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.

On the Road to Skywalker: The Last Jedi

WARNING

Like I said before, if you're a vitriolic hater of The Last Jedi, I moderate the comments on my blog with extreme prejudice. The Last Jedi is one of my favorite movies. Rian Johnson is one of my favorite directors, and he was before this movie.

I really do not get the TFA comparisons to ANH. I mean, sure, there's some similar plot threads, but the tone of the movie is somber, dark, and (sometimes!) wistfully nostalgic. And, again, I don't think the comparisons to ANH aren't totally inappropriate, just that people want ANH again and are willing to explain away whatever it takes to get it.

And that is never more evident than with The Last Jedi.

The Last Jedi, as a movie, is classic Rian Johnson, down to the multiple visual puns that haters try to ignore in order to maintain their illusion that it's an idiotically put together movie. Trying to address this movie on its own terms is almost impossible, because of the sheer number of callbacks, references, and completions of lingering plot points. There is a whole lot going on in this movie that is impossible to fully appreciate without the other seven episodes.

I said almost impossible.

Never tell me the odds! GERONIMO!!!!

The Force Awakens promised us this elusive dude, Luke Skywalker. It showed us what his family felt and thought of him. And there was such a warmth there. They remember him fondly, and don't seem to hold a grudge against the Jedi Master for leaving them. I mean, sure, they want him back, but they clearly love him so much that their anger is overpowered by the longing to see him again. They don't think of him as a deserter. They don't think of him as a loser, they just remember Luke. If your'e not going to show a character the next best thing is to show everyone how much his family misses him. And TFA completely nails that longing.

Are we really that surprised that Rian Johnson, the maker of subversive masterpieces like Brick, did this in response?

You shouldn't be saying "Yes, I was surprised"

Rian Johnson's favorite two themes (pain and grieving) are put to excellent use here. We find out that everyone else had rose-colored glasses about Luke. He did leave them. He does not want to come back. He's honestly bitter that he was near them, ever, at all. Luke's failure is so total, in his own eyes, that he wants nothing to do with all the things that remind him of what he once was. He had become "a legend" and just wants to die so that way someone else can pick up the torch. He's an excellently written mess of a person, trying to kill what's good and noble inside of him, but still showing little bits of hope from time to time. He's not gone.

And yes, he was indeed going to burn those books at the beginning of the movie. Just let that sink in for a minute.

Anyway.

This is the situation that Rey walks into: not a hero, but a broken human being who has made the completely and utterly wrong decision. It's a slap in the face to everyone who loves this guy, and Rey's response of disgust and disdain is completely warranted. The rest of the movie is about Luke becoming that hero again, step by step, inch by agonizing inch.  And I'm sorry, but:

You can't have this moment without the green milk. It's not how people work.

This suicidal urge to destroy what made us so great is continued chiefly in Kylo Ren, as he grapples with killing Han in the TFA. The whole movie is him trying to figure out how he wants to align himself with the world and its history: will he burn the past down, or will he integrate its lessons? He goes for destruction.  Rey chooses to preserve what came before, and that's a choice that both infuriates and intrigues Ben. I love the interplay between these two at this point.

Continuing with the theme of preserving tradition, we've got Finn, Poe, and Rose, who are set up as a deliberate counterpoint. They disobey orders, upset the established order of Canto Bight... and almost lose everything in the process. Conservative vloggers like Jonathan Pageau and The Distributist (both of whom I have a great deal of respect for) don't quite seem to land their interpretation of this arc. To paraphrase Wolfe, people die so that way you can't repeat their mistakes, while then receiving what they did correctly. Finn, Poe, and Rose are what it looks like when you're doing it wrong, at least by and large. To preserve, to conserve, is the proper primary human response to what came before. Not striking out at the things that threaten it.

I have gone on. And on. And on. About The Last Jedi before. It's almost nauseating to me at this point, mostly because I feel like I'm just hammering a railway stake with a ball-ping hammer when it comes to how friggin' good this movie is. We meet Luke. We learn who he is, who he really is, way deep down. And he gives the galaxy the will to fight back. And Rey runs with it.

I find that to be a profoundly hopeful thing.

