Rating of
3/4
The Desperation of Abrams
SIngli6 - wrote on 12/21/19
If you believed there was any chance that J.J. Abrams would be able to seamlessly merge his vision of an unironic nostalgic homage to the original Star Wars trilogy with Rian Johnson's predilection for torching genres and running, disabuse yourself of that notion immediately. Rise of Skywalker is pure, utter insanity. Every creative decision made either plunges the narrative into greater depths of absurdity or outright contradicts what came before, the air of creative disillusionment and scorn for the audience, Johnson, and Abrams himself screaming out of every bit of direction. Some moments you can practically hear J.J. screaming 'Are you happy now?!'.
Why then am I rating it so high? Because it's fun. The desperation of this film's writing gives it a type of daring that recalls the nonsense logic of the serials and matinees upon which this whole saga was originally based. Where's Palpatine been this whole time? On a super secret Mordor planet with a fleet of star destroyers with actual planet destroying lasers. Oh, and he has a spiky rock throne and groupies. How did he survive being thrown down thousands of feet into a radioactive core? Next question. It's dumb, but in that sort of defiant, endearing way that makes you secretly wonder if perhaps there isn't some deeply intelligent message behind it. Like, perhaps the star destroyers are the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or Palpatine's return is how our cultural obsession with evil can literally resurrect tyrants? Yeah, let's go with that. It's much like The Last Jedi in that respect; a bunch of very dumb things happen and yet you feel you've watched something revelatory. Have you? Who knows. Abrams certainly doesn't.
