It’s ironic, perhaps, that a movie featuring an edited together performance of a deceased cinematic icon ends up becoming, in effect, an edited together pastiche of a deceased franchise.

The Rise of Skywalker is nominally the end of The Skywalker Saga, though of course there will be more films, but more than a capstone on a legendary cinematic series, it’s Exhibit A in the case that Star Wars is no longer a living, breathing work of art.

That functionally ended when George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, though the prospect remained of a new creator, a new vision, picking up the mantle. The Sequel Trilogy ultimately became the JJ Abrhams trilogy due to his unexpectedly writing and directing Episode IX, and his tendency for nostalgia rendered the film and this trilogy lifeless. TROS is an entertaining, moving and very Star Wars-y movie. It’s also a clip show of the series best visual, musical and narrative moments.

I really liked the movie.

Of course, there’s parts of it I didn’t like. It’s sort of part and parcel of being a Star Wars fan these days that you approach each new piece of content as a Jawa. You’re going to scavenge this sucker only for what you like, and really what you can use. Otherwise, you’re going to leave that shit in the desert where you found it.

This works for every type of fan; those who loved The Last Jedi for instance (raises hand) or those that didn’t. I have no interest in the TLJ vs. TROS or Rian vs. JJ debates. I like what I like and don’t like what I don’t like, and that is true of every Star Wars film except for the first two, and because I saw it at the Crossroads Cinema in 1983, Return of the Jedi, too. But where TLJ made a deliberate choice to escape the confines of the series own structure, nostalgia and trajectory, TROS forces the trilogy back down to cruising altitude and machine guns warmed over concepts at us – hello again, planet destroying super weapon – that evidence how the series post-Lucas is a zombie.

How great would the film have been if it had been conscious of this, and leveraged the return of The Emperor as some kind of meta commentary on the series perceived faults? Oh, that’s right. Star Wars can’t be meta (or at least, properly understood.)

Palpatine returning makes enormous sense actually, and Abrams is spot on that wrapping up the series without its principle villain would be odd. And Palpatine’s entire ambition in the prequels seems to be achieving what he ultimately does in TROS. But The Emperor arrives in this film not out of a narrative need – certainly not a narrative plan – but a desperate need to get back into the nostalgia lane after TLJ went off road and left the story in a place where events couldn’t be anticipated. This metastasizes into the awful revelation of Rey’s parentage, which undermines her character, the previous film, and commits the Sequel Trilogy – ostensibly a rebuke of the Prequel Trilogy – to the notion that The Force is not necessarily democratic. 

That’s another post.

The inability to properly integrate The Emperor into the story undoes the film. His return is not explained, which puts his – shifting – goals, along with the narrative, on shaky ground. You can kind of infer how the Emperor came back, suggested in his plan to transfer his spirit to Rey (he is as I have always suspected, a Dark Side entity that isn’t really seeking apprentices but new bodies). For the stakes to be clear, and the climax to work, we need to know his death at the end is THE END and we don’t because there’s nothing to suggest that this death is final.

The movie is built on stopping the Sith Fleet, not Palpatine, a fundamental mistake. The need to resurrect the tired trope of the super weapon – AGAIN – undercuts the entire logic of the movie. The First Order is in control of the galaxy at the end of TLJ; the Resistance has been whittled down to a handful aboard the Millennium Falcon. What need is an entire fleet of planet killers? What does it change strategically? The answer is nothing. The film simply needs to retread the third act construction of the intrepid rebel fleet attacking the massive enemy stronghold to destroy it and save the galaxy, cue montage of other planets celebrating.

And I dislike that, enormously.

This film can’t think for itself. It is a lumbering, slurring, naked rehash of images, moments and music from earlier films. Star Wars has always been self-referential and George intended this, but he didn’t remake the same movie twice (just the once, with ROTJ). What Star Wars needs to be without its creator is a survivor, not a zombie.

Nowhere is this more unfortunate than the fate of Princess Leia.

Now this is my personal preference. For what the story is, her fate more or less works. They were put in a difficult position, to say the least, and the filmmakers made a valiant and in some cases, extraordinary effort to bring Leia back one more time. The concept of Leia becoming Rey’s master, her lightsaber and flashback to her Jedi training are outstanding and go a long way to heal the wound of not having the movie we would have had with Carrie Fisher. It also does a lot to course correct her general post OT narrative, which has been to sideline her. But still, she is sidelined. Perhaps this was unavoidable, given the resources they had.

My preference would have been for Leia to survive. Her intervention in the Rey/Kylo duel is effective, but her death underscores how much this trilogy has been a three movie funeral. It is a slide show of pictures and videos played at someone’s wake. See? Remember when? I never wanted the sequels to serve as memorials to my childhood heroes. And here, it was unnecessary. Princess Leia is the ultimate survivor. She survives the loss of her birth parents, her adopted ones, her home planet, her destiny as a Jedi and ultimately, her son. A more fitting end would have been for her to be there at the end, carrying on, as Carrie and Leia did.

But as I said. My preference.

TROS can’t escape the stitched together pieces of the original trilogy, so its narrative demands a death of a mentor. Ghosts, real and figurative, haunt this film, as they do the entire Sequel Trilogy. The spirits of better movies are the most damning. I still believe Star Wars can survive with Lucas, and thrive; The Mandalorian shows signs of that, though it, too, leans heavily on nostalgia. I hope the inevitable future Star Wars films don’t look for guidance from the spirits of the past, but seek out new horizons, and new journeys into the unknown.