Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Review

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.

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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¢:

Buy on Amazon

Nerd Rage Star Wars Spoiler Review

"I've seen raw disappointment like this only once before, in Episode I. It didn't disappoint me enough then. IT DOES NOW!" 

Ok, look, I'm not proud of what I'm about to do here. I'm getting older, folks. I really, really thought that my days of complaining about the substandard quality of pop-culture, big budget blockbuster epics were over. I thought that in my age and wisdom, I could reconcile the fact that no story is really sacred, there are winners and losers, and you're better off just sneaking a flask of Wild Turkey into the movie theater and tryin' to have a gooood time! For example, the Thor: Ragnarok script plays out like every single part was written for Robert Downey Jr., with ancient celestial deities awkwardly delivering punchy one-liners like it's open mic nite at the Asgardian Comedy Store... but hey! Those visuals, am I right? That soundtrack! After all, it's a comic book movie. Transcend your negativity, man.

Besides, something that really turned me off to giving my actual opinion about anything was the Ghostbusters backlash. Like, holy shit, what even was that? An army of kids who were three years old when Dan Ackroyd Et Al. ad-libbed their way through one of the most ridiculous non-porno scripts of all time feeling so entitled that they started harassing the actors off of Twitter. I know those were some really precious memories of discovering the original Ghostbusters on DVD fifteen years after its release following a really animated "Dude, you've never seen..." conversation at the local food court, but the cold truth is that Colombia Pictures is not indebted to your forced sense of sentimentality. The whole thing made me question whether the world really needed one more nerd with a blog (me) taking up more server space with lamentations about how an industry that is now like 90% dedicated to nostalgia and fan-service is ruining our memories and disservicing us as fans. It just seemed a bit like overkill.

However, I am but a humble human nerd, and I guess I'm off the wagon again.

Part of it is that pesky, irrational emotional appeal of Star Wars. Despite the fact that as a movie franchise, its got a less-than-stellar batting average and really, the entire toiling juggernaut pretty much just gets along by sprinkling in ever so much originality into an ever-expanding soup of self-reference, I'm just not really over it. And so, with two pretty good Disney-led Star Wars films in the bag and scores of glowing critical reviews all over the Internet, I walked into this one with some high hopes.

I felt that familiar emotional rush during the opening fanfare, the 'Its really happening!' moment I literally dreamt of as a little kid during the pre-prequel years. And, just like the first time, it transitioned pretty quickly from 'It's really happening!' to 'Surely this will get better!'. But deep down, I knew. I'd been down this road before. Following the first exchange, where they let Oscar Issac's now traditional opening joke stretch out just long enough to not be funny anymore, I looked back through time and space to my younger, less buff, baggy-jeaned self sitting in the theater for The Phantom Menace and said, "I got a bad feeling about this".

I'm convinced that this current crop of beaming movie critics are either being paid off by Disney or watching a completely different move than the one I saw. After seeing reviews like, and I'm paraphrasing here, "This movie keeps all the mystery and magic of Star Wars alive while taking it in bold new directions, etc, etc...", I can not willingly believe that our experience was the same. The Last Jedi (hereafter referred to as TLJ) was not only one of the worst Star Wars films ever made, but it fails repeatedly at even the most basic elements of storytelling. Whatever isn't boring and pointless is fucking unbelievable. Whatever is believable is boring and pointless. And yes, I am of course adjusting for suspension of disbelief.

Let's start with the fact that this thing is a giant 'fuck you' to even JJ Abrahm's derivative vision of the Star Wars story. Sure, he basically remade A New Hope with a fresh crop of handsome, sassy youngsters, but he left plenty of threads to pull on to keep the fan-theory boards alive and well for two years. Absolutely nothing about the state of this cinematic universe is answered in TLJ. Every juicy question put forth by The Force Awakens is either completely ignored, or made immaterial by the death of what or whoever we were asking about.

