Mickey’s Lightsaber
SPOILER ALERT: Plot details for all Star Wars movies are discussed
Star Wars should’ve ended in 1983. Nearly every Star Wars story released after Return of Jedi, with the exception of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars cartoon or the Knights of the Old Republic video game, has failed to reach the same heights of emotion, creativity, and awe as the Original Trilogy. Not all film franchises have the long shelf life of Rocky, 007, or Godzilla. Some stories wear out their welcome and should be respectfully put out of their misery. The Sequel Trilogy, in many ways, has confirmed that Star Wars is spiritually dead, but that hasn’t stopped Disney from squeezing all the blue milk it can from its corpse.
If the Prequel Trilogy is an excess of creative arrogance, then the Sequel Trilogy is an excess of corporate appeasement. This is because Disney did not approach the Sequel Trilogy like storytellers, but like a focus group out to maximize positivity among fans and general audiences. As a result, Disney’s takeaway from the Prequel Trilogy wasn’t that they had interesting ideas which suffered from awkward execution, poor direction, and a lack of rewrites. It was that the Prequel Trilogy failed because it didn’t look and feel exactly like the Original Trilogy. The result is The Force Awakens, a virtual remake of A New Hope which is desperate to avoid any resemblance whatsoever to the Prequels. This is why The Force Awakens doesn’t feel like a real sequel to Return of the Jedi. It’s too busy engorging itself with Original Trilogy nostalgia to try move the story forward. A real sequel would’ve been about testing the new world gained by the Rebellion, and if it could avoid the same mistakes as the Old Republic. It would’ve been about Luke raising a new Jedi Order to improve on the old one. It would’ve been about Luke trying to be a better father than Anakin was. It would’ve been about the next generation of Skywalkers struggling with the good and the evil of that legacy.
Instead, the New Republic is blown up before we get a chance to learn about it. All of the new Jedi are slain before they get to bring about any real changes. The First Order manages to get a third Death Star while the Resistance dwindles. Han and Leia separate while their only child becomes the right hand of the Supreme Leader. Luke gives up on everything he’s ever believed and becomes a cynic in exile. By the end of The Last Jedi, we are back to status quo of A New Hope. In other words, the Sequel Trilogy, for the sake of a safe audience reception, undoes all the victories, sacrifices, and relationships made by the heroes in the Original Trilogy. It’s a rather depressing end that sends an ugly message: “No matter what you achieve in this life, all those accomplishments will completely be reversed a few years down the road.” Who’s to say that the victories of the Sequel Trilogy won’t also be undone when Disney decides to do Episodes X, XI, and XII? It brings a sense of futility to any victory in Star Wars going forward.
It also bothers me that Disney has belatedly referred to the Sequel Trilogy as the end of the “Skywalker Saga”, when our main protagonist isn’t even a Skywalker. George Lucas has said that Star Wars is about “the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers; it’s a family soap opera.” Since the Prequels were about Anakin and the Originals were about Luke, the Sequel Trilogy should’ve focused on the next generation of Skywalkers. Kylo Ren is, of course, a major character in the Sequels, but he’s the antagonist, not the hero. This is why Rey should’ve been Luke’s daughter. It would’ve felt like a natural continuation of the theme of generations, added more resonance and depth to her meetings with Han, Leia, Luke, and Kylo, and could’ve been a way for the Sequels to bring back Expanded Universe fan favorite, Mara Jade. Rey instead feels like an outsider in her own movie, an observer of someone else’s story.
Rey has also proven to be a surprisingly divisive character, with some praising her as a feminist hero and others deriding her as an overpowered Mary Sue. I am somewhere in the middle. Daisy Ridley’s euphoric performance as Rey is what sells her, especially in The Force Awakens. She’s so enthusiastic and cute, and has great chemistry with Finn. I don’t mind her being strong with the Force, but her relationship with the Force has neither spirituality nor growth. In A New Hope, Luke’s first encounter with the Force is in him learning to let go of his material senses. This starts with him blocking the training droid without his sight and ultimately destroying the Death Star without the targeting computer. This scene always moves people because it validates the persistence of the human and the spiritual in the face of technology and materialism. No such deeper meanings were to be found in Rey’s encounters with Kylo in The Force Awakens, which is why that film felt so spiritually dead to me. Granted, The Last Jedi tries to remedy this in her training with Luke, which was one of the more interesting parts of that movie. From Luke, she learns that the Jedi do not have a monopoly on the Force, and that their order was far from perfect. We don’t get a sense, however, that she’s internalized this. There’s no sense of real growth in her from The Force Awakens to The Rise of Skywalker because she never loses and learns. The only exception here is in her relationship with Kylo Ren, which is deepened in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker through a clever new Force connection where the material and the spiritual are made one. The ultimate problem with Rey, however, is that her character is too preoccupied with her parentage. We never really delve too deeply into who she is outside of her mysterious lineage, which seems to me a real waste.
