Review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) by Whitewolf_1984 — 19 Dec 2019

While having the look, sound, feel and the obvious production values of previous Star Wars movies, TRoS fails badly in terms of plot, imagination, pacing, characterisation and satisfaction. It's a hollow and uninspired Star Wars movie.

I'd love to start with the positives but unfortunately the bad stuff tanks this movie so badly it's where you must start because it's so shocking where Star Wars has ended up. TRoS feels in different ways worse than Solo. I have to start with the plot, it's unimaginative and empty. You get thrust into the middle of things already happening and only have the opening crawl to know slightly what's going on. Then everything in from there happens at hyperdrive speeds. You just get exposition thrown at you and vague reasons for why our heroes have to go somewhere. Questions about the mission and how did stuff happen are just bluntly explained away with a sentence from someone. There is no mystery or clever thinking it's just go there and stumble across the answer. The film allows you no time to get to know a place or a character. The pacing is rushed and if you don't listen to every quick conversation you will miss something. Fortunately the plot is so basic like a World of Warcraft fetch quest that if you do miss a line it doesn't matter. It's a McGuffin hunt directing Rey to we all know what because the trailers have already spoiled it and the opening crawl spells it out. The camaraderie between our heroes is lousy, they just bicker and the tiny bit of wit they do show is eye rolling bad. The dialogue is basic and does the job but no effective wit and humour. I only chuckled at one line C3PO said and somethings Babu Frik said and did. Nothing else amused me even Chewy or D-O didn't add any humour. Rey is who you spend easily 95% of the movie with either on her own or with someone and unfortunately Daisy Ridley just doesn't act the part very well. She isn't very expressive and is one dimensional. Her performance isn't truely believable, her anger doesn't come over and her happy side is just a grin. Many scenes shes in shock or bewilderment and in them she just looks like a rabbit in the headlights. Oscar Isaacs is good if predictable and John Boyega's performance is the best out of the main stars but nothing special. The new characters are awfully implemented they just appear and you just have to go along with it and not expect a proper introduction to them. I truthfully can't remember their names. They come into the story so abruptly and then they go away and show up barely at the end. Don't know why they bothered putting them in, they're just in there as a means to an end I guess and just products of bad writing. The film squeezes in so much exposition and McGuffin hunts into the 2 hrs 20, the movie doesn't have space for character development. The Knights of Ren have about 2 minutes of screen time, no joke ! Some characters also make illogical decisions throughout and their motivation for why they suddenly decide to do something isn't well conveyed over to the audience, you just have to go along with it and not question why. I guess it keeps the pace up not deeply getting into the why, they just do. I prefer being involved in characters thought processes. The First Order scenes are just cheesy and bad, I just didn't feel any threat from them and they felt like pantomine villains. Hux and Pryde are crinchy and lame.

The lightsaber battles were fun if a little short and predictable. The fighting scenes became ridiculous though with the use of 3 different never before seen force powers which made the final battle and aftermath laughable. Now for the good...

The visual presentation on show is impressive. The locations and sets look great with amazing vibrancy and detail, everything is spot on, it looks Star Wars. The CGI is solid as all the ships, speeders and structures are well rendered although some of the graphics in outside scenes like on the desert planet look fake. The special visual effects are top notch every blaster flash and explosion. They thankfully haven't tinkered with the library of Skywalker Sound assets so every lightsaber zoom and TIE fighter screech are exact. The music is the best part of the film, it's the original trilogy John Williams themes which have been lifted and polished to perfection. The nostalgia is what Abrams nails and he knows how to milk it through sound and visuals. There are lots of new aliens which look great and are all done using animatronics. The space battles are good and decent but you don't get much more than 10 second flashes of dogfighting before it cuts to something else. The ship battles and saber battles are exciting but before you can really get into them they're over.

There were some good performances from Ian McDiarmid, Adam Driver, Billy Dee Williams and Mark Hamill. The Leia scenes are cleverly implemented with old Carrie Fisher footage.

A disappointing end to the saga.