The Problems With Episode 9, Part 3

Act 3

So emotionless point number one of the last act of this movie: the space battle. The biggest problem for me here was there was no one left in the First Order that I cared about. No feeling of jubilation lurked in the inevitable defeat of the baddies because there was no one left there I was invested in anymore. Had Hux been at the helm, I would have been excited to see him fall. (Or Phasma! Where was the chrome trooper in all this? I heard JJ was mad she was killed off in 8 because he wanted to use her again, but that “death” was pretty ambiguous. It would have been so easy to bring her back! You brought back the Emperor for fuck’s sake!) But Pryde? Meh. Whatever. 

The ground crew launching an assault on top of a star destroyer was pretty freaking awesome. Again, I needed more of Jannah. More badass women of color in the galaxy, please and thank you! I would’ve liked to have seen more of her relationship with Finn, and she trusts him so much at the end to stay with him and march towards their untimely death. Other than one previous conversation, there was no reason they should be this connected. I wanted one! 

Oh, right. The Force again. Of course. 

So Rey finally meets Palpatine, and he reveals that he’s never wanted to kill her. The spirits of every Sith ever live in him (why? How? Because this is the last movie and that sounds appropriately epic? Okay.), and he wants her to kill him so these spirits all transfer to her, and she can rule the galaxy as Empress Palpatine. 

Wait a minute. If he’s still alive, why doesn’t he want to rule? He’s always proven to be one hell of a selfish mofo. Is he more of a reanimated corpse than he would have us believe? Come on, throw us a line here about how he can’t keep up with the decay his body is going through. Just a throwaway line would have explained this better! We had enough pointless throwaway lines in this movie, how about one that means something?

Rey resists, but when the Emperor explains how her friends will lose if she doesn’t claim her birthright, she concedes. In one of my least favorite lines in the movie, the Emperor cries, “Begin the ritual!“ He then narrates the steps of the “ritual,“ which is just Rey killing him with a lightsaber. Nothing ritualistic about that. Other than the weird black robes servants surrounding them in some kind of stadium seating. I mean, what were these - the servants that worked to keep the Emperor alive? Were they the Sith of the past? Does it even matter anymore at this point?

Meanwhile, Ben parks a TIE fighter (where did he get this TIE? Maybe it was left on the Death Star ruins, but we’re left to do mental gymnastics to figure that out) next to Rey’s X Wing - we get a lingering shot of the two opposing ships parked next to each other in another example of beat you over the head symbolism. Ben drops down into the Emperor’s lair only to be confronted by the dreaded Knights of Ren. They have somehow gotten the memo that Ben is no longer Ren, and they attack. See Ben? Told you you should’ve still had your lightsaber with you. 

But then, in a cool dramatic turn, using their Force connection, Rey is able to pass Ben the lightsaber she’s been using up until now – Luke’s. Ben uses it to defeat the Knights of Ren and joins Rey to confront Palpatine. 

Palpatine brings up that force dyad thing again and says their bond is as strong as its own life force, something that hasn’t been seen for generations. But that’s as much info as we get about what could have been the most interesting part of this new saga. Then a reanimated corpse zombie dude is able to suck this incredibly powerful force out of the duo and sort of almost kill them. But after it appears the two are dead for a while, Ben opens his eyes and stands up, only to be blasted down a pit by the emperor. Then Rey cracks her eyes open, rolls over, looks to the sky, and asks the spirit of all the Jedi of the past to be with her. (She did this in meditation at the beginning of the movie as well, and it didn’t work. So I guess this is supposed to be a full circle moment that feels more clumsy than clever.) It’s cool that she hears the voices of so many Jedi of the past here, like Anakin and Qui-Gon and even Ahsoka Tano and Kanaan Jarus. Probably would’ve been more fun if she had seen some actual Force ghosts though. With the strength of her new dead friends, Rey stands up and faces the Emperor with Leia‘s lightsaber. The Emperor throws some force lightning at her that she is able to deflect with the blades. He nearly overpowers her while screaming, “I am all the Sith!“ And then in another of my least favorite lines in the movie, Rey says back, “And I am all the Jedi.“ This should have felt epic and kick ass, but it fell flat for me, and I can’t put my finger on why. Although my husband pointed out how much more awesome it would’ve been if Rey could have said, “And I am nobody.“ Oh yeah. That would’ve given me chills.

Using two sabers to deflect the Emperor’s force lightning back at him, she burns the skin off his face. He dies, and the huge underground layer begins collapsing in on itself. Rey falls down, apparently dead, I guess because she wasn’t really fit to channel all that energy. I took issue with this. Again, she and Ben were supposed to be some kind of crazy powerful force that hadn’t been seen in generations, so why wouldn’t they have been able to overcome the Emperor? In the last two movies, we’ve seen both Rey and Ben do crazy things with the Force, way more than Palpatine was ever seen doing. I did not think his death should have also resulted in their’s. I guess the Dark side really is stronger? What a message to send us home with.

But then, close up on the pit Ben fell down and his hand rising up. (Oh, was this the actual rise of Skywalker?) then stumbles over to Rey and cradles her in his arms. As she healed him earlier, he now uses some of his life force to heal her. She opens her eyes, sits up, and looks deeply into his eyes. “Ben,” she whispers.

