Here we are, back again, dusting the cobwebs off of this old blog to review the latest Star Wars movie. I'm afraid that this time around, I won't have such an overwhelming heap of punishment to dish out as with my last review, which was so full of piss and vitriol that it nearly derailed the entire Star Wars franchise and sent high-level Disney executives plummeting out of their penthouse suites screaming "God forgive me!!!" into the night sky. (Ok, that didn't actually happen, but if you want to read it, it's here. ) However, I do intend to review Episode IX, and then launch into a tirade about what's wrong with everything about entertainment today, so if you can handle a measured, even-keeled few paragraphs, we may see some fireworks later on.
I liked Episode IX exactly as much as I expected to. JJ Abrams is remarkably consistent with creating C+ sci-fi franchise additions that combine the promise of nostalgia and moments of true brilliance with scene after scene of excessive bloat that add nothing to the films but time. To start on an up-note with some of those brilliant moments, I can say that the first scenes of the movie comprised the most badass cold open in the history of the franchise. I was 100% here for it as Kylo Ren descended into what was absolutely the purest vision of what the secret ancestral planet of the Sith should be. In fact, everything about the Emperor from a visual standpoint was done perfectly, and as Ian McDiarmid carried the good parts of the prequels, so he does here again.
Rey becomes more of a three-dimensional character in this one. Both she and Adam Driver give very good performances, their handy mind-swapping ability serving as a vehicle for the closest thing we get to genuine character development with any degree of emotional complexity. The battles between these two, whether mental, light-sabered, or force powered, make for the more interesting scenes in the film, and often left me feeling annoyed with the classic screen wipe as it cut to something going on elsewhere.
Additionally, the C3PO-getting-memory-wiped gag went from being sad to entertaining really quickly, and I was delightfully surprised with that. When he says "Babu Frik, one of my oldest friends!"... well, I really loled at that cheeseball. I'm glad they were able to make C3PO's comic relief actually funny for the first time in many films. And finally, I believe this film is a visual success. I like how JJ peppers in the relics of the "old wars" and makes them into set pieces. The second Death Star floating in the ocean is really cool, and makes for some good old lightsaber battlin' terrain.
That all said, when this movie was over, I felt a little overwhelmed, and more than a little sad. After all, this is Episode IX, the finale that had been promised to me in my childhood by the knowing whispers of comic book store owners; those arcane keepers of all pre-Internet science fiction wisdom! The end of Star Wars! Well, the end of what we used to know as Star Wars, but what has now been relabeled by those robust, forward-thinking corporate creatives as "The Skywalker Saga", for, in our foolish youth, we may have thought that it was possible for Star Wars to ever be over. And so for this grand finale, for this trilogy of trilogies, what have we seen?
Nothing different, really. I mean, Rey models herself after Luke, Kylo Ren after Vader. The Emperor, the Ultimate Evil (although admittedly, astoundingly so as a techno-lich) beckons the Jedi to slay him and take his place upon threat of the death of her friends, and the Sith apprentice receives redemption as he sacrifices himself. All the beats remain the same, and the narrative crosses the bridge from homage to reenactment so completely that one wonders if we are watching a sequel or a remake.
Episode IX, like VIII before, suffers from MacGuffin fever. The characters must get the thing that leads to the other thing, which will lead them to the place. It's fine, I mean, that's one way to do it. The issue is that the MacGuffins, these supposed objects of ultimate necessity, continually vacillate between being supremely important and not important at all. For example, with the 'Sith d4 of Exogol Finding', one is found by Kylo Ren, then another by Rey. The second is destroyed by Ren, and then later we are made to believe that the first is destroyed when Rey torches Ren's tie fighter. It isn't, of course, as later they just reach back into the hulk of the burnt-out tie fighter, dust the thing off, and plug it back in to have it function perfectly. Whew, what a close call! Almost thought the characters' choices had meaning!
The whole final trilogy is just filthy with this kind of thing if you really pay attention. Take the example of Luke's lightsaber over the course of the three movies: Initially, Rey finds Luke's lightsaber. Rey later gives the lightsaber to Luke. Luke throws it away. Rey recovers it. Rey says she's not worthy and gives the lightsaber to Leia. Later on, Leia says that she is worthy and gives it back to Rey. Rey goes to Ahch-To and chucks the lightsaber like her hero, Luke. Ghost Luke catches it and gives it back to her. Then finally, Rey goes to the moisture farm on Tatooine to bury both Luke and Leia's lightsabers, which is sentimental only to the audience considering the facts that Luke hated that place and also it was the scene of his Aunt and Uncle's gruesome murder, and Leia had never even been there at all. I'm not really sure what's going on with this constant elevation of objects to the point where they simultaneously drive the story and ignore all consequences from the action of said story. Maybe it's like a weird fan-service thing. But whatever it is, I did find it tiring.
