Why I Love the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
From the moment it premiered in the summer of 1977, writer-director George Lucas’ towering space opera Star Wars instantly became a cultural phenomenon, spawning a multimedia enterprise that’s still going strong and making heavy bank nearly fifty years later. As a child of the 2000’s, I grew up during the height — or at least, it was at the time — of Star Wars mania, when fans flocked to witness the spectacles of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in droves, two animated television shows bearing the name Clone Wars were making booming waves on Cartoon Network, and Family Guy and Robot Chicken were mercilessly and gleefully parodying the initial three installments.
Amazingly, it wasn’t even until I reached double-digits when I got really interested in Star Wars, and like many a fan of the epic science fantasy saga, I very much love the original trilogy, and of the prequels, the only one of them that I found truly great from beginning to end was the aforementioned Revenge of the Sith. My interest in the Star Wars films partly coincided with my interest in film as a whole; it wasn’t until I watched (the 2007 final cut of) Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner when I started to realize that this thing we refer to as cinema isn’t a mere vessel for escapist entertainment but rather a legitimate form of art, something to nurture like it’s a real, living and breathing thing.
So while I may have been late to the Star Wars hype train, watching those six films on home video was a formative experience for me, and with the endless rumors and gossip of whether or not we would get another three films, I got my fix from some of the Star Wars video games, for better and for worse, whether it be Shadows of the Empire, Kinect Star Wars, or the Lego Star Wars and Force Unleashed titles. Then, in 2012 came the ultimate bombshell: Lucas, exhausted from a decade and a half of non-stop fan revolt, sold his company Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney corporation for $4 billion, with Amblin Entertainment partner Kathleen Kennedy as the company’s new CEO and the promise of a new trilogy that would pick up years from where Return of the Jedi left off.
From that day forward, the hype for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was endless. There was the return of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher alongside fresh-faced newcomers like Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac and a great supporting cast that included Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong’o, and Max von Sydow. There was J.J. Abrams sitting in the director’s chair, after having successfully rebooted the Star Trek films. There was the return of Lawrence Kasdan, the co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back, often said to be the best Star Wars film. There was the emphasis on in-camera animatronics, tangible puppetry, and practical sets in conjunction with state-of-the-art digital effects, all to be photographed on crisp 35mm film. There was John Williams back to do the music. Everything seemed to guarantee something great.
I was lucky enough to see The Force Awakens with my eldest brother twice in theaters when it came out, and both times, my mind was blown at what I was seeing unfold. The audience surrounding me erupted in applause a whopping four times: during the opening title crawl, during the reintroduction of Han Solo and Chewbacca, during the climactic taking of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber by Rey, and during the end credits. It was one of the most euphoric moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had, and nearly ten years later, my love for Abrams’ film has yet to fade away. It will always have a very special place in my heart.
The most common criticism hurled towards this film is that the general plot is familiar to that of A New Hope, to the point where it can be considered a rehash. To an extent, I understand it. Sure, Abrams — tasked with the difficult assignment of re-introducing a sci-fi universe that wasn’t seen in theaters, in live-action, for ten years — wanted to bring back the look and feel of an older Star Wars film after many were disappointed in Lucas’ prequels, but a sequel’s purpose is to evolve a story and its characters, not recycle them. However, I myself feel that to view the film as merely that and that alone, without considering the specificities in how Abrams, Kasdan, and Michael Arndt incorporate this method and execute their approach, is reductive.
The Force Awakens follows multiple similar beats, but what it’s actually about is far different from what A New Hope is about. Plot and theme are not one and the same. I’d go so far as to make the argument that one of the core themes of Abrams’ film goes back to the old saying, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” The original trilogy is often described as a fairy tale, but remember that the prequels revealed that it was the failures of the Jedi order that led to Anakin turning his back on them in Revenge of the Sith and becoming their greatest threat in the form of Darth Vader, a choice that challenges our perceptions of black and white, of right and wrong, of good and evil, not unlike the reveal of Vader being Luke’s father in The Empire Strikes Back.
