So Star Wars the Rise of Skywalker is very much not for me and there are two major reasons why. It's not for me because it suffers all of the problems I usually have with films directed by J.J. Abrams and it's not for me as the conclusion of an ongoing story, specifically as a sequel to The Last Jedi. This is gonna be a spoiler heavy video, so fair warning about that and if you disagree with me, that's cool, as long as you don't harass anyone about it. So let's get started with Part One: No scenes, just plot. I've never loved a movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Which is weird because he's an insanely talented director in a lot of places. He's great with actors and it shows and his characters feel human, relatable, likable, charismatic. His signature mystery box style of storytelling is extremely effective at getting an audience hooked into the story quickly. His scenes are always flashy even when delivering exposition. They've got an engaging energy to them, thanks to dynamic camerawork. But fun, flashy scenes are J.J.'s greatest strengths and his greatest weakness. An over-reliance on sequences like the ones we're about to talk about leave little room for anything else. We have very few scenes in J.J. Abrams' movies, but way too much plot. And this is a bigger problem in The Rise of Skywalker than it is in any of his other movies. So much of this film is nothing more than the characters running around and yelling about why they need to go to a place to find a thing. That's plot. In one sense, it's a good way to sneak exposition into a story. J.J. is very good at making boring information feel fun and exciting. Check out the scene from Super 8. "We have to go back to town to find Alice! Come on guys!" "Dude she's dead. Alice is dead!" "First of all, I want to live, okay! "Joe, what do you to expect to do man? Town's closed and we're not allowed to go back!" "Look I have an idea. I'm going whether or not you come but I really hope that you do.' On paper, that's a pretty basic planning scene. They could have done it was simple shot reverse shot but J.J. makes it more engaging than that by having the camera go crazy and by having his actors constantly interrupt each other. Also, I'm using Super 8 as an example here because it's the only movie he's directed without cinematographer Dan Mendel. J.J.'s style remains the same regardless, it's very distinct. But in The Rise of Skywalker, these kinds of exposition scenes are constant and they are barely scenes. You know what I mean by scenes, right? Like two characters in a room working through a character based conflict that reaches some kind of resolution and that leads into the next scene. In the Rise of Skywalker, this almost never happens. Rey Poe and Finn spent half of the movie together but there are very few moments when their relationships are developing in ways that pay off later in the movie. It's just them shouting exposition about the Sith Wayfinder or the droids myth or whatever. We don't get scenes where the characters talk about what actually matters to them and maybe share differing philosophies about something, or when they do they're over within ten seconds. No scenes, just plot and this is the biggest reason why I find the movie so uninteresting. There is nothing at stake Emotionally between the leads. They're just sort of doing stuff. It's also hard to get invested in what's happening when nearly every scene gets interrupted by action. "Mr. Spock, I'm aware that I have no right to ask this of you but please, he cannot know that... Film Crit Hulk talked about this in The Force Awakens in an incredibly in-depth essay on J.J. Abrams that has definitely shaped my thoughts on him here. So I highly recommend checking that out. Basically, in a well-written plot, you understand the cause and effect of each action. The characters make decisions and those decisions have consequences which lead into the next scene. In J.J. Abrams' movies, the characters are talking about something and then bad guys show up out of nowhere. The whole movie then just becomes about them running around. It's banal. Doing this works in the moment because our lizard brains get shocked into paying attention whenever an action scene starts and it's only after that we start wondering what the story is even about. To me this kind of storytelling reeks of the fear of letting the story slow down, a fear that the audience will get bored if the characters aren't in peril at every moment but the effect is the opposite. I'm bored when they're in peril because nothing deeper is happening to make me care. In the Rise of Skywalker, it's relentless. They're at a festival, bad guys show up. Stuck in a cave, oh, no, there's a snake monster. Go to another planet, more bad guys! And to be clear, it's not that this is a problem every time or that it immediately makes a film bad if it does something like this, it's that it happens so constantly in J.J. Abrams movies that it robs the characters of agency, the ability to make big character reviewing decisions. I can see the decisions Rey is making in this story but everyone else is just along for the ride! No scenes, just plot. So that's the movie! Endless sequences of running around, yelling exposition, getting