Additionally, while all of our questions are being unanswered, the majority of the characters are doing absolutely nothing. That's right! Nothing! I tried long and hard after seeing the movie to remember what all of the gang was up to, which was very difficult because none of it had any effect on the story. Finn and Rose begin a very Star Wars sounding quest to sneak onto an Imperial... sorry, First Order ship to once again disable some overlooked piece of equipment that will help the rebels not die. In the course of this convoluted side-quest, they go to a space-casino that any director in Hollywood, or really, any 9-year-old with some Hasbro action figures and an active imagination should have been able to write into a more interesting story point. Instead, the crew gets instantly arrested, meet Benicio Del Toro en route from the Marvel Universe on his way to a paycheck via an ultimately pointless character, and then ride around on a bunch of dumb CGI horsegeese while trying to make some point about how rich people are bad. Then, after escaping that cockamamie scenario, they get captured again and fucking fail. That's right! Not only do they fail miserably at the (what now, 4th?) Star Wars 'dress up like the bad guys' plan, but it turns out that by the time they would have succeeded, their fleet is pretty much destroyed anyway.

And you know what? That's OK. From a writing standpoint, its fine, even dare I say, bold to have your main-ish characters fail at something. The problem for me is that the whole process took so long, with so many chase scenes, explosions, and ham-fisted pseudo-discussions about morality that by the time the whole thing is over and Captain Phasma falls into a pit (how many pit-deaths is that now for the franchise? 4?), I totally fucking forgot where the characters were supposed to be or what they were supposed to be doing. The whole rebel fleet > casino > jail > enemy fleet > jail again > rebel fleet transition was spliced in via 4-5 minute segments for two hours of a movie that included two other story arcs. Get out your graph paper, folks.

So what's our snappy new hero Poe Damron & the fleet doing during all of this? Running awaaaaayyyyyy!!! Yes, after an initial rally and then a brutal asswhooping, we get all the excitement of an hours-long sub-lightspeed chase. As tactically sound as this decision may have been for the characters (especially in a universe where apparently all ships have an equivalent maximum cruising speed), it does not make for a very exciting movie. During most of this time, Leia is comatose, having survived being blasted into the vacuum of space by way of the absolute most asinine scene in cinema history. Let's just forget about the fact that the angle and velocity caused by explosive decompression and the residual velocity of the ship would have put her miles away from the vessel within seconds. Suspending all possible disbelief regarding anything to do with how space, or really, moving objects work, it was just fucking stupid. In sixty years, Leia has only ever at most displayed a spider-sense level of force control. Now, for the purposes of a cheap audience fake-out, she whips out almost godlike powers to save herself. This is doubly bad because the movie had not by this point, and does not at any point in the future, re-establish an emotional bond between Leia's character and the audience. The only reason anyone gives a shit that Leia might die is because of how we felt about her in previous movies. It's a dirty, bait-and-switch, poor-ass movie making tactic that does no real narrative work. This rings especially true because after Leia wakes up out of her coma, she doesn't fucking do anything besides show up, stun Poe Dameron, and then idly recite empty platitudes about hope until she changes her mind and the end and says that actually, there is no hope.

In the meantime, the role her character should have had is given to Admiral Holdo, a late-addition rando whose purpose is to argue with Poe, (in an exchange about as compelling as a Dungeons and Dragons adventuring party leadership dispute after the soda and chips have run out) and then singlehandedly destroy the enemy fleet. Ok, I guess.

Finally, the Rey / Skywalker / Kylo Ren storyline is the most palatable of the bunch, and the only one that features any attempts at acting, mostly thanks to Adam Driver. It also is the only one to actually advance the plot through the poorly-paced, overscored middle 70% of this epic-length movie. After all, Rey finally gets on the path to becoming a Jedi, despite the fact that Luke spends a combined total of about 7 minutes actually training her and the rest of the time running across the island to yell at her if she uses the force at any point thereafter. Kylo Ren ascends to power by killing Snoke, another no-backstory rando who is introduced just to run his mouth and then fucking die. This results in the best fight scene of the movie, though without further explanation I have a little trouble trying to accept the motivations for Snoke's trained Red Power Rangers to fight to the death defending their already dead master against his clear successor. Like, if they are that loyal, shouldn't they be trying to kill themselves for failing?

