Star Wars, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

"Long Have I Waited" (Yeah, Yeah, You're Not Special)
or
"Excellent Job, Sir." ("Terrible Job, Sir")

There is no way that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker could live up to expectations. The expectations are parsecs high and one could not/should not think every characters' stories to be satisfactorily tied up to every fan's hopes and dreams. 

Plus, this one has to make up for a lot of dissension with Rian Johnson's Episode VIII: The Last Jedi—which I quite liked—and so rather than have things unfolding in this one, it has to fold-back, providing nostalgia while not exactly advancing things...the way that J. J. Abrams did with The Force Awakens. 

We've been teased—"Dark Rey", Kylo and Rey teaming up (again) and dueling (again), C-3PO "dying," re-purposed Carrie Fisher footage, and the Return of  Emperor Palpatine (Thank badness Ian McDiarmid has good genes), who was killed off six films (or three by regular timeline) ago, and thus negating the triumphal moment of the first (or middle) trilogy.

So, is it "The Skywalker Saga" or "The Emperor Saga"—one was hoping for the former rather than the latter.

One should at least be happy there's no new Death Star—they're happy to re-purpose an old one.

Now, it is going to be very dicey doing a summary of the film so as not to spoil the surprises—and there are jolts throughout, even though the film plays out in what one would think is a logical progression that feels organic enough that one could conclude that this was the intent from the original plot-line devised for The Force Awakens.* 

I am still not used to not hearing the 20th Century Fox Fanfare heralding the film's opening, but then I've seen the new trilogy a lot less than I've seen the old ones. It shouldn't be since the Disney take-over, but it is. But, the first words of the opening crawl does give a certain unease: "The Dead Speak!" With the passing of Carrie Fisher, those words resonate a bit more. Fisher is top-lined (for the first time in the series) and that is entirely appropriate, despite the use of discarded scenes making up the entirety of her performance—reverse shots and stand-in's make the transition a bit more organic. But, there is still a slight disconnect with her scenes, especially in dialog with other actors. Fisher's Leia spouts aphorisms and exposes just how generic lines from "Star Wars" can be.

The film starts out with Kylo Ren, nee Ben Solo (Adam Driver—jeez, he's great in this!) on the hunt for the Emperor, seeing the old Sith as a threat to his status as Supreme Commander of The First Order. First, he has to track down some googah to help him find his location on the planet of Exegol (sounds like a pharmaceutical planet), and once he does, Palpatine makes him an offer he can't refuse—kill Rey (Daisy Ridley—jeez, she's good in this), the waif Source prodigy and become Commander of The Final Order's massive Star Destroyer fleet.

(The logician in me said that 1) it's a bad deal as guys in power don't like to give up their power and 2) where the Hell did they get all those ships?! Who built them, as it would take a Sith-load of supplicants to build them...but then, this is "Star Wars" where there is sound in space, X-wings can make turns and swoop around in space, there can be such a thing as a space-ship that's a bomber, and there are things like light-speed and The Force...you gotta get rid of science in these things, which is why I see this as more in the Fantasy/Fairy Tale genre than as science-fiction).

So, where's Rey? Jedi-training with General Leia (Fisher) where she's starting to get a "bad feeling about this"—her "Force-bond" with Kylo interferes with her training, like getting phone-calls from your too-ardent boyfriend who keeps interrupting your homework with calls asking "What are you doin'?" Speaking of ardent boyfriends Finn (John Boyega—jeez, he's good in this), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac—jeez, he's....ditto) and Chewbacca (always good, but he tugs at heart-strings a couple times here) are returning from a spy-mission that has confirmed the Emperor is still alive and his threat is real—they have to do some fancy flying to avoid First Order ships in order to get the information back to Leia (they couldn't have just hidden the information in a droid?).

So, the story revolves around Kylo trying to subvert Rey to the Dark Side, rather than kill her in order to defeat the Emperor (Golly, he really IS his grandfather's kid!), while Rey and the boys try to find a duplicate googah—it's a Sith "wayfinder" that hones in on Sith energy or something—so that the Resistance can find the Emperor and defeat the Phantom Menace (to coin a phrase).

So, that's the plot—which is basically the plot of Episodes IV-VI, one generation once-removed—with the customary serial-formula of a fight or a chase every ten minutes. The first half-hour is editorially compressed into a short-hand of highlights, so that the film-makers can squeeze enough story-line into the movie and keep it under 3 hours, but one has to say that gripes and plot-holes don't appear like a force-ghost in your head until after the movie is over. That means the movie is doing it's job. It's "Star Wars", after all, the thing is supposed to be a crowd-pleaser.

Many of the established characters are given short-shrift—as if serving as convenient plot-points in earlier movies had exhausted their possibilities—except for the ones mentioned. And there are new characters, including a sort-of love-interest for Poe in Zorii Bliss (Keri Russell—jeez, I can't tell if she's good or not!) and a new disposable General for the First Order named Pryde (Richard E. Grant, sneering appropriately), who you just know is going to goeth before The Fall. There is quite an amazing array of others in the movie that you'll hear, but not see, that—for me—was kind of a thrill. C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) is given a beefier part and, for once, he has a good reason to be annoying.

The special effects are quite amazing, if cluttered, and there are a variety of planets in various eco-systems, that you might as well just forget because nobody spends much time on them for very long.

And Lando's back. Big plus. Billy Dee Williams is older than Methuselah now, but he has lost none of his charm.

But, then, all the actors are on their "A-game" here—as I've been making a joke of. Everybody does a good job, but some of the interactions between actors are the best-timed I've seen in the series, zipping along like in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy. This is their last shot at this and everybody in front of the camera gives it their all, especially in scenes that must have been conceptually hard to play. Brava!

So, yes, take the "fan-service" talk with a grain of salt—there has always been a bit of it where "Star Wars" is concerned, starting with The Empire Strikes Back. It's a bit like criticizing a duck because it floats. You can...but why? I would've liked to have see a little more about the democratizing of The Force (ala The Last Jedi), although there's a variant of it here (that might have been convenient in earlier episodes...!), but it gets the writers out of several jams, so...amazing thing, that "Force," midi-chlorians or no.

So "fan-service," yeah. But, with this closer, it does bring to mind what Lucas envisioned for the last trilogy, where the victorious Rebels lose their way allowing for a new Empire to spring up in a circular variation of the Episode I -III trilogy. And as in the line attributed to Mark Twain "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." That rhyming becomes more than apparent in The Rise of Skywalker, paralleling what has come before in a manner of playing out.

That feels real. And is sure as the setting of twin suns.

* One could think that, but the fact is they were making it up as they went along—Ben Kenobi wasn't supposed to die in A New Hope (that was revised during shooting), most of Return of the Jedi was recycled from original New Hope treatments. These are stories, not reality. People make them up.