This review may contain spoilers.

WARNING: This review contains full spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker. Proceed at your own risk.

















There’s a moment early into the runtime of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that encapsulates almost every issue I have with the film: We pick up with ace pilot Poe Dameron and Resistance hero Finn receiving valuable intel on how to stop the First Order, who suddenly arrive and subsequently attempt to kill them. It’s soon afterwards that we notice in the back a gigantic yellow slug, screaming in terror as the heroes make their daring escape from the TIE fighters on their tail.

Though it’s never said in the film, this slug is named Klaud. He is just suddenly on the Millenium Falcon with our heroes as if he were part of one of the previous movies in this trilogy and should therefore be recognized. No explanation is given for who Klaud is or why he’s present in our introduction to Poe and Finn in this movie, and he simply walks out of the movie a few scenes later, never to be seen again.

So why is this insignificant slug named Klaud so important to me? Well, you see, many of the questions Klaud’s sudden presence raises are the same questions you will ask about major story elements in this film. Who is Klaud? Why is he here? Why does the film act like I’m supposed to recognize him? Why does the film just expect me to accept the giant yellow slug in the back of the Falcon? What was the point of introducing him if he adds nothing to this film? The only way to answer these questions is to simply tell yourself “This is just the way things are now.”

And there are unfortunately many Klauds in this movie, as most of the questions you may have about the baffling direction this final installment in the Skywalker Saga has taken will promptly be ignored with a shrug of the film’s metaphorical shoulders and an unenthused “This is just the way things are now.”







This is unfortunately how the Star War ends. Not with a bang, but with a deflated whimper. It’s not a movie that I find particularly bad, just a story that feels rather obligatory, almost as if JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio didn’t really care about the movie they were making. But honestly, I don’t know who to blame for why this film is the way it is. It could simply be Abrams and Terrio being bad choices for bringing this story to its conclusion, but when I saw The Rise of Skywalker my first and only time on opening day, I saw a film that felt as if it had been tampered with.

Many moments, both big and small, feel as if either LucasFilm or Disney themselves had mandated them in some cheap attempt to appease fans who were disappointed with the previous entry, The Last Jedi, at the expense of its own story. This is all just speculation on my part, of course, but after how much I enjoyed Abrams’ other Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, it strikes me as doubtful that he would want to create something so contradictory to both his own vision and the vision of The Last Jedi’s director, Rian Johnson. So many moments take you out of the film just to address a meaningless complaint about the Sequel Trilogy, my least favorite of which being their attempt to “explain” why Rey is so powerful with her Jedi abilities, despite the fact that explaining it undermines the previous two movies significantly (but we’ll talk about this more later.)

Regardless of who is to blame for why this filmed turned out this way, its problems still exist. This is why I’ve mainly been referring to the abstract concept of “the film” or “this movie” when talking about what I find wrong with it, because until we know what went on behind the scenes of The Rise of Skywalker, it doesn’t matter who is ultimately responsible for its failings. And I will continue to do so both for that reason and so as to not fall down the rabbit hole of targeting one person solely because they made a movie I was disappointed with.







One of the biggest issues in The Rise of Skywalker is how they introduce several new and frankly bad elements into this film as if there was an entire movie between Episodes 8 and 9 with important character and plot developments that you just simply missed. We see this with my earlier Klaud example but there are far bigger issues with this film than even a giant slug. Star Wars advancing things between films is nothing new but there’s generally enough information to fill in the gaps. In The Rise of Skywalker, everyone feels out of character instead. Rey is suddenly struggling with the dark side, Poe just seems to suddenly be butting heads with everyone for no reason, and saying Finn is out of character here is to say The Rise of Skywalker treats him like a character at all with how little of consequence he does.

This movie was heavily promoted as being the one that would finally bring our new trio of characters (never mind the fact that it should’ve been a quartet with Rose after The Last Jedi, but that’s a whole other issue) and yet it feels like it was written by people who had never seen these characters interact before. Gone are Finn and Rey’s shared childlike enthusiasm at each others’ accomplishments, gone is the bond Poe and Finn had so effortlessly developed, and even the new interactions between Rey and Poe just come across as needless antagonism rather than anything based on truly conflicting personalities.

So when no one in this trio feels like themselves, nor do they have any interactions that build upon their relationships from the previous films in this trilogy, how am I expected to be satisfied with these three characters finally going on an adventure together? I guess this is just the way things are now and I should be expected to roll with it.