No, no, no, I found myself chanting internally. Please don’t do this.

But they did. Rey leans forward and kisses Ben, a guy she doesn’t even really know. She’s only known him as Kylo, someone who treated her like absolute garbage for the last two movies, torturing her mentally and physically. If I hadn’t already written this movie off, this would have been the moment. The second time we saw it, there was an eight-year-old boy sitting diagonally in front of me. In the lead up to the act, he started chanting, “Kiss, kiss, kiss!“ So that’s who this was for. Eight-year-olds. I mean, I am the first to constantly remind people that Star Wars is a kids’ movie at heart, but it’s always been a kids’ movie that could transcend its genre. A movie that could be enjoyed by people of all ages. You shouldn’t just cater to kids and give them crap because they don’t care about quality as much as older viewers.

When the kiss ends, Ben looks at Rey with a big grin on his face – and then dies. Again, not sure why. He had had his redemption arc, which in my book should mean he should be able to walk out of this. After doing some soul-searching, I guess when the Emperor sucked the life out of Ben and Rey the first time, he actually sucked out their dyad bond. So when Ben gave Rey his life force at the end, their strength had diminished to that of normal Jedi. Even though that doesn’t really work for me. I had to justify it somehow.

Anyway, now all the bad guys are defeated and everyone regroups at the rebel base camp for hugs and dancing. It was clear that Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley‘s tears were genuine in their final hug. Again, I felt like something was missing though. It might’ve been a sweeping, grand anthem from John Williams. The music kind of petered out here and wasn’t as dramatic as it could have been.

The screen fades to black, but it fades back in to Rey on Tatooine at Lars’ Homestead. She pokes around a little before taking Luke and Leia‘s lightsabers and burying them on the property. I wondered at this point if she was giving up the force entirely, until she took out her stunningly beautiful leather wrapped saber and switched it on, revealing a glowing yellow orange blade. 

The star of these movies? Clearly the two new saber designs. I can’t wait to own replicas of these!

Then an old woman happens by and asks Rey her name. When Rey gives only her first name, the woman asks, “Rey what?“

Rey looks into the distance and sees the force ghosts of Luke and Leia smiling at her. She turns back to the woman and says, “Rey Skywalker.” UGH. Ueah, I get it, they were like parents to you. It just again felt very blunt.

The movie ends with Rey and BB-8 staring into the twin sunned distance as Binary Sunset Blairs over the speakers. A great piece of music, and a nice shot to end, but not enough to make up for the gigantic mess I had just sat through.

Other random notes: 

More than once in the movie, and one of the characters said, “we go together.” Every time, in my head I saying, “like Ramalama Lama kading a dading a dong.”

JJ must really love holochess, since this is the second time in two movies he has included it. At least this appearance of it was done better than the first.

Maz Kanata is a really intriguing character. I wanted more of her after the force awakens, but in this movie she was just thrown in for no apparent reason. How she knew things where you had to do with the force? I don’t know. Why did you never explain why she had Luke’s white saver? And why in the holy hell did she give chewy cons metal at the end? That was a big giant look at the audience and wink moment. “Hey! Here’s some thing little fan boys have been complaining about for 42 years! Let’s make it right completely inorganically and take everyone out of the scene while we are doing it!“

The characters were basically murdered in this movie. I guess Finn seemed to have settled in with being a full resistance guy. But he had no real plot here, other than alluding to Force sensitivity. Poe was more of a curmudgeon than ever before, I guess because no one came to help at the Battle of Craig, even though at the end of that there were heat members in the resistance, and at the beginning of this they have way more than eight. Rey just… I don’t even know. She vacillates so much, doing whatever the plot demands. There’s not much motivation for her character, but I guess there wasn’t much plot either. I really liked these three characters, and I didn’t know what was going on with them at the end. They felt flat, static, unchanging. It felt like the end of Revenge of the Sith, where things happened just because you knew they had to. There was very little motivation for any character to do anything in that movie other than, “Well, Darth Vader has to be evil by the end of this, so let’s have him kill a bunch of kids!“

I wish there was more. I wish this story wasn’t over. I wish somebody would get on TV and declare, “April fools!” And in another year, they would release the real episode nine that wasn’t some lazy piece of dumpster fire trash. I can’t believe how many people I’ve spoken to who claim to enjoy this movie at this point. I wonder if time will dull that for anyone.

It could just be that my expectations were so high. A lot of people I’ve spoken to have said, “Well, you can’t please everyone.“ I’m not saying you can, and I wasn’t expecting a perfect movie, but I felt like this was just… Beyond what I could have not hoped for.

It could also be that my husband and I have seen episode seven and eight probably more than most people. I had just realized this week that I love them as much as the original trilogy, as blasphemous as that may sound. And you know what mRreturn of the Jedi did? It ended a trilogy well. So sue me for hoping The Rise of Skywalker would do the same. I must be such a horrible person for wanting something satisfying, for not wanting to settle for this trash.

Thank God for The Mandalorian and the promise of a visit to Galaxy’s Edge.