The Skywalker scenes are kind of hit-or-miss. I'm assuming they were trying to paint him as a jaded recluse with a dark and bitter past, but he sort of just comes off as an awkward crazy neighbor. That is until the end. And oh boy, let me tell you, if Leia's space ballet was the stupidest scene in movie history, the end of Luke Skywalker is the most vicious, faux-clever, fuck you cop-out that I've ever seen. The fact that what we've been waiting to see for 30 years, Luke fucking Skywalker back in action, was ALL aN IllUsIon!!, a shitty deux-ex-machina double-take bullshit scam where he just sent out his spirit to do all the dirty work and made us all think it meant something is the worst part of all. Like a deadbeat dad who promises to show up for your birthday and then swings by for 15 minutes on his way from the bar to his girlfriend Cheryl's house, the disappointment is real. The emotion of Luke's last words to his sister? Fake. His epic last stand to confront Ben? Fake. All of it rendered meaningless in a trick to literally buy ten minutes for the kids to run into a cave and escape. And then he dies anyway! After all of that chicanery, we cut to Luke meditating on his front porch, where he shouts, "Oh! My ticker!" and falls over. What the hell was the decision making process behind that? This speaks to my point about sloppy writing and having characters do a bunch of convoluted shit that lands them in the same exact same place with the exact same consequences that they would have experienced anyway, just with extra steps.

Just cut out the middle man! Have Skywalker show up in person, use force push to make all the AT-ATs blast each other, have a real lightsaber battle with Kylo Ren, and then suffer a fatal wound to die a hero after the gang gets to the Falcon. Or something. It's not that hard. I have no idea how that ending got past a first draft, because a 'ha ha! gotcha!' ending like that wouldn't make it out of a freshman creative writing course. Its not a 'bold', 'unexpected' bit of scripting that deserves to be lauded because people fell for it. It's a cop-out masquerading as crafty misdirection, a crutch used to support lackluster ideas. It's the kind of thing you do when you're writing down to an audience.

In general, the film suffers from pacing issues that make it feel rushed and disjointed even though it's actually three weeks long. It somehow had the ability to make me simultaneously bored yet anxious, which I guess count as emotions. Beyond that, in addition to the general character-pissing-on fest I detailed above, the movie seems to prioritize bad, superfluous characters above characters people actually care about. Chewbacca is basically relegated to cheaufeurr and comic relief, seemingly cutting in on C-3P0's action, while R2-D2's role is to painfully remind the audience that Star Wars used to be good. Yoda shows up to impart wisdom, in the way that a stupid person might think a wise person would impart wisdom, saying Zen-sounding things and generally being a doucebag. Instead of these fan favorites, we get either boring new characters or JJ Abrams creations trotted out and then disposed of without any enrichment or purpose.

And finally, maybe it's on a spreadsheet somewhere, but I have absolutely no fucking clue how anybody got anywhere in this movie. Like, physically how. Space travel, the Journey, and the passage of time are all rendered meaningless in this movie. Despite lightyears of distance, light and sub-light speeds, and time-sensitive events, everyone just gets where they're going at the exact second they need to be there. I'm sure if I plotted it out on a graph, it may all make sense, but as an audience member trying to keep track of 9+ main characters, 3 schemes, & 5 locations, I just have to take their word for it. I have no idea which ship anyone is on at any point in time. People show up just in the knick of time, and since I can't remember where they just were or what they were doing, I'm forced to take it on good faith that they both knew where the next event was happening and had the means to get there.