But of course, there’s one more relationship from the previous movies that has to be addressed: that of Rey and Kylo Ren. And while I can fortunately say their interactions feel in-character, it’s still let down by more “this is just the way things are now” elements. One of the most confusing of these problems is the reintroduction of Kylo Ren’s mask after he destroyed it in the previous movie. In the lead-up to this movie, it was an intriguing prospect, the idea that Kylo Ren might slip back into old habits after his failure on Crait. Instead, like many of the ideas of this movie, it’s let down by the rushed nature of the whole experience. At a certain point in the movie, Kylo simply decides to rebuild his helmet with no fanfare or introspection. It simply happens and then we move on.

Destroying his mask in the last movie was an interesting development from both a thematic and practical perspective, but both angles are squandered here. There is no thematic reason for the mask to return, and the practical advantage of simply allowing Adam Driver (unquestionably one of the best actors in the new cast) to emote more often is completely thrown out the window. In his force bond interactions with Rey, an element from The Last Jedi that thankfully returns, he simply stands around flatly, delivering dialogue put through a vocal filter, in an almost deliberate effort to make his side of his conversations with Rey as boring as possible. I don’t even know if it’s actually Driver in these scenes or if it’s just a double.

In another recent Star Wars property surrounding a completely masked character, The Mandalorian, they at least put in an effort to use body language and line delivery to convey emotion in the absence of a face for the character. It’s a shame that even this basic level of effort is not put into Kylo Ren’s scenes in The Rise of Skywalker.

What’s worse is that even from a purely script perspective the dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren doesn’t live up to its potential. This is mainly because most of their interactions simply center around Kylo Ren testing her to see if what he’s heard about her unnecessary new backstory (again, more on this later) is correct. And when he’s not testing her, he simply exposits that same information he learned. The only exceptions to this are their final confrontation on the ruins of the second Death Star and the final battle on the Sith planet of Exegol.

What’s worse is that these new revelations about Rey ruin the interesting parallels between Rey and Kylo Ren, as now they both have very similar backstories rather than opposing ones, which is fine in theory, but this new parallel seems entirely coincidental and is less interesting than what came before.

However, I am happy to say I have positive things to say about Kylo Ren in this movie, or rather, Ben Solo. Leia’s sacrifice to reach her son is genuinely emotional despite how awkward the filmmakers attempting to work around the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher is. Though all she says is “Ben,” that one word carries enough meaning in context to make the start of Kylo Ren’s redemption believable, especially thanks to Adam Driver selling the whole thing without words.

To top it off, the Harrison Ford cameo as Ben hallucinates his father in a callback to Han’s death scene is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. They even managed to sneak in a reference to the classic “I know” line without making me roll my eyes, which was impressive. What makes this better is that Ben has no dialogue after this scene other than “ow” for the rest of the movie, and yet you hardly notice because of Adam Driver yet again telling the whole story with nothing but his acting. His wordless interactions with Rey from this point on generated some of the most joy I got from this film. I’m especially fond of the moment where Rey passes a lightsaber to him through their force bond.

That being said, I still have some issues with even the elements I’ve praised. Kylo Ren’s redemption simply “happens” just like every other element in this film. There’s no buildup to it within the film in the slightest. You simply reach the point in the film where the writers decided to redeem him, and then it happens. Maz Kanata simply has to exposit what’s going on since they didn’t have any unused dialogue from Leia to build up to this moment. I’d be willing to forgive the lack of buildup on Leia’s end if Kylo had shown any sympathetic qualities beforehand in this movie, but he does not. Even not killing Rey as he’s been ordered to has an ulterior motive. So sadly, even one of the most well executed parts of the movie feels about the same as everything else: obligatory.

Another issue with Kylo Ren’s redemption is the seeming lack of understanding of the aspects of his personality that turned Ben Solo into Kylo Ren in the first place, namely his unwillingness to accept responsibility. Kylo continually tries to convince both other people and himself that he was never given a choice, that he was forced to become a monster and that everyone who ever wronged him is to blame for his pain and must subsequently be wiped out for it. But of course, he’s always had a choice. Even amidst Han, Leia, and especially Luke’s failings, Ben chose to become Kylo Ren, and he always had a choice to turn back. Unfortunately, this mostly isn’t present in The Rise of Skywalker. While I do feel Leia’s death made him realize he had failed his family rather than the other way around, we never get a moment where he finally takes responsibility.

It could be argued his sacrifice to save Rey is this moment, but that feels like it’s giving the film too much credit as the framing doesn’t imply that this is what they had in mind in that moment. Sacrifice alone doesn’t mean he’s taken any responsibility, just that he saved someone he already cared about. I have similar issues with Vader’s redemption in Return of the Jedi, but they’re amplified here when it’s far less vague as to what makes our villain truly evil, and thus makes the lack of any true redemption all the more unsatisfying.

