Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — final take

As with the previous Star Wars movie, the plan was to see The Rise of Skywalker with one kid, then again a week or two later with the other. Priorities shifted, and the urge to see the movie dropped to the bottom of the list for urchin #2. I have zero motivation to devote time to a second, solo viewing of the movie, so here are some further thoughts, based on what I recall from two weeks ago — indeed, from even further back.

Spoilers follow — not just from the current Star Wars movie, but from the final season of Lost, the TV series that launched J.J. Abrams into the big leagues.

...never gets old....

My favourite scene from season six of Lost is only a few minutes long. The chief protagonist and his crew are running through the jungle in hot pursuit of that season’s Villainous Heavy. They burst into a clearing and unexpectedly encounter a happily married couple who had recused themselves from the action several seasons earlier, puttering about the yard in front of their Mr. And Mrs. Howell bamboo hut. For a moment everyone stops in their tracks with a “So THERE you are!” reaction. Then the Mrs. does an up-and-down take of the protagonist and says, “You still chasing each other with guns?”

“You still chasing each other with guns?” seems to have been Rian Johnson’s question. In his Star Wars Universe The New Republic was a failure of imagination and execution of Chestertonian proportions. The ways of The Force were misunderstood and misapplied. The new generation was, out of necessity, going to have to devote its energies to deepening its family ties.

These were issues of nuance that, were they to be explored and developed to conclusion, would require a subtle touch.

J.J. Abrams had been here once before. For five seasons, Lost played with and defied viewer expectations. Villains were introduced and teased apart until they were distressingly sympathetic characters. Motivations were acted upon to the final degree, and the outcomes were an astonishment nobody saw coming. Now here they all were, still doing this “Grab the gun!” monkey dance. It was time to wrap it up.

Time to throw all the toys back into the toybox, give it a hard shake — and pull out even more bigger guns than ever before.

I can’t recall who said it, but I’m thinking Locke Peterseim or Steve O’Donahue — J.J. Abrams is a devotee of the white-board. He doesn’t plot or do character arcs — he and his team do board-room improv until they settle on the five or so flashiest sequences, then tie them together with narrative threads best left unscrutinized.

If that makes it sound like I hated the movie, I’m sorry — I liked it well enough. The one thing Abrams does well is give his actors just enough motivation to successfully emote. So, yes — I was dabbing at my eyes as this character lived while that one died.

But this most recent generation of Star Wars movie actors have all signalled (John Boyega chief among them) that they are so ready to ditch this franchise. And I am cheering them on.

Give Abrams some other Cold War franchise to muck with — James Bond, maybe. I can content myself with memories, bolstered by the occasional comic book and television series.

Better explication:

• I experienced an “a-ha” reading Joel’s Star Wars is better without the Force (which goes a long way to explaining why I found Rogue One and Solo so much more gratifying than either of Abrams’ SWU movies, plus the three Lucas prequels).
• Paste had the best critical coverage including Kenneth Lowe Star Wars Stories Still Untold and Jim Vorel It was a total lack of planning that killed Star Wars.

Post-script:

• It has to be said: my jaw hit the floor when I finally registered just how far to the sidelines Abrams was pushing Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico. I still consider Tran and her character one of the loveliest introductions to the SWU, and this move seemed like an open concession to racist trolls.
• To quote me, responding to Joel in the previous post: “Forty-two years and countless hours of Star Wars later, it strikes me that ‘Han Shoots First’ was the most memorable bit in the three movie trilogies — or possibly the entire SWU ball of wax, even as it continues to accrue.” Discuss!