Indeed, there’s a lot of waste to go around. Finn, played by John Boyega, and Poe, played by Oscar Isaac, are great characters, but their arcs are all over the place. Finn is a former stormtrooper, which adds some much-needed humanity to the faceless grunts of the Empire. Boyega gives him a relatable and humorous performance. His chemistry with both Rey and Poe is great, either of whom could’ve made strong romantic options. His arc from coward to hero of the Resistance never really advances beyond The Force Awakens. He goes through the exact same arc in The Last Jedi and his stormtrooper past is touched upon, but never really explored in The Rise of Skywalker. We are twice teased that he will sacrifice himself for the Resistance, before being saved in the nick of time. Isaac gives the hot-shot Poe a very charismatic performance reminiscent of Han Solo, but is given similar treatment to Finn in the later entries of the Sequels. In The Last Jedi, a needlessly stupid conflict between him and Admiral Holdo erupts in order to teach him a lesson in humility. In The Rise of Skywalker, the humility is promptly forgotten and he’s back to his reckless self. His past with an old flame is also touched upon, but it’s barely given the attention it needs to carry any lasting power.
The supporting heroes aren’t treated too much better. Take a look at Rose Tico. For a series that has borrowed so much from Japanese cinema, Buddhism, and Taoism, it took a depressingly long time for a character of Asian descent to get a leading role in the main series. Like Rey, Rose Tico received a great deal of fan backlash, so much so that the actress, Kelly Marie Tran, was sadly harassed off of social media. I liked Rose for a few reasons. Tran’s performance is as adorable as it is headstrong, and her initial scenes with Finn are very funny. She also has the interesting background of having a sister slain in battle and being raised in child labor. The reason many fans reacted poorly to her is probably due to the Canto Bight storyline. The casino planet is just as jarring as Dexter Jettser’s 1950’s diner in Attack of the Clones. From there, Rose becomes a mouthpiece for Rian Johnson’s politics on wealth inequality, which are delivered with all the subtlety of Crash and Avatar. She’s also given an awkward romance with Finn, which could have been more believable had it not been so one-sided. Fans may also not have liked that Rose separated Finn from interacting with Poe and Rey. It’s a shame that J.J. Abrams caved to the backlash and shafted Rose to a forgettable technician without resolving her arc with Finn.
Our antagonists are also wasted. If the First Order was really a dedicated cult of the last remnants of the Empire, it should have been much smaller and much weaker. With the New Republic being the dominant power, the First Order could’ve been a dark rebellion, using guerilla or terror tactics. It would’ve perfectly set up a scenario in which the New Republic is confronted with the dilemma of that the old one faced in Revenge of the Sith: liberty vs. security. Disney instead defaults on the less challenging underdog dynamic, wiping out the New Republic and turning the First Order into a less threatening carbon copy of the Empire. Captain Phasma, for instance, was sold to us as a badass villainess, but gets thrown down a trash compactor in The Force Awakens and is given the Boba Fett treatment in The Last Jedi. General Hux struts around like the poor man’s Richard Spencer and is the butt of everyone’s jokes. The Knights of Ren were much hyped, but led to nothing.
Snoke was clearly intended to be the primary antagonist of the Sequels, before Johnson inexplicably had him killed off. Since Snoke was responsible for Kylo’s turn to the dark side, the destruction of the New Republic, and Luke’s failure to establish a new Jedi order, his premature death in The Last Jedi felt unearned and anticlimactic. Palpatine’s return in The Rise of Skywalker comes off as terribly desperate. He doesn’t even look right, like an impersonator in Emperor cosplay. His presence also feels bland and recycled, lacking in the delicious camp of Revenge of the Sith or the satanic delight of Return of the Jedi. His lineage with Rey might’ve worked, had it been well-developed throughout the Sequels, but it comes off as Abrams throwing in one of the many theories on r/starwars.