In The Force Awakens, our new heroes are challenged with burdens either similar to or almost exactly like the ones that our old ones endured, but those old heroes are in a much rougher place now than they were in the past, with Luke going into hiding out of guilt and shame, Han returning to smuggling out of depression and grief, and Leia taking charge of the losing Resistance out of desperation. For as good as they’ve seemed to have had it, it’s details like these that remind us that these characters are as human as you and I, vulnerable and capable of failing and making mistakes. There’s something inherently fascinating and crushing about the notion that it’s their fallibility that resulted not just in this new trilogy’s central antagonist’s rise to power but in the emergence of another sinister empire from the ashes of the preceding one.
If the original trilogy was an allegory for imperialism during World War II and the Richard Nixon administration during the Vietnam War, and if the prequel trilogy was an allegory for the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and the War on Terror, then what’s established in this seventh chapter of the Skywalker saga calls back to the Barack Obama administration, specifically in regards to how we as a people were promised change — a new hope, if you will — only for that trust to be betrayed when they basically did the same things that the prior administration had done, but rather insidiously, those things are now shelled under the glossy, ever-so-appealing sheen of so-called progressivism. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
At the forefront of this new trilogy are two of my favorite Star Wars characters: Boyega’s Finn, a disillusioned stormtrooper who grows a conscience and goes rogue, and Ridley’s Rey, an orphaned scavenger on the desert planet Jakku who’s still waiting for her long-lost parents to return to her. From the moment she first appeared, I was instantly captivated by Ridley’s on-screen presence, and for her only her first major role, that’s a truly remarkable feat. The way she so perfectly captures this character’s dread, fury, optimism, and yearning and her evolution from being a bit standoffish to being a trusting soul is spellbinding, and the same applies to Williams’ theme for the character, as it’s whimsical yet has a twinge of melancholy. I love when she surprises herself with what she reveals to be capable of and I love just how fierce her loyalty to her friends is.
Even in a subpar film like Chaos Walking or The Marsh King’s Daughter, what I admire the most about Daisy Ridley as a performer is that she never phones it in for the sake of a paycheck. She brings an extensive, borderline intense amount of conviction to each and every one of her roles, and her performances always feel so authentic — to herself as a human being, to the characters she’s playing, and to the audience — to the point where I no longer see someone merely putting on an act and instead am seeing the actual characters she’s inhabiting, and this is absolutely the case when I see her brilliant work as Rey in this film and its sequels. For a lot of actors, even our greatest actors, that’s a profoundly challenging task, and I know it certainly must’ve been for her, but she always makes it look downright effortless, which is a testament to her natural talent.
Although he previously gave a terrific performance in Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block, this is undoubtedly Boyega’s breakout role, and he makes for a winning leading man. Right from the outset, I admire the idea of a stormtrooper — a Black stormtrooper, no less — who realizes the fear and damage he’s caused, and is complicit in causing, unto others and strives to fully break free from what he was trained from childhood to do. Boyega’s layered, likable performance gets across Finn’s sense of deep-rooted pain and guilt flawlessly, making it all the more easier for the audience to buy into both his personal redemption and his radical empathy for the people he encounters along the way.
It’s a complex role that Boyega infuses with an abundance of earnest charisma, humor, and passion. One of my favorite examples of this is a pivotal moment when Finn tries to run away from all of this conflict, not wanting to any longer be a part of so much suffering. Rey confronts him, as he told her he was a part of the Resistance, only for him to confess that he lied to her and tell her the truth about his past. In any other film, a shocking revelation like this would have Rey feel betrayed, seethe with anger towards him, and demand he stay away from her only to reconcile with him later on. However, that’s not the route they take here.
Just the looks in these characters’ eyes alone convey so much, from Finn’s shame over participating in the execution of innocents to Rey empathizing with him as they’ve both had difficult upbringings and she even goes as far as to try convincing him to stay with her and fight. Rey herself later even develops a similar impulse to run away from everything after she touches Anakin’s lightsaber, having been called to it due to her burgeoning Force sensitivity, and experiences surreal, horrifying visions of past tragedies involving her, Luke, and Kylo Ren, initially vehemently refusing to accept her so-called destiny as a new Jedi in the vein of Luke.
