OVP: Star Wars: The Revenge of Skywalker (2019)

Film: Star Wars: The Revenge of Skywalker (2019)
Stars: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams
Director: JJ Abrams
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Score, Visual Effects, Sound Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In recent years, it has become clearer and clearer why I prefer film to television.  In a supposed "Golden Age," TV frequently repeats itself, and seems incapable of telling just one, comprehensive story.  The medium takes complete narratives such as the first seasons of The Handmaid's Tale and Big Little Lies, stretching them despite perfect endings after just one season.  Film is complete-it gives you proper endings with actual stakes, as has been illustrated continually with this excellent cinematic annum.  The question becomes at what point do franchises struggle with the same question-when do they risk the pitfalls of television?  We saw that earlier this year with Spider-Man: Far From Home, when it became apparent after 22 films that Marvel doesn't really have anything left in its arsenal but retreads and lesser characters with the same plot lines (it doesn't seem like a mistake that they're going back-to-the-past for their next entry of Black Widow).  Here we have what some will claim to be the "final" chapter in the Skywalker fantasy, but one with a lot of dangling storylines and myriad characters to get back into in an "Episode X" if these actors don't make it in as proper movie stars (not everyone gets to be Harrison Ford).  But if this is the end of the series (and wouldn't it be amazing if it was and they actually respected the tale without trying to bilk it for more cash?), what kind of ending do we have for arguably the most important series in modern cinema?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the final battle between, initially, Kylo Ren (Driver) and Rey (Ridley), who is fully immersed in her Jedi training with Leia (Fisher) as her mentor.  She is hoping to find Emperor Palpatine (McDiarmid), who is apparently not dead (as we'd assumed from Return of the Jedi), but instead the mastermind behind Snoke and has been guiding Kylo Ren this whole time.  It also turns out, as we continue, that Rey is not "the child of no one," but instead Palpatine's granddaughter.  Rey struggles with this, as her fight with the dark side takes on a similar path to that of Luke Skywalker in, again, Return of the Jedi, but she ultimately chooses to side with the good guys, winning over Kylo Ren before he dies (with the help of Harrison Ford in a cameo as Han Solo, almost certainly his final appearance in the series), and helping to take down her grandfather in an epic battle.

There are a lot of problems with Rise of Skywalker, so let's get the good out first-it looks great.  The special effects here are top drawer, some of the best of the year.  Standouts include Rey literally riding gigantic waves, and the entire water-soaked battle with Kylo Ren, as well as the final battle between the Empire and the Rebels.  It's become something we just expect from this franchise that the visual effects are top-drawer, but 2019 hosted visual effects that felt kind of lazy or appreciated a bit too generously; this is classic, impressively-designed special effects work, which shouldn't be dismissed as it becomes a rarity.  Also, in a year where we were expected to suspend belief with less-than-impressive "de-aging" in The Irishman, Captain Marvel, and Gemini Man, for a brief moment I was stunned at how good the de-aging work was for Carrie Fisher, until I realized that they used unused footage from past films to put together her scenes; this was the correct choice.

But the rest of Rise of Skywalker is kind of a disaster.  The latest episodes have always struggled with defining their new characters outside of the shadows of their previous iterations, giving the best moments of the new series to Fisher, Ford, and Mark Hamill.  Without that nostalgic pull (since Ford & Hamill's characters have died, and Fisher died in real life), this film needs its new characters to do the heavy-lifting, and that's not really something they've built a foundation toward.  Finn & Poe are both ancillary characters, at best-suddenly Poe is a horn-dog and Finn is just sort of there, promising information to Rey but never actually delivering it.  Kelly Marie Tran's Rose is so sidelined in this movie you basically wonder why the series even introduced her.  The film has nostalgic moments, involving Fisher & Ford, but they don't ring as meaningful as they did in the past films, the Fisher one obviously not being the franchise's fault (it's clear she had a different role in this film than they intended before her real-life death), but the writers never found a proper solution to handle her death.  The only time that felt similar to some of the high points of the previous film on this front was the first appearance of Lando (Williams)...who promptly disappears from the story, an indication that he was more a tag-on to the story because of Fisher's death (suddenly depriving the studio of a major link to the initial franchise) rather than because it suited the plot.

Rey has been drawn better than pretty much any other new character, and as a result was the best chance this film had to distinguish itself in a way similar to The Last Jedi standing apart from traditional Star Wars action-adventures, but the decision to make her a Palpatine falls flat.  This feels like a direct reaction to the fans hating on The Last Jedi, but it's a good indication that giving fans everything they want is a TERRIBLE idea.  JJ Abrams likely shouldn't have taken back over the franchise here-he had a vision that was completely disparate from Rian Johnson, and basically ignores the intriguing directions that Johnson took the characters in Episode VIII.  As a result, this is a jumbled mess, full of expository plots & repetitive action scenes.  The emotional stakes aren't strong (the only hero character to die is Leia, which pretty much anyone would have assumed would have to happen considering real-life implications), and by bringing back a bad guy who had already died, they showed they never really had faith in the new universe they crafted, just in its links to the older series.  It's hard for me to hate any Star Wars movie, but this one definitely is met with a gigantic eye roll, and my wish that they retire the Skywalker saga going forward if they are going to invest in a galaxy far, far away.