Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker review — ‘poorly directed, lamely scripted, badly acted’
The first Star Wars film would be on any list of the top 50 films of the past 50 years. Unfortunately for diehard fans, the concluding instalment won’t be.
The first Star Wars, which zapped our eyes, ears, hearts and minds back in 1977, would be on any list of the top 50 films of the past 50 years. I say “first” in a chronologically linear, stuck-on-one-planet way. As fans will know, that movie is the fourth in the series, which in its whole is a trilogy of trilogies, plus a few stand-alone origin stories.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the concluding instalment of the sequel trilogy, which started with The Force Awakens (2015) and continued with The Last Jedi (2017). The first three movies (1977-83) were in media res, or in things of the middle, as Yoda might put it. The Skywalker prequels ran from 1999-2005.
The new movie, the 13th in the remarkable universe created by George Lucas more than 40 years ago, aims to conclude the story of the intrepid but messed-up Skywalker clan. It should take the total earnings of the franchise, now owned by Disney, close to $US10 billion.
It is also a bad movie, full stop. Fans may disagree with me, and if so may the force be with them. It’s only a matter of opinion.
I think The Rise of Skywalker is poorly directed, terribly filmed, clumsily edited, lamely scripted (a perennial problem, that one) and badly acted. The best performance comes from one of the originals, the humanoid C-3P0 (voiced by Anthony Daniels, the only actor to have appeared in all of the movies), and that is telling.
There is no tension, no suspense, no menace. The cantina scene in the original has more of each than the entire 140 minutes on offer here. There is no excitement, no passion. There’s no real plot. JJ Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens, is back in the chair. Some people were so upset with The Last Jedi that director Rian Johnson received online death threats.
As it happens death is the great weakness of this Skywalker trilogy. We know Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) died in the last one and we know Han Solo (Harrison Ford) died in the one before that (in a superb didn’t-see-it-coming scene), but death is not the end in the Lucasverse.
So, if main characters such as Jedi-trained rebellion leader Rey (Daisy Ridley) or First Order commander Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) or, heaven forbid, Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) die in this movie, the question is will they stay dead, even if only for two hours? I know people will say the dead remain alive in the Force, but to me being dead then undead is just timid storytelling, unless it’s a zombie movie. The traditional chunk of words in space that start the movie declare: The dead speak! Do they ever.
Then we have the former princess now rebellion general Leia. She is still alive but the actress we’ve known as her since 1977, Carrie Fisher, has been dead for three years. The scenes involving her, taken from unused footage from The Force Awakens, are awkwardly undergraduate. As we can’t see her talking to Rey face-to-face, there are lots of back-of-the-head shots of each of them (I assume stand-ins were used). In one scene where the two are almost front-on in the same shot, Rey’s head is cut out of the frame.
Leia’s words, not written for this movie, are necessarily brief and largely meaningless.
The plotless plot can be summed up as Kylo Ren, who we know used to be Ben Solo, son of Leia and Han, nephew of Luke, urging Rey to abandon her Jedi training and join him on the dark side. “The dark side is in your nature,’’ he tells her. “Surrender to it.” What tension the film does have is the light sabre-swinging sexual innuendo between the two. We do learn Rey’s backstory eventually, and why she doesn’t have a surname, and it is interesting if predictable.
The battle between Kylo and Rey personifies the larger war between the resistance and the First Order. Indeed much of the movie is a series of uninspiring fight scenes where it doesn’t matter much who wins. Watching it all undramatically unfold you can only wonder how on earth (or any planet) the military dictatorship has managed to stay in power for so long, given the storm troopers can’t shoot straight and that one of their generals is Richard E. Grant.
This is a movie where one’s attention drifts. Two well-known moments from war came to mind: the Battle of Agincourt and the evacuation of Dunkirk. Let’s just say that in an oratory sense, resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is no Henry V. The Dunkirk moment, though, does produce the funniest line in the movie.
Let the final battle begin. See @StarWars: #TheRiseOfSkywalker in theaters this Friday. Get tickets: https://t.co/EbJ0vDHKyt pic.twitter.com/Qk5pPoJiVh
— Star Wars (@starwars) December 14, 2019
There is a lot of homage to the Star Wars back catalogue and a sprinkling of humour. Yet overall it feels as though Abrams had two tasks: stitching up the loose ends from the previous film and bringing the Skywalker story to a close.
That’s understandable but it doesn’t add up to a movie. It’s as though he decided to end a story but forgot that he therefore needed a story — one contained in this one movie — to start with. And so when the story without a story does clunk to an end, well, the saccharine final scenes would embarrass a Hallmark card.
Your journey nears its end. See #StarWars: #TheRiseOfSkywalker in theaters December 20. Get tickets: https://t.co/EbJ0vDHKyt pic.twitter.com/mzU5AhjGfi
— Star Wars (@starwars) December 13, 2019
I walked out of the cinema asking, for the first time, whether we’ve had enough Star Wars, and whether Abrams and co are relying too much on fan loyalty rather than good filmmaking.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in cinemas today.
Rating: ★★
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OLD FAVOURITES JUST AS KOOKY
Morticia and Gomez Addams are far older, in regular time, than Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. American cartoonist Charles Addams first drew the kooky, spooky family for The New Yorker in 1938. There have been numerous screen adaptations since, including the 1964-66 TV series (Carolyn Jones as Morticia, John Astin as Gomez) and the 1991 movie starring the perfectly cast Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia.
The Addams Family, directed by Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2 and, for adults, Sausage Party), is an animated reboot of the franchise. It’s stylishly animated, witty and a lot of fun, especially for adults who grew up with the previous incarnations.
There’s a link to the new Star Wars film, too. Oscar Isaac, Resistance pilot Poe Dameron in George Lucas’s galaxy, voices Gomez. He’s part of a stellar cast — Charlize Theron as Morticia, Bette Midler as Grandmama and Nick Kroll as a hilarious Uncle Fester — who lift the movie above its well-known history.
The director voices the Frankensteinian butler Lurch and the Addams kids, the teenage Wednesday and the younger Pugsley, are Chloe Grace Moretz and the young Canadian with the best name in show business, Finn Wolfhard.
The action opens with the family being hounded out of their homeland. They move, and there’s a nice real estate joke here, to New Jersey. Three main stories follow and interconnect: Pugsley has to complete the sabre mamushka, the ritual that will make him a man; Wednesday decides to enrol in the local junior high; and the host of a home renovation TV show needs to redo the Addams mansion as its lurking presence is spoiling an otherwise “perfect” town. She looks like Farrah Fawcett, but with more hair, and has a dark secret. Voiced by Oscar winner Allison Janney, she just about steals the show.
Bringing the old-fashioned Addams family — and they all arrive by the end — into the modern world raises some pertinent questions on contemporary social issues such as our obsession with our phones, the rise of social media, the dominance of television and the best way to dissect a frog.
I think kids under 12 will enjoy this movie — there’s nothing to frighten the younger ones — but the bonus is that there’s a lot left over for their older companions.
When the disconnected hand Thing is caught porn surfing, it’s very funny (and over young heads). My favourite joke — and my 14-year-old co-viewer’s — involves a red balloon floating into the Addams estate. When Wednesday asks what it is, her mother’s answer is perfect. It’s worth noting that Wolfhard had a lead role in the recent remake of Stephen King’s It.
The animation is sharp, right down to Lurch’s fingernails. The music is well-placed. The famous theme song pops up now and then but is not overdone. The musical highlight, though, is Lurch at the piano ripping into REM’s Everybody Hurts. It almost brought a tear to my eye.
The Addams Family (PG) National release
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