The new threat this time around is Driver’s Kylo Ren, the commander of the First Order who’s revealed to be Ben, the son of Han and Leia and nephew of Luke. Trained to be a Jedi, Ben was corrupted by the Supreme Leader Snoke and seduced to the Dark Side, leading him to burn down Luke’s temple and slaughter his fellow Padawans. Driver as an actor commands such a strong, calculating presence that a villain like Kylo Ren requires, rendering him an intimidating and all too palpable threat. One of the film’s highlights is when he takes off his mask in front of Rey, revealing him to be an average-looking person like her, like you and I. He’s neither a grotesque creature nor inflicted with dozens of cuts and scars, but rather just the typical everyday guy, which I found refreshing.
Many Star Wars fans complain that Kylo is “too whiny,” similar to how they complained about Anakin’s characterization in the prequels, but it makes sense for his character just like it did for Anakin. He’s a lost, petulant little boy who craves power he doesn’t truly know what to do with and is prone to fits and temper tantrums when things don’t go the way he wants them to. He desperately strives to be like Darth Vader but can’t even begin to measure up to him, and on top of all the things that happened with him in his past, it haunts him and he feels forever tormented, stewing with bitterness and rage. It’s a smart, well-thought out choice that makes him feel more compelling and human than if he were simply the average stoically sinister bad guy.
One of the most powerful examples of this is when Han confronts him inside Starkiller Base, with father and son communicating with one another for the first time in years, now under much more harrowing circumstances. Ford and Driver bring everything they have to their roles, making for one of the most emotionally charged moments in any Star Wars film. The way Ford communicates how much Han loves his son and yearns for him to come back home with him and Leia, for them to be a family again, is such a beautiful demonstration of how much Han has evolved as a human being from the days of the original trilogy.
Ben says to his father, “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it,” a perfect encapsulation of his internal struggles regarding whether he wants to continue on into the darkness or turn away from it towards the light. But he ultimately makes the devastating choice to kill Han in cold blood, impaling him with his lightsaber and leaving a beloved childhood icon to fall helplessly into the smokey abyss. For a lot of audience members, this may have been an easy thing to see coming, but the dialogue, performances, and cinematographer Dan Mindel’s atmospheric visuals, making wonderful symbolic use of the colors red and blue, are all so good that just for a moment, you think Ben could potentially heed his father’s words and come back to the light, only to be met with the harsh but inevitable blow of Han dying at his son’s sword.
The aforementioned symbolic use of color comes back into play during the film’s cathartic climax where Rey takes Anakin’s lightsaber from Kylo after he incapacitates Finn and leaves him in a comatose state, not only standing up for herself and her friend but taking her first steps into finally accepting her destiny as a Jedi, into moving on from her lonely, troublesome life on Jakku to embark on a new journey working alongside the Resistance, finding Luke, and bringing balance back to the Force. While holding off Kylo, the red and blue from their weapons flash and glow upon her face as she closes her eyes, takes deep breaths, and connects with the Force, a striking representation of the never-ending push and pull between succumbing to the dark and embracing the light.
Months before The Force Awakens premiered, writers and directors had already been set for the planned follow-ups. Attached to the eighth installment was Rian Johnson, the great filmmaker behind Brick and Looper. Attached to the ninth installment was Colin Trevorrow and his creative partner Derek Connolly, both of whom had recently scored a massive franchise-relaunching hit with Jurassic World. After the cliffhanger ending to The Force Awakens, I couldn’t wait to see how these wildly talented guys had in mind in continuing from it. Johnson’s film, The Last Jedi, premiered at the tail-end of 2017 to extremely positive critical reviews but unexpectedly divisive fan reception, with many expressing a sense of hurt over how Johnson followed up on what Abrams had done.
Seeing it in theaters, I didn’t know what kind of film the angriest fans had watched, because it certainly wasn’t the one that I sat through. In one of my more “controversial” opinions, I maintain that The Last Jedi is a top-tier entry in the Star Wars canon, and if you’ll allow me to go a step further, I’d even say that it’s my favorite Star Wars film period. Choices were made here that were so bold, so unexpected, and so unlike anything I had seen in a Star Wars project before or since that I couldn’t help but greatly admire and appreciate them. It’s a masterpiece, and my choice for most unique, most audacious, and most emotionally rich installment in the franchise as a whole, let alone the Skywalker saga, even moreso than The Empire Strikes Back.