interrupted by action scenes. I've seen so many people describe this movie as rushed and this is the reason for me: it's J.J.'s style cranked up to 11 to the point that nothing else is allowed to breathe. Part Two: The Dead Speak I don't know how to feel during a J.J. Abrams movie. So there's a part in this film where we're told that Chewbacca is dead and that it's Rey's fault. This moment is very indicative of how J.J. handles emotional scenes in his movies. In the hands of another storyteller I imagine that the movie would linger on this moment of defeat. Rey should be absolutely devastated by this. She'd go into shock. Isolate herself from everyone else in case she accidentally hurts them as well and it should be the saddest moment of the trilogy but the movie doesn't let her or us actually grieve. Grief is often sped through in J.J. Abrams' movies and particularly these Star Wars movies. Like when entire planets get blown up and no one really seems to mind a minute later. Or it's reversed like when Kirk dies and is then brought back to life. Hey, that sounds familiar because wouldn't you know it Chewbacca is still alive and so it was almost everyone else who quote-unquote dies in this movie. Grief is treated as an inconvenience, it gets in the way of the fun. So they just get rid of the consequences to anything. "It is fortunate that the consequences were not more severe." "You've got to be kidding me." They even make sure to let us know as quickly as possible that Chewie is fine. We see that he's alive before the characters learn that he is, which to me is a wasted opportunity. I mean, imagine if you could just cut out that little reveal that Chewie is fine and that we didn't know that until Rey did. Then we'd actually get to empathize with the characters as they deal with that loss. But if they did that then they wouldn't be able to have as much fun with the cute puppet and the puppets pretty cute, So the movie's fun again! And I'm not saying that a Star Wars movie needs to have the tone of a funeral but that low moments make the triumphant ones feel more triumphant. So there's the problem. I don't know how to feel during J.J. Abrams' movies because we're just whizzing past how the characters should be feeling to get to the next set piece. Two scenes after Rey thinks she killed Chewbacca you wouldn't be able to tell that it had happened. We're always on to the next thing. No scenes, just plot. Now one of the reasons J.J. gets away with this kind of filmmaking, where the emotional beats don't have the time to land on their own, or are never explored, is because of well everything we've talked about so far with his super quick flashy storytelling. But it's also because you can always just rely on nostalgia. Part Three: Nostalgia At Any Cost "Who the hell are you?" In this scene from Star Trek into Darkness, we learn this character's true identity." My name is Khan." This moment drives me up the wall! For the characters in the room that name is meaningless. They've never heard it before. For them it is not a twist, even though the way the scene is shot implies that it is. It's only meaningful for the audience who recognizes the character from other Star Trek media. Abrams uses references like this constantly in his films and he is willing to sacrifice any other element of storytelling to hit the nostalgia button. Character consistency and thematic coherence are never more important than nostalgia. He doesn't take the time to set up these moments because why would he? His movies are all about fast pacing so why waste time setting something up if the audience already recognizes it? So in the rise of Skywalker there's this ridiculous moment where Maz Kanata gives Chewie a medal. If you missed why this was important, let me explain what the movie did not. Luke and Han got medals for blowing up the Death Star in a new hope but Chewie inexplicably did not. So for 40 years fans have wondered sometimes sarcastically sometimes overly seriously: well, why didn't Chewie get a medal? So in this movie, he just gets one at the end even though there's no reason for it to happen in this story. It's not like the character has ever expressed that he wanted the medal. There's no story to this story. It's just fanservice! Now, mercifully, this only lasts a moment, but it's indicative of the scene I really want to talk about which is at the end where it happens in like three different ways. So Rey goes to Luke's old house on Tatooine. She buries Luke and Leia's lightsabers there in a place that holds a bitter memory for Luke, a place he only wanted to leave, on a planet that Leia probably doesn't remember fondly. She then claims the name Skywalker for herself. Again, it's a moment that makes sense from the perspective of the audience but which doesn't make quite as much sense for her. Skywalker is synonymous with heroism for the audience because we met Luke first as a hero. But now that we know the full history of this family would Rey really want to align herself with that legacy? A family that either dominated the galaxy or abandoned it. From Rey's perspective, the only member of the family she had an uncomplicated relationship with is Leia. Leia fought against dictatorship her entire