The Rise of Skywalker does whatever the hell it wants in the moment, largely disregarding reason and delivering an unfulfilling story that leaves more questions than answers in it’s wake. At it’s most superficial level it has impressive visuals and the odd drop of “cool factor” here and there, but they’re unquestionably overshadowed by the mindboggling idiocy of the writing throughout; in the end amounting to something so impressively incompetent it feels like the product of a child mashing together their action figures.

I’ll start by saying I understand how much director J.J. Abrams had on his plate for this film – wrapping up a trilogy, tying up the entire Star Wars saga, and having to clean up after Rian Johnson’s butchering of the franchise in The Last Jedi is a big ask; all the while having to weave in his own creative vision too. However – let’s not forget that he was also the man who kicked off the whole Sequel Trilogy with The Force Awakens; a movie so creatively bankrupt it borders on plagiarism, and truthfully there’s only so much this film could’ve done to fix things at the eleventh hour. So, if the Disney era of Star Wars has taught me anything, it’s to keep my expectations tempered, yet it was after the whole 2 hour and 22 minute ordeal tonight, while my screening had erupted into booing and groans of disappointment, I realised this had made Episode VIII a gem by comparison.

Spoilers ahead!

Eventually we reach the long-awaited climax, as Rey and Kylo confront Palpatine, and the rest of the characters get into a big old battle centred around the not-Death Star spaceships. The battle itself is no more intelligent than the rest of the film – it hinges on the destruction of some bullshit machine that the ships need to… know which way is up? Only, we learn that there is not one, but two whole bullshit machines that need to be destroyed, which may prove too difficult for our heroes – that is until thousands more ships show up to fight in one of the biggest cases of Deus Ex Machina I’ve ever seen put to screen. Palpatine’s power play is revealed to be that by having Rey kill him, his spirit can pass into her, which will help him because… because it just will, okay! Rey’s brilliant solution for this problem? She kills him – and nothing happens! The film is bad enough already, but this? I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, let alone how this passed through the hands of dozens of people at the head of a multi-billion dollar entertainment company without challenge. Before I even had time to recover from the stupor that this sequence had put me in, the rebels had knocked off the not-Death Star fleet and fucked off home to have a big old party, which included an elderly Lando Calrissian creeping on a young woman, and the film’s much-touted “LGBT representation scene” – a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment between two background characters that I’m sure won’t be removed for foreign audiences. Just like that, Star Wars was over, and before I even gave it some serious thought, I knew that the depressing indifference I felt about it was not a good sign.

Now, if you thought the plot sounded bad, I’m sorry to say that the film’s characters – if you can even call them that – fare no better. Sparing one, maybe two, Rise of Skywalker sorely lacks any character arcs, let alone decent ones. Now, that’s not to say I’m disregarding the existence of static characters – no dear reader, it’s much, much worse – this movie gives its characters subplots, and doesn’t bother to finish them. Throughout the film, ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) desperately tries to tell Rey something, and what that is? YOU NEVER FIND OUT! I honestly cannot recall seeing a film that includes a plot point it doesn’t intend on doing anything with, especially considering this is the supposed final instalment of both a trilogy and an entire movie saga. On top of this, there seems to be shreds of three different romantic interests for Finn, none of which even go anywhere, and it just builds the impression that this film was stitched together from the butchered remains of multiple scripts and countless reshoots. However, it’s our main protagonist Rey who’s character development in this film is perhaps the most ludicrous – after two movies leading you along with the truth of her lineage and identity, Rise of Skywalker meekly offers up its best answer to that question with her being the granddaughter of Palpatine himself! which causes her to have some sort of identity crisis about the possibility of her turning evil, That’s thrown out the window too as the ultimate conclusion to her character arc sees her claiming the Skywalker name for herself, after being inadvertently responsible for the deaths of every other Skywalker in this film trilogy.

That revelation might lead you to forget that Rey isn’t actually the psychotic villain of this film, and there are other antagonists to contend with as well. Chief among them is Kylo Ren, who despite having an interesting tilt to him during The Last Jedi, largely spends this film doing Palpatine’s legwork before being swept into the most uninspired and emotionless redemption arc I think I’ve ever seen. After being mortally wounded and healed by Rey, Kylo sort of just… decides to be good, talks to a hallucination of Han Solo (likely as an excuse to squeeze one last cameo role out of Harrison Ford), chucks his lightsaber away and fucks off until the climax of the film. There he fights his former compatriots amongst the Knights of Ren – still with no exploration of who or what these people are – before literally being tossed down a hole until he comes back and heals Rey in return at the end. For some reason, this also kills him. Why this is the case, when Rey was perfectly fine to heal Kylo – I have no bloody clue – but it sure doesn’t help the image of Rey being an infallible Mary-Sue-like character forcefully pushed by Lucasfilm’s female leadership as some sort of insane self-insert project. Another character that meets an unsatisfying end is Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux, who is now… a spy for the Resistance… because he… because he doesn’t like Kylo Ren. That’s right – the guy who gave a speech so vitriolic it would make Hitler blush gives up everything he believes in over a little workplace feud. Thankfully his death is just as insane and unintentionally hilarious as his characterisation, as he’s blasted into the sweet embrace of death by Richard E. Grant’s General Pryde, and truthfully by this point I was hoping for the same.