It’s still surprising to me seeing so many people online make the claim that Johnson retconned or did away with what Abrams had set up in the previous film, because what Johnson does with Abrams’ ideas flawlessly ride that fine line between being completely unlike what I had predicted would be done with them and being a completely natural continuation and extension of those very ideas. In an age of increasingly homogenous franchise blockbusters, Johnson achieves something with his sequel that feels far too rare, in that he makes it wholly his own, offering a smorgasbord of new and creative things to the table, while still paying loving homage to preceding installments and superbly expanding upon the story and characters set forth by Abrams and Kasdan.
The most notable example of this relates to what Abrams had established with how the rise of Kylo Ren and emergence of the First Order came about because of the past failings of the Jedi and the fallibility of our heroes from the original trilogy. Johnson’s film confronts this theme of failure head-on, crafting a poignant but ultimately meaningful and heartfelt story about how we shouldn’t be defined by our failures and how those very failures can be a very powerful teacher. Failure is necessary to grow and evolve as people. Much of our heroes and villains, both old and new, grapple with their failures in different and challenging ways throughout the film, with some learning to move past them while others are broken by them beyond repair.
Given how The Force Awakens revealed that Luke went into hiding because of Ben’s transformation into Kylo Ren, it makes sense that instead of Luke learning ancient Jedi secrets and becoming the Jedi equivalent of Superman, he’d be a feeble old man left bitter and depressed by his failings as a teacher, by the fact that he couldn’t live up to his own legend. For a lot of Star Wars fans, Luke Skywalker was the human embodiment of hope, best represented by his convincing Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi to turn his back on the Emperor Palpatine and redeem himself, to come back to the light and, in his fleeting final moments, re-emerge as Anakin Skywalker. With this in mind, Johnson posits the question, “What if the paragon of hope suddenly lost his sense of hope?”
When we see Luke take the lightsaber from Rey and toss it off the cliff in disinterest, it’s a massive shock, leaving Rey as bewildered and confused as the audience is at this present moment. You question why he would do such a thing given that we were previously used to seeing him as a bright, wide-eyed warrior with a brave, adventurous spirit. Now all these years later, he’s a lost soul riddled with self-hatred, bemoaning the arrogance of all the Jedi that came before him and desiring for all of this fighting to come to an end already. Despite his initial reservations about the direction Johnson took with the character, Mark Hamill’s performance is a masterclass in acting.
He manages to say so much with just his eyes that many actors can’t even do with their whole faces. Take, for instance, the scene where Rey demands the truth from him about whether or not he’s responsible for the creation of Kylo Ren. Luke reveals that he had sensed Ben was already being corrupted by Snoke, had a vision of what he could do as a result, and considered killing him, not unlike how he wailed on Vader when he threatened the possibility of Leia embracing the Dark Side. In his moment of weakness, he failed his nephew, frightening him and causing him to turn against him and the Jedi as a result. Hamill’s acting runs the full gamut from horror to embarrassment to sorrow to a combination of all those things at once and you simply can’t take your eyes off him.
Despite accepting her destiny as a Jedi, Rey still struggles to find the right source for guidance and has no idea what to do with herself nor what her place in this story is. She believes that she can convince Kylo Ren to turn back towards the light like Luke did with Anakin, even after witnessing him kill Han Solo and after Luke warns her, “This isn’t going to go the way you think.” She thinks she has a chance after he finally rids himself of the verbally abusive Snoke, but much to her horror, however, he refuses to change and elects to wholeheartedly embrace the darkness out of a need to let the past die. He’s the one who finally offers her a place in all of this, but it’s a place that she wants no part of. As put in Revenge of the Sith, he’s going down a path that she can’t follow.