Unfortunately, Ben is not the only character that I feel is done a disservice by this movie. I’ve already mentioned my issues with the trio briefly, but I want to discuss what doesn’t work about their characters in this movie individually. Let’s start with Finn.







So, Finn is force sensitive now. In the theater I was ecstatic at the prospect, especially since it was one of the few moments of fanservice I wouldn’t have complained about. But much like Leia in Return of the Jedi, an interesting revelation of force sensitivity is promptly wasted in favor of the character just sensing a few things rather than actively using the force. According to JJ Abrams, whether or not you want to believe him here, the secret Finn repeatedly wants to tell Rey in this movie is that he’s force sensitive. But he never does. If that doesn’t sum up just how little being force sensitive adds to his character, I don’t know what does. But who cares about actually developing Finn’s character? He’s force sensitive, and that’s just the way things are now.

And all this is without mentioning the wasted potential of Jannah. Here we have another stormtrooper who defected, just like him, and they proceed to do very little with it. The one scene we get between them that explores the implications of this simply happens like everything else in this film, and likewise is pretty much ignored from then onwards. After Finn finds out he’s not the only stormtrooper to defect, he and Jannah promptly kill more stormtroopers without a second thought. And that’s not even mentioning the implied connection between the returning Lando Calrissian and her. Leaks of this movie’s plot gave some insight into this, but unfortunately, none of that made it into the film, so it makes their last scene rather confusing.

So if both of the new potential storylines with Finn only amount to a few small moments, what else does he do in this film? Well, I’m glad you asked, because Finn’s entire character throughout this movie is to run into frame and yell a character’s name, usually Rey’s. It feels like a recurring gag except it’s never supposed to be a joke. John Boyega has said he enjoyed his character in this movie more than in Episodes 7 and 8, and I cannot see his perspective at all. He had legitimate character development in the previous movies, and it’s only now that he feels wasted. But at least getting nothing of consequence to do is better than what they did to Poe.







Remember in Episodes 7 and 8 when Poe was constantly abrasive to everyone he interacted with, especially his friends? Neither do I. But this is just the way things are now, I suppose, and Poe’s characterization certainly makes me hate the way things are now. It’s not even that he does any one major act of significance that’s unforgivable, it’s just the way he interacts with other characters in general that makes him the most unlikeable character in this entire movie. It feels like he never has a positive interaction with anyone in this movie because he constantly just barges in with some insult that’s meant to be played as light banter but certainly doesn’t come across that way.

This doesn’t follow up on his arc in The Last Jedi in any meaningful way, and only resets him to a point worse than how he started this trilogy. It’s not even like they were going for an arc in this movie, either, unless you count his sudden personality change as they prepare for the final battle. After finding out that Leia is dead, Poe just suddenly becomes how you’d expect him to be after The Last Jedi: A responsible leader. But this comes too late and doesn’t somehow negate his previous characterization.

And I haven’t even mentioned his love interest Zorii Bliss yet, who feels just as out of place as every other element in this film, perhaps even moreso. She legitimately adds nothing to this film despite being a prominent character, other than giving Keri Russel something to do. Her interactions with Poe serve to do nothing but exposit his new backstory as a spice runner that, along with being a bad stereotype, informs none of his actions in this movie except a few lines of dialogue that are almost funny, but not quite. The most Zorii adds to this film is making Poe sad for thirty seconds when she seemingly dies, but she ends up still being alive despite her entire planet getting destroyed, so it hardly matters.







And lastly, we need to talk about Rey, but to do that, we need to first talk about the character that she’s pointlessly and completely connected to in this movie, the one I’ve avoided mentioning until now in order to save the worst for last: the returning Emperor Palpatine. He is to blame for almost every problem in this movie, even if only in indirect ways for some. He’s the biggest Klaud of them all because his rushed introduction and pointlessly retconned relevance to this trilogy actively make both this movie and what we thought we knew about this trilogy as a whole worse.

Right from the opening crawl, he disrupts the flow of the narrative. So far, the sequel trilogy had been a soft reboot, a trilogy that could be enjoyed even if you had been living under a rock and hadn’t seen any of the original 6 films. So you can imagine how jarring it’d be if a character who had only been offhandedly mentioned once under a different name were revealed to still be alive before the film even truly begins. Before any of our main characters are mentioned, Palpatine has already taken over this story.

