As the final chapter in the beloved sequel trilogy and the newest installment in one of the most legendary movie sagas of all time, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had high expectations to meet.  The film was arguably the most hyped-up movie of 2019 and took on the challenge of trying to please one of the hardest-to-please fanbases existing today.  Considering fans’ outrage over The Last Jedi, there was extra pressure for this movie to finish out the trilogy on a triumphant high note.  So, does it live up to the hype? Does it answer lingering questions from The Last Jedi?  Does it triumph in its own right while stringing together all 3 sequels into one thrilling ending?

Those were some of the questions I set out to answer when I took a trip to Patriot Cinemas at Hingham Shipyard on Friday, December 20.  In the past, I absolutely loved The Force Awakens and *gasp* actually liked The Last Jedi.  I thought Episode VIII was a creative and well-made Star Wars film, other than Leia flying for some inexplicable reason and occasionally cheesy dialogue (“We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down” …Seriously?)  Anyways, I walked into the theater hoping for a sweeping ending that would blow me away. As the end credits rolled and I walked out of the theater hours later, I was left with one haunting thought that is difficult for this lifelong Star Wars fan to admit, “Wow, that was disappointing.”

After the opening sequence got underway with the iconic line “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” and the ageless theme song sounded, the movie began with Kylo Ren’s journey to Exegol, a hidden sith planet which he believed to be the source of the many eerie voices he’d been hearing.  Rather hastily, the film then switches to Rey’s storyline and then quickly once again to Finn and Poe’s (which is combined at this point in time). This is the primary flaw of the film, as it hurriedly transitions between characters and restricts plot development. The 2 hour and 22-minute length of this film is right around the average runtime of a Star Wars movie, but right out of the gate feels uncharacteristically rushed, which is especially surprising considering director J.J. Abrams’ talents with pacing in The Force Awakens.  The beginning of this one doesn’t connect nearly as well to the ending of The Last Jedi as The Last Jedi did to the ending of The Force Awakens.  By skimping on this connection, it simply assumes that the audience knows about the voices Kylo Ren has been hearing and how the Resistance found a new planet to set up base.

The major antagonist in this chapter is not Kylo Ren, but Emperor Palpatine, who somehow survived being tossed into the second Death Star’s reactor at the end of Return of the Jedi and has been living on Exegol ever since (with the help of some complicated machinery).  When Poe and the rest of the Resistance catchword of this, they soon realize that Palpatine has been pulling the strings since the beginning, that Snoke and Kylo Ren are merely pawns in a greater scheme.  Palpatine intends to unleash a massive fleet called “The Final Order” and bring an end to the pesky Resistance. But is bringing back Palpatine really the right move? It makes logistical sense, as one can recall that in Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine told Anakin “The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”  One of those abilities, as told through “The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise”, is to cheat death, leading us to assume that Palpatine used this dark ability to avoid his fate.  However, to include him in this chapter seems like a moral disservice to the fresh-blooded needs of this trilogy. It brings up several more questions (none of which the film answers) and feels like a last-ditch effort to hide a lack of imagination.  Relying on an old foe to once again sustain the tertiary chapter figuratively halts the creative wheels set in motion by Rian Johnson and exposes one of the trilogy’s overarching issues: a lack of connected creative thinking.

The movie as a whole feels disjointed from the previous two sequel installments.  An important characteristic of any great trilogy is its ability to effectively link together 3 films and have them all contribute to one final conflict and resolution.  The Rise of Skywalker simply doesn’t do that.  It instead tries to combine all 9 films and gets lost in its own ambition, paying unsubstantial attention to the storyline developed in the previous 2 films.  This results in more questions than answers; how and when was the force dyad between Rey and Kylo Ren created? Who are the Knights of Ren? How did the Final Order lose the battles not fought on Exegol?  Why did Palpatine order Kylo Ren to kill Rey when he wanted the opposite? When did Palpatine have a son and who is Rey’s grandmother? All these, and more, are left open to the audience’s interpretation.

 The biggest problem of The Rise of Skywalker is that it’s overburdened and often held back by an absurd amount of nostalgia.  Aside from Emperor Palpatine, there’s also the return of Lando Calrissian, a ghost of Han Solo, a ghost of Luke Skywalker, Luke’s x-wing, the voice of Darth Vader, the voices of Jedi past, Wedge Antilles gunning the Millennium Falcon, and Rey burying Luke and Leia’s lightsabers at the Lars Homestead on Tatooine, to name a few.  Abrams decided to answer fans’ complaints after The Last Jedi by stuffing nostalgia down their throats and although some will gladly eat it up, most will be suffocated.  The film recycles the saga’s greatest hits in a way that makes the expansive universe it’s set in feel limited, diminishing from the magic that made Star Wars so lovable in the first place.  This isn’t to say that nostalgia is all bad, in fact, I actually thought that the return of Lando was a brilliant move. However, the film treated his return rather poorly. After he saves Rey and co. from trouble on Passana and gives them a clue to the location of a sith Wayfinder, he is largely ignored until the final battle, where he co-pilots the Millenium Falcon just like in the old days.  The movie is so concerned with throwing all the other nostalgia into the mix that it doesn’t deliver on the only nostalgic character with serious potential.

Don’t fret too much Star Wars fans, the film isn’t all negatives.  The lightsaber duels are more epic than ever before and will keep you on the edge of your seat.  There’s a slew of new faces, mainly Jannah (Calrissian?), Zorii Bliss, and best of all, Babu Frik, who will be challenging Baby Yoda for the title of “Best New Star Wars Character”.  The relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey goes to wild new places and CGI Leia shines in her final Star Wars appearance. If you can’t get enough nostalgia, you’re in for a real treat.  If you secretly love the dastardly Sheev Palpatine, you’ll get to see him at his evil best and with more screen time than in any of the original trilogy films. If you happen to be a film music enthusiast like myself, you’ll be pleased to know that composer John Williams writes a wonderful score for his 9th and likely final Star Wars film.  He actually makes his first on-screen appearance of the saga in The Rise of Skywalker as Oma Tres (an anagram of “Maestro”), a metal eyepatch-wearing bartender on Kijimi. The ending is good, but whether it does justice to all the major characters of these sequels is questionable.

The success of a modern Star Wars movie is defined by its ability to recapture the magic of the original trilogy while adding new elements to keep it fresh and intriguing.  Adding a hint of nostalgia doesn’t hurt either. The Force Awakens succeeded because it adhered to those guidelines.  The Last Jedi mostly succeeded because it checked off those boxes but took characters in directions that diehard fans didn’t expect or like.  The Rise of Skywalker leaves some boxes unchecked, resulting in a hurried, disjointed, and overly nostalgic film that brings a once-promising trilogy to a disappointing end.