Ridley’s look of devastation as Luke’s warning comes back to bite her is haunting to witness, and the same can be said for how Kylo tries to get Rey to join him, proposing they bring a new order to the galaxy. I love how Driver keeps him so soft-spoken, only lashing out when he senses that she’s still clinging onto the past and struggling to truly define herself. Driver’s quiet, complex performance communicates such an insane amount with only a few choice words. His demeanor lends further credence to his being emotionally tortured inside and suggests that he may not even want to be her enemy, that he wants to hold on to the unique connection he has with her, but it also gives way to a horrifically manipulative side to him, like how he coldly tells her, “You’re nothing,” when he pesters her to stop denying the truth about her parents’ abandonment of her.
The reveal that someone as powerful as Rey comes from nothing and doesn’t need to be related to some other character to be special or define her is one of the best and most meaningful in any Star Wars film. You can feel Johnson’s love for Lucas’ prequel trilogy shining through with this detail, expanding on the democratization of the Force. But even more than that, I love how it reaffirms the common sentiment that greatness can come from anywhere and from anyone, even the people, places, or things you’d least expect. Johnson hones in on this theme even further with how he chooses to end his film, on a downtrodden little boy somewhere on Canto Bight using the Force to bring a broom towards him as he looks up at the sky, with a sense of hope on his face.
It always breaks my heart seeing people reduce Finn’s character arc down to a random side quest or claim that Johnson turned him into a Black comedy relief sidekick in this film, when neither of these are the case, and really, it says a lot more about them than it does about Johnson as a storyteller. The way Finn evolves as a character is beautifully handled and Boyega sells each and every ounce of it. A common criticism lobbied at his arc is that it’s the exact same arc he goes through in The Force Awakens, but it really isn’t. His arc in The Force Awakens is that he learns to care about and fight for another person instead of running away. His arc in The Last Jedi is a natural extension, where he learns to care about and fight for a cause that’s worth fighting for.
Going back to the central theme of failure, the mistakes he makes during the assignment Poe Dameron gives him and the spunky Rose Tico on Canto Bight are indispensable not just to the film’s plot but to his character progression, as he gets the opportunity to witness how the one-percent of the galaxy oppress the little people and profiteer off of the endless fighting, selling and supplying weapons to both the Resistance and the First Order. If we want to bring the Star Wars spin-offs into the mix here, this doubles as a clever way of expanding on how Rogue One established that the Rebel Alliance was capable of getting their hands dirty in order to win their fight against the Empire; what was once thought to be pure, clean white is really something much muddier and grayer.
Just as Rey learns to accept her destiny as a Jedi warrior in The Force Awakens, Finn learns to accept his destiny as a soldier and freedom fighter for the Resistance, proudly declaring himself “Rebel scum” following his cathartic duel with his former First Order commander Phasma, one of the best and most satisfying moments in the entire film. In the Resistance’s battle against Kylo and the forces of the First Order on the salt planet Crait, he makes the bold decision to try and sacrifice himself, only to be stopped by Rose. This is another moment fans complain about, but had he succeeded in his kamikaze attack, for as heroic as it sounds on the surface, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It’s an empty gesture. Poe even demands that he not go through with it.
Poe was a cool presence in The Force Awakens, but I wouldn’t exactly call him much of a defined character. Here, Johnson takes the time to really flesh him out and gives him a wonderful arc, once again tying into the theme of failure. Poe is a trigger-happy, reckless flyboy prone to ignoring orders and undermining authority, a choice that comes back to bite him when it results in several unnecessary deaths and he gets demoted. He leads a mutiny against Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo because she doesn’t inform him of her plan, even though she really has no reason to tell him due to his actions, and refers to her as a cowardly traitor, only to be proven wrong upon the reveal of the Resistance base on Crait and Holdo sacrificing herself to save them.
He desires to be a hero, when really, he must learn to be a leader first, to use his brain and not rely so heavily on his ego. Not only does Oscar Isaac sell Poe’s transformation with a stunning balance between confident swagger and aching insecurity and vulnerability, but the arc Johnson crafts for him also works as a pointed subversion of traditional stories where the day is saved by protagonists who play by their own rules, who know better than everyone else. When Finn starts to become as reckless as he was, he’s quick to tell Finn not to do what he plans on doing, taking Leia’s and Holdo’s words to heart and promising to keep the spark of hope alive.