This isn’t the story of the trio finally coming together and going on one grand adventure, this isn’t the story of Rey and Kylo’s dynamic finally reaching a head, and this isn’t even a story about bringing each character’s arcs to their conclusion. This is now Palpatine: A Star Wars Story. Those other things may be present, but they are not the focus of this story. Palpatine is, despite having mere minutes of screentime. By the ten minute mark, he’s already made his presence known to the entire galaxy and now the entire film revolves around the characters finding the MacGuffin to stop him.

I’ve used the phrase “This is just the way things are now” to criticize this film several times throughout this review to highlight how this film’s choices require you to simply accept the jarring nature of them without question. Palpatine’s integration into the movie is this principle in its purest form. Most of the characters don’t get development because the plot has nothing to do with them, especially since he’s hardly been mentioned until now. None of them have any personal investment in stopping Palpatine (until the second half for Rey) except that they happen to be the ones sent on a mission to locate him. This is just a movie about stopping a character who wasn’t relevant until this movie first and foremost, so characters only get any attempts at development through the various side quests on their way to stop Palpatine.

This is why this movie feels like it has no time to be the things it wants to be, because Palpatine is far more important than he should be. He’s just meant to be a final boss for Rey and Ben to team up to fight at the end and yet they make him the focus from moment one simply because he’s recognizable. And the worst part is, I actually like when he’s on screen towards the end, especially his genuinely creepy cult and Sith ritual (I even like the new retcon about the Rule of Two!) But what I do like unfortunately can’t be separated from the overall context he’s been placed in.

But Palpatine has not merely become the focus of this movie, he has now been retconned into being the focus of the entire trilogy. People complain about this movie turning the Skywalker Saga into the “Palpatine Saga” but I think it’d be more accurate to say it turned the Sequel Trilogy into the Palpatine Trilogy. And it is transformed into such with frightening speed. In the second scene, Palpatine reveals he was the mastermind behind Snoke, the person who set the Sequel Trilogy into motion. And while the visual of his Snokes in a jar is legitimately unsettling, it actively harms the story we thought we knew.

Everything the characters had done up to this point was all part of a convoluted plot to get Kylo here, making his arc in The Last Jedi rather pointless, since now him defying the machinations of his master was now part of a grander machination by Palpatine. Have any questions as to how or why? Don’t like the ramifications of this revelation? Too bad, this is just the way things are now.







But there are worse Palpatine retcons, ones that affect the character I have recently become the most disappointed by. I had convinced myself on viewing the film that what they did was consistent with her journey so far, but the more I think about it and the more I discussed what they did with her the more I realized that Rey was handled the worst of all.

Though many had become gravitated to Finn or Kylo Ren, my favorite character of this trilogy as of Episode 8 was Rey. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi had come together to create an interesting story of someone trying to find her place in a universe that dealt her the worst of circumstances. Her desperate search for validation through her parents created a meta theme that reflected the state of new Star Wars fans entering the fanbase for the first time, and how the gatekeeping nature of many fans more familiar with the franchise came into conflict with those new fans.

I wasn’t really that into Star Wars until The Force Awakens so I saw a lot of myself in Rey, especially after the revelation that her parents were nobodies who sold her for their own benefit denied her being artificially handed a place into this universe rather than finding her own. And unfortunately, rather than let her find her own, The Rise of Skywalker sees it fit to hand her what she wanted, and though it comes with a cost, that cost is rendered insignificant thanks to its execution.

Rey and Kylo’s confrontation on the cold planet of Kijimi contains some of the worst dialogue in a Star Wars movie. At least the prequels were just overly pretentious with their dialogue, but on Kijimi we get some dialogue that’s pure laziness to justify their pointless retcon of Rey’s heritage. Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter now, and you’re asked to simply accept that stupid idea despite the fact that we already had a satisfying answer to who Rey is.

And to try and pretend that this isn’t a retcon, we get my least favorite line in the whole movie, in which Kylo says (and I’m only barely paraphrasing here) “Your parents were nobody because they chose to be.” This is on the level of an internet theorist trying to justify why Rey’s heritage makes her important when the entire point Rian Johnson was trying to make with The Last Jedi was that it didn’t. This trend continues with more awful lines like “They sold you to protect you” and “you have his power” as if this film was written by people who only got the cliff notes of what Episode 8 set in motion without any of the significance.

I am a believer that there are few, if any, truly broken ideas for a story. I want to believe that even Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter could have worked, but that doesn’t forgive the execution. As Kylo exposits, this retcon is just a way of satisfying the people upset that Rey was so powerful without going through rigorous training (despite the fact that Luke barely ever trained with Yoda and literally becomes a Jedi Master off-screen) by saying that Rey is powerful simply because of her special Palpatine genes that apparently skipped a generation.

