As pleased as I
was to learn that my favorite character from the Prequel Trilogy, Palpatine,
was inexplicably returning in some fashion for Episode IX, I couldn’t have
imagined how much this detail would symbolize the most glaring offence in the
entire film. “The dead speak!” the opening crawl mysteriously announces. “No
one’s ever really gone,” promised the teaser trailer, sparking much speculation
and derision. This was an extraordinary example of truth in advertising. The
Rise of Skywalker could be subtitled “The No-Consequences Space
Adventure Movie.” In this film: a character seen dropped into a chasm and
disintegrated in Return of the Jedi is just back as if nothing had
happened; a character seemingly killed in a spaceship explosion is shown to
have survived within minutes; a character stabbed through the gut with a
lightsaber is faith-healed immediately; and another character makes a farewell
speech prior to sacrificing himself for his friends and is literally rebooted
back to normal mere moments later. The problem with all of this is that you can
only invest yourself in a tear-jerking “death” scene and then be told “just
kidding” so many times before you start going dead inside yourself. This lunacy
got to the point where, when characters started dying in the third act, I just
shrugged and said, “Eh, what’s the problem?” All in all, it’s an enjoyable
popcorn movie, but there’s no need to pretend that it comes anywhere close to
the virtue, magic, humanity, and spiritual dimension of the original trilogy.
In fact, the redemption of Darth Vader, the sacrifices of the Rebel Alliance,
and Luke Skywalker’s intention to die along with Vader and the Emperor on the
Death Star are all trivialized in Disney’s Sequel Trilogy, which absorbs the
plots of all six prior films into its own hodgepodge of disposable Hollywood
action movie clichés. The biggest frustration about the whole Star Wars franchise
is the lack of planning. It always appears that they’re starting over from
scratch with each episode, alternately ignoring or retcon-ing whatever was
inconvenient in the previous film. George Lucas was somewhat guilty of this
himself, famously not deciding until The Empire Strikes Back that Vader
and Luke were related, but at least his controversial Prequel Trilogy feels somewhat
cohesive thanks to his certainty about where it was all going. The
Abrams-Johnson trilogy, however, is forever at war with itself, its shameless
plot twists screaming “never mind” to the audience every few scenes. If you’re
confused about anything or starting to get bored, not to worry; within seconds
you’re being whisked off to some new loud fireworks display. One last thing
about Palpatine. He was such an interesting character in the prequels because
he was a mortal human being who happened to be a strategic genius and an
ass-kicking Sith Lord on the side. He wasn’t a supernatural space monster with
a doomsday plot like Thanos from the Avengers movies. That’s what Disney-Abrams
has turned him into, and it’s sad.
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