac grabs his opportunity with both hands and throttles. He's dynamic, magnetic, and sells iffy dialogue in the style of the OG scoundrel pilot.

For more well-earned nostalgic good feels, C-3PO (the "C" is for "comedian") and Babu Frick (a Baby Yoda/Groot hybrid who will make a very nice Funko Pop one day soon) occupy the same chamber in my heart forever. Thank you, silly heroes.

OH NO, HERE SHE GOES

Already, the fuckery. A split in critical and audience reception, talk of behind-the-scenes discord and Disney sacrificing Lucas's work for the sake of an entirely new Star Wars universe. (And yeah, I suspect if you peer at the pie you'll find Iger's thumb-holes gouged in certain slices.) Evidence of ret-conning, incomplete or contradictory threads (Finn/Rey, Kylo/Rey)…it's frustrating, but I feel those problems were going to exist with or without J.J. in the driver seat. I sympathize with fans who view Ben's death as reinforcing the lesson of "death is the only true redemption," who resent stripping Rey of her "other" status and denying her a fertile future on a lush planet, instead sending her back to the sand to live out her days as an intergalactic spinster with a basketball droid for a cat.

But goddamn I liked this movie.

The first act is too fast for its own good--why this movie wasn't three hours long is up there with Jack the Ripper and The Beast of Bodmin Moor I tell you--and not all the emotional beats thump, but it's a good Star Wars movie. I'd like to watch it again, though thanks to circumstances beyond my control, that won't happen for awhile.

I save my vitriol (in a Snoopy thermos, no less) for the gatekeepers who hunger to dictate fandom, the click-click commandos with more usernames than anatomical digits, YouTubers who've made projection and vitriol lucrative business, the prune-breathed oafs hungering for midichlorians and Force Ghost orgies who bond over their rancor for outsiders, a considerable percentage of whom check the box marked "female."

I can't claim absolute association with all of my like-chromosoned brethren in the fandom, since women are as gorgeously varied as men, but I'd never make them feel unwelcome. Those "shippers" who raise hackles by injecting gross romance into everything, guess what? I love 'em. I embrace 'em, I smooch 'em on the forehead, I offer 'em a swig outta my Snoopy thermos. They're enthusiastic, they expand the universe with fanfic and artwork, inspired by characters and settings and plots, so occupied they haven't the time to search out dissimilar spirits in order to execute harassment campaigns. (Already I'm seeing mean, condescending messages online towards fans who convey anguish over the fate of certain characters. Probably from the same men who threw the poorest of hissy fits over Luke Skywalker's boss sacrifice in The Last Jedi.)

Bless 'em. Telling other fans how to feel, trying to dictate the proper reactions, is lamer than Attack of the Clones. (Totally cool if you like that movie, though.) And I hope they make peace, soon, with the fact that Ben Solo, having been Kylo Ren, could not exist freely in the post-Palpatine world. Without his sweet sacrifice, he'd be doomed to a sour life.

Critics who call TROS a "fuck you" to TLJ are ignoring/missing the homages to Rian Johnson's work, be it Palpatine narrating Rey's supposed imminent turn or "the Holdo maneuver" referred to as a "one in a million" move ('cause it fucking was, one of the greatest moments in Star Wars, come fight me if you enjoy shadowboxing).

"Rey Nobody" turned out to be somebody, and initially that pissed me off.* Then my partner laid out an alternate read. "You are not your genetics" is still a valid moral. Rey's survival is not a victory for Palpatine, since she introduces herself as a "Skywalker" in the last line of the film. This defiance of her birth name is pure hope. What did Snoke say? "Skywalker lives. The seed of the Jedi Order lives. As long as it does, hope lives in the galaxy."

She's a long way to go, though. Burying the sabers of Anakin and his daughter in the sand. Honey, the sand? Jesus, babe, read the planet. (Or the shared Jedi texts, which certainly feature a chapter on the stated pet peeves of noted Jedis.)

The ninth and (allegedly) final installment in the saga is at once a relief and a reminder: they're just movies, y'all. 



*(Hi, and thanks for reading. When I say the twist pissed me off, I mean I voiced my displeasure in the theater, although thankfully only my partner seemed to hear. I don't normally behave so rashly in an audience, and while I regret my minor outburst--to the point I'm addressing it in a review--I take solace in the fact I'll never be as imbecilic as the douchenozzle wearing the bright red "Trump 2020" sweater in our theater.

Signing off, Jennifer Shakespeare.

FINAL RANK
1) THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK A+
2) A NEW HOPE A
3) THE FORCE AWAKENS A
4) THE LAST JEDI A
5) RETURN OF THE JEDI B+
6) THE RISE OF SKYWALKER B
7) REVENGE OF THE SITH B-
8) THE PHANTOM MENACE C+
9) ATTACK OF THE CLONES D