On the Road to Skywalker: The Force Awakens

Let's be perfectly clear about this. I did not want to write this blog post. Writing my original series of posts was a brain breaking experience. Finding out that others did not put even half that level of thought into... well.... most things... did not help. At all. But my brain won't shut up, so here we are. I'm writing about Star Wars again. God help me. No, seriously, may God help me. I was originally going to write about how I saw the whole series, a year and a half later, one movie at a time, but honestly not much has changed about my views of the rest of the series. It's the sequel trilogy that I've grown to appreciate more. So I'm going to just write about that. I'm going to write about the Sequel Trilogy as if the previous six films didn't exist, or at least try to, to see what these things are on their own. I know that's a bit... difficult... to do... but I think that a really important way to look at these films before their own finale is what they are, just by themselves. I tried to approach this the same way someone did with A New Hope, back in the 70's.

A warning: if you're a vitriolic hater of The Last Jedi please know that I moderate the comments on this blog. Just, y'know, something to think about. Something to consider.

So, when I sit down and re-watch the The Force Awakens with that in mind, the film begins with a really intriguing line.

Wait, who the hell is Luke Skywalker??

Bear with me here, I find this exercise interesting.

By the sound of this opening crawl, Luke Skywalker is the most badass person, ever. Ever ever. His absence is so seismic it allows an entire evil government to rise up, from the ashes of what Luke had (presumably) destroyed once before. Where's Luke? Why did he go? An entire story just pops, unbidden, into my mind. I begin to have questions, about what Luke did to this Empire and what would have caused someone so legendary as to be compared to a galactic entity to just vanish. But the movie promises that we'll get to that. Because everyone is looking for Luke.

Even without my knowledge of left-right for Star Wars, Kylo Ren's opening is weird. The way they shoot him is like that of a good guy, the protagonist. Abrams takes every opportunity to put Kylo in as favorable a shot as he can, even putting the clearly more heroic Poe in the "bad guy" frame so as to keep Kylo as the more "sympathetic" personality. It's a very, very, very weird thing to see. This opening scene screams "There's more to this story than you're being told!" And yeah, eventually we are told more, and it's clear that Ben has been duped by.. something. We're not sure what, but he's clearly bought a bill of goods and can't help but regret it, somewhere deep down.

Finn's intro is powerful. Within a few seconds you know everything that you need to about him, which is that he doesn't know very much about himself. The whole incident with his dying compatriot is a huge surprise to Finn. I love every second of him having his crisis of conscience, and how he is immediately zeroed in upon by Kylo Ren. The cinematography in this shot is just impeccable. It's not my favorite shot in this movie, but it's dang close. But we'll get to that.

OK, so three masks just can't be a coincidence. And, like the other intros we've had so far, Rey's is extremely powerful. She's a tough (how on earth you expect a young girl like that to not be tough and self-sufficient goes beyond simple misogyny into stupidity), independent, kind-hearted, and quite clearly expecting to leave any minute now.  Really, any minute now.

Well, not with Finn.

But any minute now!


The introduction of the previous generation of heroes is done extremely well. I buy that Han, Chewie, and Leia were the heroes who fought beside Luke. And they all worship this dude! All of them! There's such reverence for Luke, and you can begin to get a feel for who he was to these people. It's quite possibly the best way to show how much of a hole Luke left when he vanished, by focusing on the people who were his family. The shadow of Luke Skywalker (who I'm pretending I don't know anything about!) just looms over this movie, casting a melancholic shadow. The simple fact of the matter is that Ben was having trouble and somehow all of these people, who are otherwise great people, let him down.

It is notable that Ben only removes his mask for one person, without prompting, in this entire thing: Rey. He's this dark reflection of everything these other people in the movie say the legend of the previous generation is. And he has no absolutely no issue with telling Rey that the people she's coming to adore are really any good either. He also allows her to shake him and push back. The back and forth of this is revealing on both ends. The connection between them, despite their differences, is palpable in this scene. How many people have looked that deep into Ben's soul?

Rey's conflict is then resolved, while Ben's is deepened. Finn actually comes back for Rey, and there's this look of relief on her face when she sees him again that's amazing. She finally gets it, on some level, that she is worth coming back for. Finn, who had left earlier in the film, came back because he cares. And Rey makes the conscious decision that this is enough for her. Her question is answered. She doesn't need to do anything to have someone accept her, nor should she. Ben, on the other hand, is still buying into the idea that he has to prove his worth by killing his "baggage". And so he tries to cut himself loose.

My first child was almost nine months old when I saw this scene. He'd just learned to crawl, right before the movie was starting. I was wrecked.

Ultimately I think The Force Awakens is a powerful story about searching for your identity in the face of conflict. Ending it on the cliffhanger of facing Luke Skywalker was a brilliant move, because that's exactly what the movie was about! Heck, I'm glad he doesn't talk. There's nothing to say. He's been found. He's clearly unhappy about it, and that's a completely different conflict.

The Last Jedi is tomorrow!