Look, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is not a good movie, and we’re not going to argue that. It just isn’t. This is a movie that clearly had many challenges going into it, and had a central purpose of taking down The Last Jedi whenever and however it could. This is pretty unfortunate, because The Last Jedi is actually a good movie. Today, we’re going to dive deep into ten issues that this movie had with its mess of a plot. Mainly, we’ll be going into underdeveloped plot points. Let’s get into it.
Palpatine
Yeah we’re just going to dive straight into one of the main problems with this movie, Palpatine. Why, why is he here? Sith magic? That seems to be the answer to a lot of weird issues in this movie. Nope, Anakin’s sacrifice actually means nothing, because Palpatine was actually in fact, not dead? Ever? And was behind all of this? The whole time? This cannot be something that was planned from the beginning of this trilogy, because it makes absolutely no sense. It brings up more questions than answers, including… this next point.
Rey’s Lineage
Let’s not dive too far into specifics here, but Palpatine had children. And in order to do that… well, yeah we’re not going to dive too far in here. While that is an issue in its own right, the fact that Rey is a Palpatine completely ruins her arc about finding a new family because her old one abandoned her. This is one of the areas in which TROS seeks to tear down what TLJ seemed to be doing. It’s a solid mix of overcorrecting and two directors clashing on a vision, and Rey as a character is the one who suffers for it.
Leia
From the beginning, The Force Awakens was to be Han’s movie, TLJ was Luke’s and TROS was supposed to be Leia’s. Unfortunately, the passing of Carrie Fisher made this impossible, and the filmmakers did what they could with unused footage of Leia to make her a presence in the film. It… it isn’t great.
The conversations involving Leia feel forced around any dialogue that they have of her. Nothing feels natural. Her most impactful scene, of course, is when she reaches out to Ben using the Force, but you just can’t help but wonder just how different Leia’s role, and the film as a whole, would have been if Carrie Fisher was still around with us today. It would be a largely different movie, that’s for sure. Leia didn’t get a chance to fulfill her real purpose in TROS, and she wasn’t done any justice in the final product.
Zorii Bliss
Oh look, it’s Zorii Bliss, this character that we just made up in order to totally prove that Poe and Finn do NOT have any sort of a romantic relationship because this is Disney and its 2019 and that absolutely won’t be happening. Zorii is one of many characters in the film that doesn’t… need to be there? She serves virtually no purpose in this film except to prove that Poe is 100% straight. What a shame.
Rose
Because The Last Jedi is basically just not even canon at this point, that means that we can’t have any of its characters around in TROS, and that includes Rose. Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose was a great character in TLJ. While she wasn’t 100% needed, she was still enjoyable to watch and a great addition to the universe. In TROS, she is reduced to a backslappin’ pal to Finn and nothing more. She has virtually nothing to do here, which is amazing considering how there is constant plot happening in this film all of the time.
Rey Kills Palpatine
“Once you kill me my energy will flow into you and you’ll become me but also no it doesn’t because your mind is so powerful.” - Palpatine
So, this entire movie was centered on Palpatine’s desire to get Rey to kill him to allow him to transfer his soul into her body. She just kind of goes along with this for a while and listens, as one does, until she doesn’t… and then she does kill him… and none of what he said would happen ends up happening. Yup. Everything sounds good here! Plot is great everything is great. Obviously it’s because she won’t let her dark side influence her but… is it? Is that really how things work?
We can go on for hours about how ridiculous, bad and underserved Ben’s story is in this film, but let’s focus in on his backup dancers for a minute. The Knights of Ren don’t do ANYTHING in this movie. What is their point? Is it to sell more action figures? Well, yes it is… but… ya know, plot relevance. They hold absolutely no significance in this film whatsoever.
Any Sort Of Emotional Hook
Chewie’s dead JUST KIDDING he is absolutely fine. C-3PO won’t remember his friends ever again JUST KIDDING his memory is back and everything is fine. This movie never lets anything stick. Any time that you think there’s about to be some sort of an emotional occurrence or a heavy loss, nope. Everything is fine and will be fixed momentarily, don’t you worry about it. This movie never lets anything happen, even with so much happening constantly. There are 30 MacGuffins but none that matter or cause anything of note to happen.
General Hux
Yup, you guessed it, I’m the spy because me angwy at Kywo Wen. General Hux is treated like absolute garbage in TROS. He’s the spy because he’s like, he’s kind of mad. Shouldn’t we have given Kylo and Hux more than thirty seconds of screentime together before Hux decides to betray him and the entire First Order? Oh, and then make sure Hux dies in the most underwhelming way as possible, to keep the theme of underwhelmingness strong throughout the film.
All Of Its Characters
With so much happening, TROS has no time to serve any of its characters, both old and new. No one gets a chance to go through any sort of a meaningful arc, and if they do, it’s a messy one. No one gets a chance to shine. There’s so many people and so much plot to bog through. TROS doesn’t service what makes the world of Star Wars so compelling, its characters. Without that, you have nothing. TROS has many, many problems, but this is the biggest one.