life. She's the adopted daughter of someone who also fought and died fighting dictatorship. She trains with Luke for only a few days, but for a year with Leia, even though we don't see it I think it's arguable that she had a closer relationship with Leia than she did with Luke. So if there's one name in the Star Wars saga, that is actually synonymous with heroism, democracy, freedom resistance and everything else that Rey values, it's Organa not Skywalker. So she's going to construct her own identity by taking up the surname of another family, it would be a stronger statement to choose Organa not Skywalker. It's only Skywalker because of how the audience feels about the name. It's the Khan moment all over again. These moments feel like they've been constructed backwards, like they had this idea of a cool scene that would hit the nostalgia button and then stretch things to get there without earning it. And that's not even mentioning the fact that the earlier moment in the film when she says her name is Rey, just Rey is infinitely more powerful than the moment at the end. First Conclusion? Interlude? Eh whatever. I think the Mission Impossible franchise was the ideal franchise for J.J. Abrams. Those are movies where tons of exposition shot like it's super exciting works. Where being fast and funny but having little substance works. Where mystery box storytelling works because it's a Mission Impossible movie and I don't care if there are character arcs or themes or even what the characters' names are. Simon Pegg has been in like four of them and I still call him Simon Pegg because it's Mission Impossible. Show me some explosions and I'll be fine. But with Star Wars, I want a little more. I want to be invested in the characters in this story. Which would mean Slowing down the pace and allowing them to interact with each other on a more emotional level. It means allowing moments of defeat to land before rushing on to the next thing and I want stories that are thematically rich not merely referential. So this is probably making things sound worse than they are. I don't think J.J. Abrams makes terrible movies I think he makes passable blockbusters. I've liked a few of them. I just haven't loved any of them. For me they're riddled with a thousand little problems that give his movies a bad aftertaste. With this one, I'm coming into it as someone who really loved the Last Jedi, but I also wanted to judge it with an open mind even if it changed things I liked from the last movie, or didn't follow up on stories and themes that I wanted to see. But for all the reasons we've talked about so far, I find The Rise of Skywalker barely passable as its own movie. It's the fact that this is also the conclusion to a long-running narrative that makes it deeply disappointing. So for the rest of this video I want to look at these story threads I was invested in and I'm disappointed by. Part Four: Finnpoe Since their introduction in The Force Awakens, fan communities have speculated about whether or not Finn and Poe would end up in a relationship together. It'd be the first homosexual romance in Star Wars and every acting decision that John Boyega and especially Oscar Isaac made seemed to support this. This movie being the last time we were guaranteed to see them together meant that they had to make the call of a whether or not to make this an explicit part of the movie and given that the movie is so concerned with validating every portion of its audience, it feels like a glaring exception. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to start depicting the characters as Aggressively straight. Both characters sort of get girlfriends in this movie. Poe meets up with old flames Zorii Bliss and Finn bonds with Jana. Now if you were thinking during my whole "no scenes, just plot" spiel but what about that scene with Poe and Zorii up on the rooftop or that one between Finn and Jenna where they talked about defecting from the first order? Yes! Those are some of the only times the movie slows down long enough to have two characters talk about their feelings. But given how little either character is in the movie, it's basically wasted time. It's time that could have been spent developing Poe and Finn's relationship. They spend the whole movie together, but barely actually interact in a way that develops coherently over the course of the story. So no, this isn't just about appeasing fans who shipped the characters and no it's not just about having more diversity in the film. Although it is also about that but I think it would have made this specific movie a tangibly better movie, a stronger story. I mean, can you imagine this movie's version of this scene, but it's Finn and Poe. It's fresh material for a Star Wars story and it would have been thrilling to see these characters explore those emotions and at the very least just have something to do during the film. Instead, there's a blink and you'll miss it, same-sex kiss at the end between two characters who you don't know that's been edited out for Singapore! What a waste of two great characters and two incredible performers. Part Five: Rose. After the release of The Last Jedi an incredible amount of racist and sexist vitriol was directed against Kelly Marie Tran