COLIN DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
JANUARY 14, 2020
Surprised to see my name under something that isn’t sports? Well, I do like other things and one of those things being this movie. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was the 3rd time “the saga came to an end” and it brought pretty much what I expected with some nice little bonuses. Nice twists, quick action, and a HUGE plot detail that came out of left field to me. All right, that’s as vague as I can be for now.
WARNING: If you haven’t seen Rise of Skywalker, please click off of this as it does contain spoilers.
My honest rating of this movie: 7 out of 10.
But let’s start with the positives because why not? Right off the bat, JJ Abrams starts the movie off with Palpatine talking about the Final Order rising and destroying everything and it puts such a chill in your spine in the first 2 minutes of the movie. The reveal of Rey’s parents legitimately shocked me and was a twist I absolutely wasn’t expecting. The final hour of this movie is what saves this movie from the tubes though. The whole storyline with Rey and Kylo being connected was something that was executed brilliantly towards the end. In the beginning, I couldn’t care less about it, but the fight it lead up to was absolutely worth it. The part where Rey sent the lightsaber to Kylo through the force was beautiful and the Han Solo shrug after he took out the Knights of Ren was AMAZING! The sequence with all of the rebel ships led out by Lando was a great payoff with Wedge Antilles coming back to fight the Final Order. The whole final sequence was just a gift to all of the loyal fans who watched and trusted the process after the garbage chute of the prequels.
But now we get to the bad parts of this movie and there were some glaring concerns. Why was Palpatine in Rey’s bloodline? (I know the biological way) The Sith only look out for themselves considering it’s in their code and Palpatine is literally the most self-obsessed person in the galaxy. The reason everyone thought Rey might’ve been Luke’s kid was because of the lightsaber calling to Rey. But at the same time, the darkness called her too which would have Anakin’s blood, similar to Luke. Personally, I didn’t like that choice from the producers. Another thing this movie suffers from is the middle of the movie is a total snoozefest, similar to The Last Jedi. Absolutely nothing interesting is going on that contributes to the plot. Wow, I care so much about meeting someone Poe slept with before he joined the Resistance. My biggest question though, how did Chewbacca survive that plane crash or even get on a different ship in the time Rey was force obliterating the ship. But lastly, where did the First Order go? Wasn’t their mission throughout the first two movies to take over the galaxy? But now they just sit back and do nothing? That was disappointing in my opinion because if you’re going to achieve galactic control, you stop for nothing.
Overall, it was a decent movie that had to atone for the mistakes of The Last Jedi while ending the trilogy in a satisfying manner. JJ Abrams filled the movie with fan service and payoffs but it just felt like he was putting 9 pounds in a 5-pound bag.