The Rise of Skywalker: Review

Over the last few days I resolved to try something that I've not seen anyone else do: approach the Sequel Trilogy on its own terms. I would try to forget the first six films, if only so that I could see what this trilogy had that the other two did not. And what I found was a discussion on the importance of tradition and family to the human condition. One cannot forget what came before, no matter how flawed the previous generation was. Trying to destroy the past inevitably destroys you, whereas trying to conserve its lessons, but to do so with a strong critical lens. And that tradition, provided it's properly followed, will rejuvenate who you are.

This movie takes all of those ideas and dials them all the way up to 11, while adding its own ideas to the mix. Palpatine's return is foremost in the narrative, with a directness that I found to be surprising and refreshing. Palpatine is not presented so much as his individual return but that of the Sith tradition. There's a ritual element in Palpatine's dealings that are hard to ignore, right down to the ritual dagger used to find him. And Rey is presented as someone trying to inherit the tradition of the Jedi, of being worthy of it, which is presented as something more than just being able to lift rocks, but being aware of the people who gave that tradition.

And that's the big addition to the mythos that Rise of Skywalker gives: actual tradition is the awareness of the people who came before you. The ending of The Rise of Skywalker, with all of its pop and flash, reminded me of stories of the Desert Fathers, like Saint Anthony needing an answer to a text from the Old Testament and so Moses came to talk to him about what he had written and why. Tradition is the collective dead, pushing forward to influence us. This is not a passive thing. The dead know. They care. They want us to learn from them. And how we react to this consistent push from beyond the grave is a large part of how we become defined as people.

The last (and most important) thing I want to comment upon is upon the nature of death as it's discussed in Rise of Skywalker. My father once told me that the best thing parents could do for their children was to die when it was time. We pass things down to the next generation by the simple act of dying. This was so that way the child could finally begin to live a life that was no longer defined by the living presence of their parent.  It's an amazing gift to give, to no longer have to be like your predecessor, but yet still have the lessons they gave you so that way you have their wisdom. They are put out of your conscious mind so that way you can just make decisions, just for you.

The Rise of Skywalker closes out a trilogy of movies that is about what came before and how it intersects with the now. It takes the very real issue of how one is to identify oneself and puts it into an incredible showcase of spaceships, lightsabers, and explosions.  And for all of its craziness Rise of Skywalker uses these crazy, child-like, things to say something that everyone needs to hear, all the time. We are not just us. We are those who came before, and we get to choose how that gets shown to those around us.