who plays the character of Rose Tico. So much so that she eventually deleted her social media accounts and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about how the barrage of abuse affected her. Rose was a main character in the last film and a character I wanted to see more of. I literally jump with joy every time I see her but here she is relegated to basically being an extra. In total, she appears on screen for one minute and 16 seconds. The most charitable interpretation of this is that J.J. was just uninterested in her as a character, or that he didn't know what to do with her, or that they thought the audiences didn't like her for reasons that weren't bigoted. But you can't make that decision without knowing about the bigoted nature of the backlash against Kelly Marie Tran. So it just feels like Disney has shamelessly capitulated to the worst part of the audience and that part what the audience will certainly interpret it that way. It sucks and I hate it. It's also disappointing because there was such an obvious role for Rose to fill in this movie. Imagine if at the start she went on her own subplot to recruit various planets to come together for the final assault on Exogol. In the last movie, she's the one who explains why the resistance is morally superior to the first order. She's responsible for making Finn less selfish and into a resistance fighter. She's the obvious pick for the character who needs to explain to skeptical world leaders why they absolutely need to join the fight and seeing her evolve from an insecure mechanic into a confident diplomat, could have been a great character arc And then when the ships do show up, it would actually have been earned. This movie has one of the least effecting reinforcements save the day moments. It feels completely out of the blue. So with Rose, it's not just about rejecting racism and sexism, although it is that, but it also would have made the story better. Part Six: How not to write a redemption story This section has spoilers for Harry Potter and Avatar The Last Airbender so you can skip to this timecode if you'll want to avoid that. Going into this movie I didn't think Kylo Ren should be redeemed. Part of my reasoning for that is that it is the obvious conclusion for his character from the very first moment that he appears in The Force Awakens. He's the Vader of this trilogy. Vader was redeemed therefore Kylo will be redeemed. The Last Jedi changed that. The film tries as hard as is humanly possible to close the door on a redemption narrative for this character. Kylo turns down a chance at redemption, continues down the path of anger and ends the film on a genocidal rant. "I'll destroy her... and you... and all of it!" Plus, as an audience, we know that he's the equivalent of a school shooter in this universe, right? I mean, that's something we didn't know about Vader when we first watched his redemption. So Kylo is just an infinitely more villainous character than Vader was in the original films. Redeeming him should take more work than it took for Vader. He should have to atone and work to heal the galaxy that he's torn apart. Not just help Rey. Sacrificial death isn't enough. But lacking that, it should at least be crystal clear why he is choosing to be good again. In Return of the Jedi, there is one singular reason why Vader redeemed himself: he loves his son. In Harry Potter, there is one singular reason why Snape redeems himself: he's in love with Lily. In Avatar The Last Airbender, there is one singular reason why Zuko redeems himself: he realizes his father's reign is immoral. There is very clear dramatic intent. The entire thesis statement of those stories and those subplots are wrapped up in this: love redeems. Love redeems. Honor means more than being loyal to your country. In The Rise of Skywalker, there's like three things going on at once. The one I sorta like concerns Leia. So in the last movie, Kylo is all about tearing down the past. In this one, he's changed his tune. He says repeatedly that you can't change your nature and your nature is your bloodline. Now, even though it doesn't track from the last movie, you can sort of understand why he'd think that about himself. From his perspective, his father was mediocre and a criminal. His uncle was a phony and an attempted murderer. His grandfather was the second most powerful Dark Lord in the galaxy. There's just one giant blind spot in his assessment of his heritage and that's Leia. Leia is pure. How can the son of Leia think that villainy is in his blood? We've seen in the last film that Leia is his one weakness, the one bond he's not capable of violently ripping himself away from. So having Leia interrupt his fight with Rey reminds him of the good part of his nature I guess? Is that why he turns to the light or is it because he realizes he's in love with Rey or is it because he feels guilty about killing his father? The movie's answer is...umm...all of the above. So whatever answer you like best, you just get to have. But this robs the moment of clarity, of a strong message that declares this is what this story is about. It's just lucky that Adam Driver is such a great actor. Alright, let's get to the big one! Part Seven: Headcanon Oh look, that