Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Review

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is the final installment of the epic space-opera story of good versus evil produced, co-written, and directed by J. J. Abrams. It is the third installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, following The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017), and the final episode of the nine-part Star Wars saga.

PLOT: Who Cares - Why Even Bother?

REVIEW: “Star Wars” for nearly five decades has been a movie fixture adventure in our lives with its wholly exclusive new concepts and story lines of a basic tried and true distinctive division of “Good battling Evil”. They have in one form or another both enthralled and fascinated us not only with its fantasy visual technology of living and functioning in a “galaxy far, far, away” but also with its beguiling imaginative new verbiage that has become forever part of our national lexicon… “The Force will be with you.”……… “Do, or do not, there is no try.”……….“No, I am your father.”…… “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.……… “Chewie, we’re home”.

At the same time Star Wars has incorporated and woven countless fictional names into the enduring  fabric of iconic film status with its Jedi, Vader, Yoda, The Dark Side, Storm Trooper, Light Saber, Ewok and Droid. Together after years of this plot mixture of whole new language and operatic western cowboy characters to thrill us that have permeated our collective consciousness in the end (as with most things) we have probably seen all that this franchise could ever offer new. Such is the with case with “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" which doesn’t do a lot to distinguish itself from the rest of the eight other stories, as it is not a great film, it still provides a soft enough landing in that expected entertaining and satisfying way. While its not awe inspiring it does not disappoint.

Looking back over all of the nine films I reflectively think that George Lucas probably never intended his Star Wars to be great films, because none of them really are. Rather I believe he intended for people – film fans specifically, to go into theaters to have lots of imaginative new fun. The kind of fun without all of the messy way too real life bloody and deadly carnage we can all readily see in the more dramatically acclaimed films (i.e. "The Godfather"). Certainly if not in films we can clearly get nightly doses of real violence on the evening news, where murder and death seem to never be on any short supply to report and see. So, Lucas (I think) just wanted people to have fun, even when the explosions and laser gun fire still hit their targets making their deadly impact they never really actually killed anyone, there was never any noticeable shedding of blood…………….People did die but it just was just make believe pretend violence, pretend death and destruction. 

In the early beginning Lucas's genius was creating and telling an imaginative story where the fans could also imagine along him and his movie itself of being those actual same characters too. He created and infused life in to totally new fictional characters out of whole cloth which allowed us to temporarily suspend our lives to transitionally pretend to living outside ourselves in a purely fantasy “make believe” world, place and time. Where individual nobility, virtues, decency, self-sacrifice, respect and kindness mixed with a bit of swashbuckling space travel made it all one hell of a ride. In that respect I believe Lucas probably has created a masterpiece of entertainment.

Ultimately like all of the other Star Wars film, “The Rise of Skywalker" was made first and foremost for the servicing of its global legions of committed, at times a bit servile, occasionally a bit nutty but always for better or worse totally devoted fans.

As the theater goes dark on the finale of the Star Wars saga, whether you are a super nerdy fan, a purist film fan (me) or just an occasional passing movie fan, in one form of another its story of space heroes and space adventures has been here on earth very good for us all.

3.25 Stars