Going back to Finn’s misguided attempt at a sacrifice, another source of derision from the fanbase is Rose stopping him, but when you pay attention to her character and what she’s going through, it makes sense. She’s suffering the loss of her beloved sister Paige, a gunner for the Resistance who died trying to take down the Dreadnought, an attack initiated on Poe’s command. It was a loss that ultimately proved to be unnecessary. Rose’s personal stakes in the story are made abundantly clear right then and there, as she tries desperately to prevent Finn from sharing the same fate and gives him a powerful reminder that there’s a right and wrong way to fight for a cause, that aggression towards the enemy means very little compared to benevolence towards your allies.
It’s a testament to Johnson’s brilliance as a storyteller that he’s able to fit in all of these arcs, callbacks, parallels, and payoffs — and still packs both his written screenplay and his visual compositions with a staggering amount of rich, vibrant detail — and yet it never feels overstuffed or too busy. Everything fits perfectly into their place. It never ceases to frustrate me when even my fellow fans of this film declare it a “hate letter” towards the fans when every choice Johnson makes here is born from a place of pure, unfiltered love and appreciation, both for the other Star Wars films and for the variety of stories, mythologies, and philosophies that influenced Lucas to begin with. There’s no contempt or malice here. It’s a work of unabashed sincerity through and through.
This sincerity doesn’t shine any brighter than when Luke Skywalker, given words of wisdom by the Force ghost of his master Yoda, projects his image from Ahch-To onto the battlegrounds of Crait. It’s here where he owns up to his mistakes both as an uncle and as a mentor, where he gives his former droid companion C-3PO and his twin sister Leia one last goodbye, and where he fully reconciles with the Force and becomes one with it, by extension becoming more powerful than ever. It may have lasted for a short period of time, but the optimistic and fully capable Luke Skywalker that we knew and loved from the days of old had finally made his glorious return, harkening back to the Jedi that taught him what he knew.
One touch I personally adore is the choice of Johnson and film editor Bob Ducsay to cut to each of our three heroes, as each of their individual character arcs represent different parts of the speech Luke gives to Kylo. As Luke says “the Rebellion is reborn today,” we cut to Poe, having learned to be more responsible and less hot-headed. As Luke says “the war is just beginning,” we cut to Finn, having learned to believe in what he’s fighting for. As Luke says that “I will not be the last Jedi,” we cut to Rey, having overcome her struggles regarding her past and making peace with the place she has in this story. Cinematographer Steve Yedlin’s use of shadow, light, and close-ups in these shots is also worthy of attention, aiding these themes exceptionally well.
Speaking of Yedlin, in terms of sheer formal craft, I think that this is without a doubt in my mind the most beautiful-looking film in the series. Rogue One may have a more intense sense of grit and some of the other films may have a more vibrant display of colors, but there’s a certain texture in Johnson’s approach to framing and Yedlin’s shot choices and palette that’s so specific, evocative, and radiant that it’s a true feast for the eyes. The lighting allows for stronger black values and contrast than in The Force Awakens, which results in a much sharper visual presentation in general, and makes production designer Rick Heinrichs’ already astonishing sets a jaw-dropping spectacle to behold.
Furthermore, it also works in tandem with Johnson’s core thesis of the characters not obsessing over the past or killing the past but rather learning from it to forge something new. It’s very much in line with Johnson’s own sensibilities as a filmmaker but at the same time, even with it being shot on a combination of 35mm and 65mm during a time where the industry has embraced digital cameras like Lucas predicted they would, it somehow manages to be of a piece with the respective formal approaches of Lucas and Gilbert Taylor on A New Hope, Lucas and David Tattersall on the prequel trilogy, Irvin Kershner and Peter Suschitzky on The Empire Strikes Back, Richard Marquand and Alan Hume on Return of the Jedi, and Abrams and Dan Mindel on The Force Awakens.