rhymed! By far, the clumsiest scene in the film is when Kylo Ren reveals that Rey is secretly Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter there are plenty of reasons for me to not like this. It reeks of more nostalgia bait bringing the Emperor back means that three at the last four movies chronologically speaking, have scenes where there are three Force users in a room and rebels fighting outside. One of the reasons to play this card early in The Last Jedi is to force the next director to come up with something new but here we are, and of course most importantly the twist backpedals on one of the main messages that was so powerful in The Last Jedi, that anyone from anywhere can be a hero. But just because it's not the choice I was hoping for doesn't make it a bad choice necessarily and I want to try to not dismiss it out of hand. So what's the utility of this twist? From a storytelling perspective, it's to make Rey question whether or not she can still be good. Immediately after the reveal, she's a little more reckless. She's angrier and Daisy Ridley does a really great job of portraying that new undercurrent to her character. I think the twist would work better if they didn't also change how her parents are characterized. The Last Jedi tells us that they are filthy junk traders who sold their daughter off for drinking money. This movie tells us actually they did it all to protect her and were actually good people. The fact that they're good people contradicts the entire argument Kylo was trying to make to her about the dark side being in her blood. I mean if her parents were good what does it matter if her grandfather is evil? The it's in your nature argument doesn't apply. So really it's that part of the twist that irks me the most and not the fact that she's actually related to Palpatine. That much I could tolerate. It's just a much more convoluted way of trying to communicate the same message that The Last Jedi already did. The movie wants to say that blood doesn't matter even though it spends so much of its runtime showing how Rey only has power because of who she's related to. Part of me wonders if in 10 or 20 years when people watch this trilogy already knowing about this twist, just as a lot of people today watch the original trilogy already knowing that Luke is Vader's son, if it will feel like a more natural progression? Like that future audience won't get as hung up on the mystery box elements of this story but in the here-and-now it a barely functional twist where more is lost than is gained. It does however lead into the film's one central theme of being able to choose your own identity. And while I quibbled earlier about the exact name she chooses, I do find meaning in that idea that you can construct your own identity, your own story out of the fragments of what came before. She basically just chooses her own headcanon about who she is Headcanon if you're unfamiliar is when fans of a piece of media believe something about its story even if it contradicts the Canon or if there is no evidence to support it. This movie has an interesting relationship with headcanon given that it elevates some popular headcanons into actual canons like bringing Rey and Ben together at the end. Going into this movie, I prepared my own head Canon so that no matter what happened, I wouldn't be too disappointed. If I didn't end up liking it, I haven't lost anything. It's quite easy to do this given how neatly The Last Jedi wrapped things up. All of the character arcs are complete and in the final shot a young boy looks up at the sky inspired by the story of Luke Skywalker. It's the perfect ending to the entire Star Wars saga capturing many of its most essential themes in a single scene. Even though the rebellion is decimated at the end of the movie, the final shot is pure optimism. In my interpretation of it, it tells us that empires like the First Order are doomed to fail. So long as they reign there will always be stories about those who resist and those stories will inspire the next generation to rise up against them. It's only a matter of time until freedom is restored. You can imagine the specifics of that eventual victory any way you like. Conjure up a whole movie in your mind. And for me it's more fun than just being angry about what didn't happen. I've got my headcanon ending. What's yours? For more than 40 years, Star Wars has inspired millions of writers to create stories that feel as big and emotional as these movies were. To do that though, you've got to master the basics of writing and according to Daniel Jose Older, those basics are character, conflict, context and craft. If you want to learn how to improve those elements of your writing, then check out his Storytelling 101 course on Skillshare, the sponsor of this episode. Or you can check out the thousands of other classes on Skillshare in fields like creative writing, film production, productivity and more. It's very useful stuff. To give it a shot, click on the link in the description of this video. You'll get two months of Skillshare for free and unlimited access to all of their classes. Thanks for watching everyone and a big thank you to my patrons for supporting this channel on Patreon! Keep writing everyone!
