Disney fails to redeem popular series
The Rise of Skywalker contributes to disjointed trilogy
With a 52 percent critics rating, it is clear that “The Rise of Skywalker” failed to triumphantly end Disney’s sequel trilogy. There are two problems with “The Rise of Skywalker:” The movie is disjointed and it disrupts the flow of the sequel trilogy.
Let’s start by first examining “The Rise of Skywalker” as just a movie. The trailer featured the late Emperor Palpatine laughing, and it was largely confirmed that Ian Mcdurmid would be reprising his role as the Lord of the Sith.
Palpatine’s return drew in massive amounts of fans back to the sequel trilogy, and it is clear that this was Disney's a last ditch effort to keep their trilogy alive.
Walking into the theater, I looked forward to learning how Palpatine survived, but to my everlasting surprise, Palpatine was introduced during the opening text crawl with the words, “The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, a threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE.”
JJ Abrams did not touch on the return of Palpatine at all and left the audience bewildered in the opening scenes of the movie.
After that scene ends, the next two thirds of the movie consists of Rey running around to various planets with Kylo Ren ‘tracking’ her by using their mysterious force connection. Though the force connection could make sense with proper explanation, no further details are given on this matter other than the fact that they are “connected.”
After watching all three movies again, it is clear that the main problem is that ideas set up in one movie are often completely ignored or reversed in the next movie.
This may have been caused because there were no set plot points that each director needed to follow. Abrams hints at the Knights of Ren and dialogue from Obi-Wan Kenobi in one of Rey’s visions in “The Force Awakens” but Johnson simply throws both those concepts out the window in “The Last Jedi.”
In “The Last Jedi,” Johnson introduces Rose Tico as a main character, yet Abrams barely gave Rose a couple minutes of screentime in “The Rise of Skywalker.”
All of this could have easily been avoided if there had been set plot points however, “The Last Jedi” ended up being more of a stand-alone film than a part of a trilogy, showing how directors look over the details from the previous movies.
Johnson ignored what The Force Awakens set up, and Abrams ignored what Johnson did in “The Last Jedi.” The result ends up being a finale that makes you feel as though there was so much more that could have been.