Moving on, I still find both Finn and Poe pretty lackluster despite some attempts at adding character backstories. Sure, Poe may have stolen something in the past and dated the Helmet & Tights lady, but it seems like the point of both of these characters is to do battles and loudly yell what's happening in the scene to each other at every opportunity. ("The stormtroopers fly now!" "Are you doing the lightspeed skipping?" "I'm doing the lightspeed skipping!" "You can't do the lightspeed skipping!" etc, etc). The attempts at giving these two a sense of camaraderie generally falls flat and makes me feel like I'm in a freshman dorm room watching a softboy undergrad play Mario Kart with his fuckboy roommate. The novelty of the Star Wars universe's first bromance sort of wore off for me after Episode VII, so whenever these jokers are on screen together, I was really just waiting for it to cut back to whatever was going on with Rey.
I'm not going to spend too much time picking apart plot holes or addressing sequel power-creep. I'm not really bothered by new force powers, the fact that every star destroyer is a death star except shooting the gun blows it up instantly, or that it was somehow an efficient use of the Emperor's time to literally create a Sith lord in a test tube that was more powerful than the force-users he was trying to recruit in order to build a fleet one ten-thousandth of the size of the one he already had just to use it as a bargaining chip to temp Kylo Ren. Or to test his moxie. I'm not really sure which angle he was going for since he uses the classic "throw 'em down a pit" maneuver the second Kylo rejects him, which seems like a cavalier waste of resources for a guy who's been planning this for fifty years. But I digress, because I think we've all gotten used to every character in this trilogy pulling a complete 360 several times over.
I think my real issue with the movie is a little bit more intangible. It just feels kind of lonely, sort of like I'm watching Return of the Jedi in a dream or something and all the plot points are there, but everything is unfamiliar and just a little bit off. The trilogy in general feels less like Star Wars than either of the spinoff movies, which seems difficult to achieve considering it was engineered to be Star Wars in the most authentic and literal way.
The new generation of main characters is here to take us through this iteration of the time loop while the old familiar ones transcend death (both narratively and literally) to watch over them, phasing in and out of the screenplay like wistful spirits haunting the house they inhabited in life. We're reminded by the briefness of their token appearances that this isn't their story anymore, though one may wonder after all is said and done why the fuck not. That indeed, if it might not have been better to gather up the old crew, gray hair and all - Expendables style - for one last big ride instead of martyring them each in turn so that the new, less interesting heroes can win the day. In the now traditional '3rd movie victory party' scene, Finn, Poe and Rey dance around in a joyful embrace while Chewie, R2, and C3PO stand there and watch them like pets whose original owners have all died, trying to take some joy in their strange new environment. In the end, all we're left with of the old gang is the support crew and the comic relief, which in some way is more sad than if they weren't there at all.
In a way, even the Emperor's story is sad from an audience perspective. He is the one constant - he's been there with us all along, weaving his webs throughout every movie, both good and bad, across the decades. And here he is at the last, having outlived all of his apprentices and his enemies, begging his granddaughter and the grandson of his last apprentice to kill him. Though surely a character of such pure, unmitigated evil would be unmoved by the tragedy in this, I couldn't help but find these circumstances even darker than the actual action of the film's climax.
I'm sure a lot of this is just me. All three movies had the arduous tasks of creating a new ending to a 40 year old franchise, simultaneously appealing to adults, children, and the Internet (if such an endeavor is even possible), and providing fresh feed for the marketing engine. (I don't imagine Old Han, Fat Luke, and Granny Leia are exciting enough for an action figure line on their own.) Surely the subtle plays on nostalgia are lost on the 11-year-olds of today, much like the cheesiness of the Ewoks were not apparent to me until a long-delayed adulthood rewatch. So take this with a grain of salt.
However, it is much harder for me to suspend my disbelief and be immersed in the world these days. For one thing, we just know too much. We know that whatever George Lucas had planned for the third trilogy was vetoed, for better or worse, and that what we got was a fast-tracked, controversy-embroiled series of films that juggled writers and directors with constant press coverage and tight deadlines. Believe me, I have no love for the prequel trilogy (though a soft spot for III), but I can say that it told both a complete (if byzantine) socio-political narrative as well as a character arc that was wholly different than what came before. The sequels, on the other hand, feel more like a made-to-order product (a McTrilogy, if you will); a game of narrative hot-potato, or a reboot that hot-swaps the characters, locales, and items of interest on otherwise well-tread territory.
