The Problems With Episode 9, Part 2

Act 2

Now off to Kajimi, which was another part of the movie I had no issue with. I enjoyed seeing the First order terrorize the town to make them seem more threatening. More good trio banter.  “Poe Dameron, spice runner. Runner of spice.“) I even liked Zorri Bliss, who I thought would be a giant waste of time. She had good chemistry with Poe in their short time together, and she provided some comic relief with him. And her smoky eye make up look really great underneath that helmet. Good use of an eye pencil for a two second shot. Babu Frik is absolutely adorable. 

Due to the previews, I was convinced I would be a sobbing mess when 3-PO gets his mind wiped. I cried every time I saw 3-PO saying he’s taking one last look at his friends. I’m sure a huge part of that is the wonderful under scoring and the shock of seeing it for the first few times. But in the actual movie? Because of Babu Frik’s adorable babbling, the scene is played almost more as a comedy than something sad. Not how I would’ve played it. No tears shed for me, and I cry at most things. 

Next up – a daring rescue from the Star Destroyer when the trio finds out Chewie is still alive. Another overall positive sequence. The stormtroopers Rey was able to brainwash were pretty funny. The Rey/Kylo duel that took place in two locations was beautifully edited. 

But then the entire thing fell apart at the seams. It went from my thinking “this couldn’t get worse“ to what Harrison Ford said in a trash compactor that one time – “It’s worse.“ Kylo comes back to the Star Destroyer and delivers the news of Rey’s lineage to her – she is Palpatine‘s granddaughter.

What?! WHAT?! How on any planet does this make any sense? Spoiler alert for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which I also hated – but this felt an awful lot like the big reveal in that, the one where Voldemort had a daughter. That didn’t make a lick of sense either, but at least you could understand Bellatrix as the girl’s mother. Who the holy hell was Palpatine banging? If you do the math, his son would probably have had to be born around the time of Episode Three. So his son’s mother should’ve been visible somewhere. But Palpatine exudes no sexuality ever, and there’s no one I could even identify as a potential partner for him. So randomly he just had a kid who had a kid? This is another major fan fiction moment for me. Why did Ray have to be related to someone powerful? It takes away her agency and her own power. This is not an “I am your father“ moment. This is a cheap rip off. Because of Palpatine’s allusion to this in the beginning of the movie, I was pretty cautious up to this point. This is where I bowed out. This is where this ended for me.

Meanwhile, Poe and Finn get caught after rescuing Chewbacca. Their execution is ordered, but they are saved by… General Hux?! Prior to this, General Hux had only been present in one scene. There was some minor confrontation, and when I say minor, I mean super minor and joking, between him and Ren, and then he saves the heroes. He loudly and bluntly pronounces, “I’m the spy!“ Yup. What a well written line. Soon afterwards, he informs Finn that he is only a spy because he wants Kylo Ren to lose.

I get it. I get that he and Kylo hate each other. That much has been super obvious in the last two movies. But wouldn’t have been more interesting if Kylo had been actually in charge of the First Order but was constantly distracted by his obsession with Rey, and then Hux had to confidently lead the First Order and snatch control out from under Ren when he was off searching for the scavenger? And then there was more tension between the two? Instead, he reports that the prisoners have escaped to some new guy no one gives a crap about, General Pryde, another god-awful name. Pryde sees right through Hux and blows him away. Another waste of an interesting character! I feel so bad for Domnhall Gleeson. What did he have, three lines in this movie? After being built up as a pretty evil dude? And Kylo doesn’t even get to kill him? He doesn’t even get to be present in the final battle between the Resistance and the First Order? This was another move that felt sudden and cheap and disappointing.

So the heroes escape (again) and go to Endor, which is where the Sith dagger tells them the next Sith triangle can be found. There’s a really dumb sequence where there’s a piece that pulls out of the dagger and Rey lines it up with the remains of the second Death Star, and the pattern on the dagger lines up with where the Sith triangle is? 

So even though the Sith are thousands of years in the making, this dagger has probably only been around for 30 or so years, and Palpatine brought a Sith triangle onto the death star with him and then made the dagger look like the remains of the Death Star? If he knew the Death Star was going to blow up, why was he on it? How did he know exactly what the remains would look like? Why wasn’t the Sith triangle hiding on somewhere that makes sense, like Coruscant? Like in his throne room that was made out of the remains of the Jedi Temple? Or maybe he had the Sith triangle brought to him after he was resurrected? And Ochi was hiding the Sith triangle, not looking for it? 

Oh, I know what the answer is. The Force. The end. (That’s not how the Force works!)

There’s another good scene here where Finn bonds with Jannah, a new character who is also a former stormtrooper. She tells this really great story of how her entire battalion laid down their weapons rather than kill civilians at some battle, and they all ran away to Endor. Finn implies that the Force helped them come together in a group mentality, which is a really interesting concept. A bunch of stormtroopers who probably should’ve been trained as Jedi instead? There’s some potential for a follow up here. I would have enjoyed more time with Jannah than we got.