In the months before The Last Jedi premiered, trouble was afoot at Lucasfilm. After creative disagreements with the higher-ups and the recent critical and commercial failure of The Book of Henry, Trevorrow exited the director’s chair on the trilogy’s capper, with his and Connolly’s script going unused. In a desperate attempt at easing fan worry, Abrams was enlisted shortly afterwards to re-captain the ship that he had once steered, teaming up with Chris Terrio on a new screenplay. If The Last Jedi had the smoothest production of any Star Wars film under Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm, then the exact opposite applies to The Rise of Skywalker.
The finale to the Skywalker saga was a victim of incessant pressure. Like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi before it, its hype became absolutely impossible to live up to. Because Disney insisted on a Christmas release, production was rushed to the point where rewrites were constant and editing had to be done on-set during filming so that they could stick to the planned shooting schedule and not risk going over-budget or falling behind. In an interview, co-editor Maryann Brandon even said that they had several less months’ worth of time to get the film done than was the case for The Force Awakens, leaving Abrams constantly exhausted.
It also didn’t help that not only did Disney chairman Alan Horn admit in interviews that he took a more hands-on approach than usual during the making of the film, but the executives at Lucasfilm were in full-blown panic mode following the disastrous box office for Solo and the wildly vitriolic fan reception towards The Last Jedi, resulting in certain creative choices being made that aimed to please everybody, both the die-hard devotees and the terminally online haters alike, but ultimately ended up pleasing nobody, or at least very few. Under such deranged circumstances, the chances for a perfect conclusion not just to this trilogy but to the other trilogies were sadly slim to none.
There are key moments in The Rise of Skywalker that have frustrated me then and still frustrate me now. Rose’s screen-time being significantly reduced in an effort to appease racist, misogynistic trolls is asinine. Despite the two-and-a-half-hour running-time, there’s not much in the way of breathing room between constant set-pieces. The reveal that Rey is the granddaughter of the returning Palpatine and no longer a “nobody” is a lazy way of pulling the “So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view” trick like it’s some sort of “get out of jail free” card. Kylo Ren’s redemption is unearned and his kiss with Rey before dying is an awkward and forced attempt at acknowledging — and pandering to — the Reylo community that ships the characters.
But this is about why I love the sequel trilogy — as in all of them, not just the first two films in that trilogy — , and despite my grievances with some of the choices made, I really do have a love for The Rise of Skywalker as a whole, and I refuse to apologize for that love. The fact that Abrams still managed to deliver a ridiculously entertaining film at the end of the day, even with all of the gargantuan odds stacked against his favor by the corporate powers that be, is a true monument to his talent behind the camera. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say that Abrams or Terrio aren’t deserving of some blame for the aforementioned lesser elements of the film, but my point still stands.
For as much as people lambast the return of Palpatine, and I myself would’ve preferred if Kylo were the sole villain all the way through, there are a few things about this choice that I’m willing to go, “Hey, just hear me out on this one.” For one thing, given that we’re now living in a time and place where Donald Trump is — depressingly — going to be the President of the United States again and actively striving to make things worse for everyone, it’s hard not to draw relevant comparisons between that and the Emperor’s unexpected return. Think of it as like a significantly darker twist on how Obi-Wan Kenobi said that “if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine” to Darth Vader during their final showdown in A New Hope.
Second, a common criticism is that his resurrection goes unexplained, except it does. Calling back to Revenge of the Sith, he says to Kylo, “The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural,” all the while he’s relying on a life-support device to survive on the planet Exegol and is surrounded by numerous vats of clones. Later, a Resistance member reveals to people questioning how he could still be alive, “Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.” I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t find all that hard to buy into the megalomaniacal, power-hungry tyrant who orchestrated the Clone Wars cloning himself in a desperate attempt to secure his legacy and accomplish his goal of ruling the galaxy with an iron fist.
George Lucas is often quoted as saying, “It’s like poetry, so that they rhyme,” so with this in mind, while I still would’ve preferred Rey being a nobody, there is something poetic about the fact that the Skywalker saga begins chronologically with a Palpatine leading the galaxy to ruin and ends with a Palpatine protecting and redeeming it from an army of darkness. Even with the unnecessary retcon, Abrams follows through with Johnson’s thesis that a person shouldn’t be defined by their bloodline but rather by their spirit and that future generations shouldn’t be required to pay for the past ones’ sins. A great example of this is when Rey, overwhelmed with guilt, considers doing what Luke did and exiling herself on Ahch-To, only for Luke’s Force ghost to tell her that she can’t make the same mistakes he had made and reveal that Leia knew she was a Palpatine all along but was still willing to train her as a Jedi because she saw inherent goodness in her.