To that point, travel and technology concerns that used to encompass entire movies or at least several pinnacle scenes are now routine tasks for even minor characters. Remember when getting onto and off of an Imperial starbase took 60% of A New Hope, even for a party led by a Jedi as powerful as Obi-Wan? That was amateur hour, apparently. After being flung at the flagship dreadnaught in a space-box by Chewbacca like a stressed-out UPS driver, Rey survives the battle with Kylo Ren. She then wakes up while he's passed out, somehow finds her way off this gigantic ship under the nose of the entire First Order, gets from that ship back to the Milennium Falcon, and from there to the final rebel base... all off camera.

Also, unlike for the entire Rebellion in both Return of the Jedi and Rogue One, flouting Imperial shield technology is no problem for Benicio Del Toro (or "DJ"... fucking of course his name is DJ), who somehow has a set of flash drives that are universally compatible and allow him to both cloak his newly stolen ship and disable First Order shields. This is another convenient Deus ex Machina that happens to be possessed by a random character that Finn and Rose meet in jail while searching for a different character who would have served the exact same role. It's a confusing bit of  redundant audience misdirection that conveniently advances the already-moot-by-this-time plan to the next stage. Maz Kanata makes it real fucking clear that there is only one guy in the galaxy who's good enough to crack First Order shield codes. It turns out that not only is that dead wrong and there are there two guys in the galaxy who are good enough to crack First Order shield codes, but that the other guy who can do it, out of all the myriad planetary systems of the Star Wars universe, is literally downstairs from the first guy. Like, ok? Why tho?? Does nobody understand that if you send your characters on a mission to find an important plot device and they fail, and then they are provided immediately with an identical backup replacement for that plot device, there are no stakes to the story and nothing that happened really mattered?

Or how about Rogue One even, which murdered its entire cast demonstrating how fucking hard it is to steal top-secret enemy plans? Not for Rose, the low-rank flight deck worker who can just pull up holographic dreadnaught schematics in her bedroom on command. All of these things, while they could potentially be overlooked individually, combine to make a pretty nasty case of sequel-itis. At this point, you're glossing over problems that other writers constructed entire films around (like how characters get places or know important things) because by the end of the movie, none of it mattered anyway. And that's a bad sign!

So that's really the trick to this one; you can turn your brain off and just go along for the ride (which is what I assume all these gold-star bestowing critics were doing), but even then, there's not much to hold on to. Characters that were starting to show promise at the end of TFA either plateau or backslide. The general storyline of the universe is whittled away to the point where JJ Abrams is basically going to have to either turn Rey into a god or go completely off the rails to come up with any way to end this 35-year story arc, which is a pretty tall order for a guy who is basically a B- directorial composite of his influences. I do feel for the guy though. Rian Johnson basically took everything Abrams tried to seed in this new trilogy and wiped his ass with it, leaving him with nothing but original trilogy support characters and a new class that spent their transitional 'Empire' movie doing nothing but chase scenes and running from explosions and generally spinning their wheels. Because of Carrie Fisher's passing, the only Skywalker left to complete the Skywalker storyline is Ben. (Man, that was sad to type). However, if anyone can salvage the final installment, I think it's Adam Driver / Kylo Ren. He gets all kinds of fanboy flak for not being a badass, but while somehow the critics have been lauding this pile as a 'bold masterpiece', what's actually bold is to play a follow up to Darth Vader as a deeply flawed, petulant child with anger issues who has more power than he knows what to do with. After all, if you wanted a super-powerful stock villain with no depth or conflict, well, you already got Snoke, who fulfilled all those requirements so perfectly that all he had to do the entire trilogy was put on a bathrobe and sit in a fucking chair until he got killed.

It may take a lot, but judging by the scores the actual audiences are giving this one (which some critics are of course pinning on trolls because this movie is obviously perfect), a course correction may be possible if the studio is taking note.

So hopefully, two years from now, I won't have to do this again.

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UPDATE:
Holy moley, I mean to put the link to my book at the bottom of this rant and totally forgot. Now that it's too late and you're already read this, here it is! I wrote this collection of stories years ago, so there's basically no diversity. So please, everyone buy it and support my next one which will have lots!

Buy on Amazon