It astounds me that Disney inherited a ten year plan for Marvel and it paid off really well (regardless of what you think about the films, they're very consistent and work as a very long series) and didn't come up with a plan for one of the biggest film franchises ever.
The new trilogy had some interesting aspects but I think Star Wars is maybe just too big and bloated that they're scared to do anything else. "Here's a desert planet that isn't Tattooine! Here's a forest planet that isn't Endor!" Okay, Endor is a moon. The idea of a Sith Cult was cool but then suddenly Palpatine has a huge fleet as did the First Order.
Also the pace of ROS was exhausting.
Say what you will about the prequels but the backstory, actual story and world building was great. It felt galactic and big. The new one feels like a conflict in the Balkans during the 90s.
Just watched it. Lots of painful, "explainer" dialogue, but having just gone thru the production process myself, I'm not ready to lay that at the writers' feet. Most of it felt like producer input.
I'm not a fan of the trilogy. I still feel like Rey was underwritten in her actual desires and goals. I mean, she's presumably 18 and acts like a child throughout. I always imagine her being a "street urchin" hustler type who thinks she has a special swindling ability that turns out to be the force in my little "head cannon" movie.
TLJ works better as a standalone film and as an end to the saga than ROS does. This is just my filmmaking opinion.
There is some good stuff in the new trilogy. There problem is none of the movies do anything with it.
Kylo Ren is the only compelling character. Everyone else is under-developed. But Ren is an inspired character--such a realistic, petulant version of evil--and his dynamic with Rey has a lot of potential. Potential that gets tossed aside again and again. We haven't seen a hero who rejects the light/dark dichotomy. There's got potential. Potential that goes nowhere...
It's not just RoS. This trilogy has been a waste of potential from the get go. Makes me wonder why Disney was so adamant about tossing the EU. At least the EU timeline/plot is coherent.
These movies are just so at odds with each other. The Last Jedi subverts The Force Awakens, and Rise retcons the Last Jedi... it feels like two dogs tugging at the same bone.
Making Rey a palpatine was such a misstep in my opinion. Completely ruined her arc. Like I thought the whole point of Rey being a nobody was that made her a foil to Kylo Ren, a character haunted by his lineage. Making her also have a cool powerful relative is so awful.
The horrible writing in the movies with the largest budgets and most public attention should show you exactly where "being good at writing" will get you. And I hope it wakes you up from your meritocracy fantasy.
All three of them sucked. I just kept waiting for magic and never felt it. It just wasn’t there. They just seemed so painfully and obviously extruded out the ass end of Hollywood wrapped in plastic and ready to turn profits. They simply had no heart.
Still frustrated that the movies never adressed why Ben Solo did turn to the dark side in the first place? Why does he hate his parents so much?