A running thread throughout the film is Finn saying that he has something to tell Rey, which never really goes told. However, if you pay attention, you realize that he wanted to tell her was that he was starting to become sensitive with the Force, an eye-widening development suggested not through blunt dialogue but rather through subtle visual hints, like when he sensed the presence of Kylo Ren before he arrived at the desert planet Pasaana, when he sensed Rey dying after using all of her life-force and all the strength given to her by past Jedi to finally vanquish Palpatine for good, and when he’s introduced to another rogue stormtrooper like him, named Jannah, and they discuss how they both shared the same “feeling” that convinced them they were on the wrong side and compelled them to defect, or if you will, to rebel.
Speaking of Finn and Rey, their frequent banter with Poe is one of the film’s major highlights. Whether it be a friendly back-and-forth or a standoffish argument, getting to see all three of them together was wonderful to experience and you really get a sense of how close they’ve become with each other since the events of the prior two films. The chemistry between Ridley, Boyega, and Isaac is top-notch and it’s hard not to buy into the love they have for one another. It also makes the culmination of Rey’s emotional journey, that the new allies and friends she’s made are her true family and she’s blessed to be given exactly what she needs, hit that much harder.
As weird as it seems that it ends with her alone on Palpatine, I argue that with BB-8 by her side and the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia smiling proudly at her, it represents that she’s never truly alone. Some people take umbrage at Rey choosing the name Skywalker instead of reclaiming Palpatine, but what’s lost in the shuffle there is that the name Palpatine, in the grand scheme of things, means nothing to Rey, going back to theme that a person’s bloodline isn’t what defines them but rather their authentic self. As the film The Iron Giant so delicately put it, “You are who you choose to be.” She chooses to be a Skywalker because of the spark of hope that Luke and Leia represent, a spark that must continue to shine long after they’re gone. It’s her way of paying tribute to the people that helped make her who she is, both as a Jedi and as a person, and of showing that she herself is the author both of her future and of her legends, not anyone else.
Now, would I have personally preferred if they had gone with Trevorrow and Connolly’s script, subtitled Duel of the Fates? Admittedly, I would. As much as I love the finished film, Duel of the Fates is a more satisfying conclusion to the overall story of the trilogy and does a better job of following through with the ideas set up by both Abrams and Johnson. There are also several elements in here that would’ve been so cool to see play out, like Finn convincing the stormtroopers he once served with to go rogue and form an uprising against the First Order or Rey learning to not to reject the Dark Side but embrace it alongside the light in order to achieve a balance with the Force never seen or thought of before. But I have to make due with what I got, not with what I didn’t get, and for what I got, I came out of it extremely happy.
It’s weird to be sticking up for a trilogy of billion-dollar hits, two of which received overwhelming critical acclaim, released by the biggest corporate entity on the planet as if they’re some sort of underdog, but it’s hard not to treat them so much when the vitriol comes so heavy, so loud, and so quick. I have many friends who enjoy these films to varying degrees, but at the same time, I desperately wish more people could see what I saw in these films. With The Force Awakens on the verge of turning ten years old, there’s a very strong chance that this trilogy will be reevaluated much like the prequels were. It’s hard for me not to love them for their passion alone.
It’s my favorite of the Star Wars trilogies, not at all because of recency bias nor even necessarily because it does a few things better than some other installments, but because I felt things while watching these films that I know people growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s had to have felt while watching the original trilogy and people growing up in the 1990’s and 2000’s had to have felt while watching the prequel trilogy. Never have I connected to a character in these films as strongly as I have with Rey, a person who doesn’t just yearn for something more out of her life like Luke Skywalker did but yearns to contribute, to find a place where she can belong. These films boast — and represent — everything I wanted in new Star Wars films and almost everything I needed in new Star Wars films, and for good and for bad, I wouldn’t trade them for anything else.