All that being said, Kylo Ren is by far the best character of the Sequel Trilogy. Bravo to Adam Driver for one of the finest performances in Star Wars. His struggle between the dark and light sides of the Force is more believable than Anakin’s in the Prequels. When he kills Han in The Force Awakens, we understand that this is a struggle for him to go through with, and he might even regret it. There’s a good scene in The Last Jedi when Leia is in his sights, but he can’t bring himself to fire on her. His relationship with Rey is also great to see, a more compelling tale of forbidden love than that in Attack of the Clones. One of the best scenes in The Last Jedi is when Kylo reaches his hand out to Rey, asking her to join him. He says “Please” with just the right amount of vulnerability. Rey desperately wants to take his hand. She still cares for him, but as Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren. I like the tension here, and it continues in their lightsaber battle on Endor. Kylo lets in the light and stops attacking Rey, while Rey opens up to the dark and nearly kills Kylo. Kylo’s redemption is also well-handled. He sees Han again, but is much too ashamed with his past sins to return to the light. The scene is very emotional, with Ben wanting to say something more to father, before Han quiets him with, “I know.” In his last scene with Rey, he gives his life to resurrect her. This is so poignant because the whole reason Anakin became Darth Vader was to save the ones he loved from dying. Ben manages just that, but through the light.
The handling of the original Star Wars cast is mixed at best. Han and Leia are mostly fine, behaving more or less as we expected them to. I also didn’t mind them giving their lives for their son. Luke’s depiction in The Last Jedi has by far been the most polarizing. Some fans liked that he was still flawed and learning, while other fans found him needlessly cynical and unrecognizable. As with Rey, I’m somewhere in the middle. I liked the idea of Luke still making mistakes and struggling with his own weaknesses, even as a Jedi Master. It showed that, no matter your age, you never stop growing. As Master Yoda wisely tells Luke, “The greatest teacher, failure is.” On the other hand, I do think it goes a little too far. Luke is cynical to the point of throwing Obi-Wan under the bus and rejecting even the redemption of his father. Then there’s the fact that the hero who believed even Darth Vader could be saved would contemplate killing his own nephew. Even Mark Hamill struggled to come to terms with the role.
Lando’s probably suffered the most. Disney can bleat about diversity all it wants, but we should never forget that the first black character in Star Wars was treated like an afterthought, only introduced in the last film after all of his friends had died. This ties into the biggest reason why these Sequels don’t feel like real sequels. We never see a reunion of the original cast. The core of what made the Original Trilogy fun was watching all of these different characters interact, and it’s sad to think that at the end of their journeys, they never had one final reunion.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are many good things about the Sequels. The special effects are a vast improvement over the Prequel Trilogy, with an overall balance real sets and locations, puppetry and costumes, and cutting-edge computer animation. Abrams and Johnson are also talented directors. Abrams has a good sense of colors and action, while Johnson has a good sense of style and quiet. The acting is great, with Driver and Hamill giving standout performances. The lightsaber fights are also fun, like Rey and Kylo’s team up against the Imperial Guards. John Williams is underwhelming this time around, but he still has some memorable hits, like “Rey’s Theme.”
Quality production values, however, cannot erase the fact that this trilogy has no soul. Disney clearly had no plan or guiding vision going into these movies. They eschewed any story treatments by George Lucas in favor of pandering to fan outrage in the most simplistic ways possible. The Force Awakens was an overreaction to the Prequels, The Last Jedi was an overreaction to The Force Awakens, and The Rise of Skywalker was an overreaction to The Last Jedi. The result is a thematically inconsistent and lopsided mess. As bad as the Prequels were, at least they had a point: to tell the story of how Anakin became Darth Vader. The point of the Sequels is for Disney to make more money. This became nakedly obvious from their initial plan to release one Star Wars film every year until the end of time. In a way, the state of Star Wars is similar to the state of Disney. Both are names that once represented risk-taking, creativity, and heart, but have now become so bloated from their own success, that they take delight in regurgitating the shadows of stories we once loved. The Star Wars spin-offs certainly have potential, but Rogue One and The Mandalorian, while decent, aren’t anything to write home about. Nor does Disney seem to have any interest in getting a release of the unaltered versions of the Original Trilogy. I hate to say it folks, but the dark side has won.
Star Wars began in 1977 and it ended in 1983.