Rey travels to the Death Star remains and uses her scavenger jumping powers to get to the place where the Sith triangle is just floating in thin air. Then she has a Force vision of herself as a Sith, with perfectly porcelain skin, a badass double bladed swinging lightsaber, and pointy teeth. After she duels herself, Ren shows up and crushes the Sith triangle, telling her she’ll never get to Exegol without him. 

Now ensues an attempt at an epic lightsaber battle between these two that felt devoid of any emotion. I’ve felt this since the prequels - when there’s too much going on in the background - literally, like there’s spewing lava or crashing waves - it serves as a distraction to the duel. A good duel should be clashing sabers and emotions. Rey showed a little anger, but I wasn’t sure what Kylo was feeling. And by this point, I felt these two should be teaming up. They both want to kill the Emperor, albeit for different reasons, but there’s not much reason for Rey to be angry with Ren. Yes, he destroyed her triangle, but wouldn’t they also stand a better chance at defeating the Emperor together? And then Rey could still refuse to turn evil after that... it was just lack of logic. I had no real idea why they were fighting. 

After jumping through some waves and pushing Finn backwards, Rey actually kills Kylo. Stabs him right in the gut. Granted, Leia helped by reaching out with the Force and distracting her son. And then dropping dead. All she did was say, “Ben,” across the miles, and it immediately killed her. And him. I was pretty shocked at this as the movie was only halfway over. But then, drawing on the power established with the giant snake earlier, Rey healed Kylo’s wound and brought him back to life. Because of their previously established bond, I absolutely would have bought this without the snake scene. (Plus Baby Yoda just did it on The Mandalorian the day before the movie’s release, sooooooo...)

Presumably horrified by actually killing someone, Rey hops in Kylo’s TIE fighter and flies away. Ben stands up, and we hear the voice of Harrison Ford say from behind him, “Hey, kid.” He turns around, and there’s daddy Han Solo. Okay. This was pretty bad fan service, but I did love it, probably more because Ford maintained for years he never wanted to do another Star Wars and still came back in the end. There was something heartwarming about him returning to a franchise that really launched his career for its ending.

Of course, had princess Carrie still been with us, this probably would’ve been her showing up as a Force projection. In fact, Leia’s death seemed a bit abrupt - one word did it? That didn’t take much. However, if they had saved her death for after Ben’s vision of Han, it would have looked like Leia was able to trigger this vision. This would’ve made more sense, particularly as Ren showed soft spots for his mother in episode eight, but he never showed much remorse for killing his father. So why would he be feeling that now? 

There was a lot of depiction of Ren’s back-and-forth nature in episodes seven and eight, but in nine he only seemed hell-bent on ruling the galaxy. The tortured soul element wasn’t present, so this vision of Han and his immediate turn to the light was extremely abrupt. He and Han have the same conversation they had in The Force Awakens, another clear example of the writers thinking they’re being clever by reusing dialogue but really just being immature. Then Ben throws his lightsaber into the choppy ocean, which is kind of a dumb move when you figure he’s still going to try to take on the Emperor. What weapon is he going to use? Why couldn’t he just use his lightsaber no matter what color it was? 

Although I did like the fan servicey line where Han cuts Ben off with an “I know,“ anticipating his I love you without having to say it. A lot of things in this movie didn’t need to be said but were – this was a nice touch.

Rey now shows up on Ahch-to, presumably so afraid of herself that she wants to go into exile rather than destroy the ultimate evil in the galaxy. Force ghost Luke shows up to chat some sense back into her, and we find out that he and Leia have known who Rey was this whole time. (How? Whatever.) Luke describes that Rey must confront her fear, and she goes along with it. Then Luke gifts Rey Leia’s lightsaber, which she gave up on her last night of Jedi training after having a vision of her son’s death. (Oh, so she’s basically been a fully fledged Jedi this entire time? That’s why she could train Rey? OK. Glad we didn’t know that until 2/3 of the way through the movie.) When Rey wonders what ship she can use to leave seeing as she burned Ren’s, Luke pulls some more fans service out of the ocean in the form of his X Wing. No more trying here, folks. He has done. Not done not. This was again a bit much for me. Like, “Hey, remember that big thing I couldn’t do before? Well now, even though I’m dead, I can do it! Yay for me! Clearly everyone can see that my character has now come full circle. That’s what it took. Lifting a ship. Not the end of the last movie where I realized I was wrong and came back to save the Resistance, sacrificing myself while using a super awesome new Force power. No. That wasn’t it. Lifting rocks.“

Ray collects the Sith triangle from the wreckage of Ben’s ship and takes off in the X Wing. Back on the rebel base, our two is able to detect the signal of the X Wing, thus allowing the rebel fleet to follow her to Exegol. 

Hey, by the way, there’s another droid in this movie that I haven’t talked about because that’s how much of a point he serves. D-0 is really cute, but he just says words in English to tell you the emotions you’re supposed to be feeling at any given time. He almost had a purpose here, as he apparently knew where Exegol was. But once R2 could pick up on raise signal, they didn’t need him anymore. Yeah seems like an excuse for JJ to guest star in his own movie.