To expand on this point, I'll quote critic Nick Pinkerton from his appearance on the Red Scare podcast, which is as far as you can get from a pop culture podcast and therefore in a great position to offer insight:
I could give two fucks less about, like, the Star Wars universe, but I mean, say of it what you will, it was the actual product of a person with particular predilections and interests. But I think there was something of a collective sigh of relief when it had been handed over to a safe, corporate entity who was going to lovingly make certain that nothing like, the ... I don't know, Attack of the Clones ever happened again, that we wouldn't get anything like these somewhat disappointing (in some people's eyes), soggy prequels, and that only the best and most efficient and most streamlined entertainment would prevail from there on in the Star Wars world. It's chilling. Certainly it's one thing to have The Suits pursuing and leveraging for whatever power that they can get, but to have a contingent of fans, so called, who are absolutely excited...
I confess that I was in the same category of fans at the time. But a few scant years later, the cracks are beginning to show. For one thing, the stakes are so much lower now. If Episode IX feels hollow and derivative, well, no worries - there will be dozens more movies and hundreds of hours of TV shows on Disney+. The Star Wars Universe will expand for a thousand years, and our children's children's children will have no more emotional attachment to Luke Skywalker or Han Solo than I do to, I don't know... Steamboat Willie.
The Disney-helmed strategy of 'giving fans exactly what they want, and lots of it' seems to be working for the time being. Personally, I'm already experiencing burnout. Five years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more 'here for it' than I was about all of the Marvel content being generated. But I haven't seen any of the post-Avengers Endgame films, because honestly it feels done to me. I mean, a ten year, twenty-five (or something) movie storyline wrapped up in a way that I thought was really great. Two weeks later, Spider-Man is up to something again. Soon, Black Widow. Then, Shang-Chi(??!). Next, we'll be making the rounds again through Dr. Strange, Thor, Black Panther... who the fuck can care for this long at this pace?? Will nothing end?
If Game of Thrones taught us anything, it's that I am wrong and everybody wants everything to go on forever. And really, not only that they want everything to go on forever, but that they are in fact entitled to have everything go on forever. Personally, I thought the ending of GoT, though not perfect, ended sensibly enough. I was pretty astounded by the opposition, but when the people I talked to were pressed for exactly why they were so pissed off, it wasn't that the resolution didn't make sense (with some exceptions) or that the conclusions hadn't been alluded to for nearly the entire series, but the series had ended at all. That the directors were lazy. That there should have been three more seasons. That the directors didn't care anymore. That it wasn't that Khaleesi turned into a tyrant (fuckin obviously), but that it happened too quickly. That plot line needed more time. More seasons! More everything forever! More, more, more!!
People were so incensed and entitled that two million of them petitioned the government to force the studio to remake the last season, because that is certainly the rational response a functioning adult takes when confronted with a work of art they didn't like. Yea, let's just crowdsource and redo every piece of intellectual property that has ever disappointed us, cause I'm sure things will work out much better this way. Let's install the choose-your-own-adventure buttons in every movie theater a-la Futurama, so that the audience can decide the optimal resolution for every moment of conflict. Why stop there? Let's petition the government to send Navy Seals in to kidnap Metallica and force them to rerecord the bass on ...And Justice For All at gunpoint!
Now, obviously, I'm not against criticizing works of art. You may notice that I've done some of that in this very article. So before you label me a hypocrite (you asshole), what I am against is the attitude that as critics, we have any right to force creators to make (or remake) exactly what we want. But this is the environment we have fostered, a fertile field for a smily, gladhanding megalith like Disney to roll into and pump us full of custom-ordered content. And like I said, for the moment, it's working. But we're eating cookies for dinner every night, and eventually we're going to become malnourished entertainment-zombies, so addicted to the fulfillment of our own expectations that we won't remember what it's like to appreciate something we've had to wait for, or to be surprised by something we didn't expect, even at the risk of disappointment.
Episode IX really is a perfect example of this. It's entertaining. It's both brand new and nothing new. It's a little bit funny, and a little bit sad. It's nowhere near as bad as I feared, but not as good as I'd hoped. A little something for everyone, and not quite enough for anyone.
Expect a lot of this in the next decade.
If you want to listen to the rest of that podcast episode I quoted (which I recommend), you can find it here: https://redscarepodcast.libsyn.com/cinema-dead-and-loving-it-w-nick-pinkerton
I also have written a collection of short stories in e-book form, which is available for the low, low price of 99¢:
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