By this point, the Sequel Trilogy’s handling of legacy characters has left much to be desired, and The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t exactly fare any better in this regard. Following Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing in 2016, the question remained as to how the final film in the trilogy would handle her absence and the character of Princess Leia, and in their infinite wisdom, Lucasfilm and Disney found the most disturbing way possible. With a combination of CGI, body doubles and cut footage from the previous two films, Fisher is resurrected as some unnerving phantom with an obvious lack of presence on the screen, only to be killed off later in the film anyway; finally achieving modern Lucasfilm’s mission to kill off the original heroes of Star Wars in the most disrespectful way possible. I do have to commend Abrams for trying to remedy the catastrophe that was Luke Skywalker’s characterisation in The Last Jedi, but a couple neat lines of dialogue and yet another moment plagiarised from the Original Trilogy isn’t enough to undo the damage wrought by Episode VIII. The film also sees the return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, who for most of his short time on-screen totters around looking aloof, with the rare glint in his eyes that could either be a faint attempt to revive Calrissian’s debonair personality, or simply just Williams thinking about how enormous the paycheck he received for this role would be. Last to round out the endless parade of nostalgia-soliciting characters is Emperor Palpatine, who’s return seemed like a last ditch effort to secure the viewership of younger fans given an uptick in goodwill towards the Prequel Trilogy, but ultimately ends up being a disrespectful caricature of a once-great villain, and spits in the face of George Lucas’ entire saga of films by reneging on the end of Return of the Jedi.

As much as the writing was firmly in the range of forgettably bland to downright infuriating, I must also give credit where credit is due in terms of the talent that The Rise of Skywalker brings to bear in it’s visuals, design and cinematography. From the get-go the film stuns with its elaborate sets and CGI-constructed environments, and while some areas like Pasaana and Exegol could feel a little bit monochromatic, generally it felt like there was a good range of diverse and interesting locales throughout the story, making it perhaps the most visually impressive Star Wars film to date. Plenty of interesting aliens make their debut in the film too, from the strange slug-like Klaud to the adorably funny Babu Frik, it’s clear that at least in some areas there was passion behind the production, with exceptional work in the costuming, makeup and puppetry. New designs such as the striking red armour of the Sith Troopers and Sovereign Protectors also help to set aside the mass of white plastic that has become custom for many of this trilogy’s battles, and in general the aesthetic of the Sith Eternal faction felt refreshing for the antagonist’s side of things. As much as some people may dislike it, I have always been quite enamoured with the fight choreography of the Sequel films, with a distinct weight and brutality to them as compared to the calm, measured duels of the Originals and the acrobatic combat extravaganzas of the Prequels, and it continues as such here, making at least the lightsaber duels somewhat enjoyable to watch. As always, John Williams’ score only serves to bolster what little this movie has to offer, and even if it might not be as inspired as the sound of the Original or Prequel trilogies, it was a tad bit nice to hear reprisals of older themes incorporated into this film too.

So, after the whole two-and-a-half hour ordeal, the Sequel Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga were finally over. In the place of the epic, high stakes, galaxy changing conclusion this franchise needed, we got a film that ignores almost everything that came before it, doesn’t fit in with its own trilogy, walks back on all of it’s dramatic decisions, and is rammed full of stupid creative choices. Any redeeming qualities it does have, you can count on one hand, and they’re certainly not enough to salvage this trainwreck of a script. It’s a mystery to me how this was even allowed to be made, to the point where I have to wonder if this could even have been born out of malice, or some masochistic desire on the part of the studio to see just how bad of a movie they could make, and watch as Star Wars fans were helplessly suckered up by it anyway. Nevertheless, after eleven film instalments, and God knows how much expanded universe content, The Rise of Skywalker drags the Star Wars saga over the finish line; limp, lifeless, and finally bled dry of all the goodwill and magic of George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away.

2/10