So I guess her heritage really did end up validating her even if she doesn’t like who her grandfather is since he’s the reason she’s force sensitive. I guess she really should have searched for her parents so she could find out Palpatine was still alive. I guess her parents selling her didn’t matter because they kept her safe from Palpatine so that somehow makes what they put their own daughter through okay. I guess this is just the way things are now, and I need to accept that Rey’s arc was pointless.

You can argue that this at least continues the arc of Rey not letting her family define her, but that’s undermined by saying her power came from him and by saying her parents actually cared about her and tried to protect her, making Rey’s struggle with her identity meaningless since her father already proved his relation to Palpatine didn’t define him. So any potential for this story to work is utterly ruined by is execution. And it makes you wonder what was the point of being invested in Rey’s character if this is where it leads to. All those themes I talked about, the powerful messages of her story, have all been rendered meaningless by not being brought to a true resolution. Because I guess the people complaining over a character’s power level like this is some shonen anime are more valuable than the people who were already invested in the story.







You could, like so many others have, blame this movie’s failings on the lack of a plan, but that’s not the problem. There’s little evidence any plot point of the original trilogy was planned until the movie it showed up in. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is often cited as having a grand plan but if you actually listen to what the directors say you realize they’re just given characters to work with and make it up from there. Even the infinity stones were just a matter of the directors choosing which stones they wanted to use before Infinity War, leaving the directors of that movie to decide what to do with the state of the universe after the movies that lead into it. A plan isn’t required to tell a good story because good storytellers can create the illusion of a plan even when there wasn’t one.

However, whoever called the shots with The Rise of Skywalker clearly wasn’t interested in making that illusion convincing, because it wasn’t compatible with their priorities in making this film some kind of correction for a course that didn’t need correcting. “The great error has been corrected,” Palpatine says in his speech that you could only hear in Fortnite, a sentiment I think is shared many of the people who say this movie cleaned up the supposed mess Rian Johnson made.

They say the fans got what they wanted with this movie, and they’re unfortunately right. No longer is Rey an important part of this universe thanks to her own virtue, but because Palpatine set her entire life in motion. No longer is Kylo Ren a cautionary tale about toxic fandom, but instead cast aside in favor of a “real” villain. No longer do the characters drive the story, but instead plot and lore. And worst of all, Rey taking on the Skywalker name, a moment that would have truly symbolized her choosing her own place in the universe and her own place of belonging is instead treated as her just wanting a better family than Palpatine because they just had to satisfy fans who wanted a completely different character.

This seems to be the reason that many who were dissatisfied with the Sequel Trilogy love The Rise of Skywalker. And it hurts because I want to love it, too. I don’t fault them for enjoying a movie just because I didn’t. I’ve criticized almost every aspect of this movie but there’s still plenty of moments I enjoyed, and it’s a shame the entire movie isn’t like those moments for me.







Despite how it may seem, I’m not angry at this movie. I just feel rather empty inside because in the end, what did The Rise of Skywalker accomplish for those who were invested in the Sequel Trilogy? Because it certainly feels like it wasn’t made for them.

Those who wanted a story about how no one is important just because of their background instead got a story about how Rey’s background completely defined her entire life and that she just didn’t know it yet.

Those who wanted this film to prove everyone who accused Finn of being a wasted character wrong instead got him doing the least he’s ever done in this trilogy because the movie cares more about Palpatine than him.

Those who wanted a story about exploring Poe now that he’s finally a responsible leader instead get an unlikeable spice runner, but at least he doesn’t have a purple-haired admiral to deal with anymore, am I right?

Those who wanted to see how the tragic tale of Ben Solo would end simply got the easiest, bare minimum ending you could expect that only knows what it borrows from Return of the Jedi.

Those who loved Rose Tico got practically insulted by her substanceless 75-second screentime, as her minimalized role became a victory for the toxic fans who harassed her actress off of social media.

Those who simply just wanted a story that built upon and concluded the story and themes of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi got a story that felt like it was written by someone who had only read the wiki summary and watched merely a few scenes from both, giving us a movie that feels more like a reboot than part of a trilogy.

If this movie isn’t made to tell its own satisfying story, and instead to try and please people who will never truly be happy until all the people they attacked never work again, why even bother making this movie at all? Because, to me, while this isn’t the worst Star Wars movie, it represents the worst thing Star Wars can be: uninspired.

If The Rise of Skywalker represents a new direction for Star Wars, I don’t like where we’re headed. This movie is an assurance to fans that if they beg and scream loud enough, they will have their voices matter more than those of the storytellers. I don’t want that for Star Wars. I don’t think anyone should.

But I guess this is just the way things are now.