Regressive Nostalgia in The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars Refuses to Grow Up

In 2017, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was released to the most divisive reception of any Star Wars film ever. Inevitably, the discourse around it soon became wearisome. I made no secrets about how highly I regarded it and spent far too much time defending it against most of the people I discussed it with. Fortunately, I never faltered, never ceded any ground and never suggested that The Last Jedi was anything less than the best Star Wars film since 1980. I maintain that position to this day and if anything I like it more, having retrospectively got over some minor issues that were absurdly over-analysed at the time. Johnson’s triumphant success with Knives Out (by far one of 2019's best films) has also vindicated my conviction that he is a genuinely wonderful filmmaker that fell prey to a toxic fandom.

The fact is in 2017 Rian Johnson gave the Star Wars fandom a gift and they threw it back in his face. His rich, progressive and purposefully subversive film gave Star Wars the chance to grow up and the fans responded “No! We want to stay as children!” I had some hope that Disney wouldn’t listen; The Last Jedi still did well financially and the professional critics loved it. Perhaps they would have the guts to follow through on Johnson’s vision. Then Solo happened. A messy, expensive flop muddled by studio interference, Solo demonstrated that the creative freedom Disney afforded their directors had a limit and they were no longer in the mood for potentially costly artistic risks. With The Force Awakens director J. J. Abrams back on board for the next (and allegedly final) entry into the saga, the signs were emerging that Disney were playing it safe.


I think I have seen The Force Awakens a total of six times, four of which were in the cinema. The first time, a packed IMAX viewing, was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I was so excited for a new Star Wars film and J. J. Abrams delivered exactly what I wanted. The moment when the camera pans to first reveal the Millennium Falcon was just the beginning of a relentless wave of nostalgic glee. That feeling wasn’t quite as strong the second time round but it was still a great time. The third time the effect was starting to wear off and the film’s weaknesses — mainly its over-familiarity — were starting to emerge. By the fourth showing it was clear that, whilst The Force Awakens did everything it was supposed to, its intense reliance on nostalgia was not a sustainable way forward.

Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was therefore the perfect follow-up. Whilst it maintained a generous (but not overzealous) level of fan service, it also made a deliberate effort to stand on its own merits. Johnson refused to become dependent on familiar faces or tired themes and paved the way for a maturer Star Wars founded on a more inclusive and fluid understanding of the force. A lot of fans hated it because — well to be honest I don’t quite know why. I know the mantras they repeated over and over again but I can’t actually rationalise them into coherent arguments that justify such vitriol. From what I can tell, it seemed to come from an unwillingness to mature with Johnson. They just couldn’t allow Luke to break out of the basic hero archetype of their childhood or come to terms with the possibility that a character is more than who gave birth to them.


We now find ourselves with The Rise of Skywalker (potential spoilers from now on) the ninth installment of the ‘Skywalker Saga’ and the answer to the question “are Disney cowards?” That answer, sadly, is a resounding yes. When faced with a choice between delving deeper into an exciting new direction and capitulating to a mob of whiny man-children with a racism problem, Disney went with the latter. I do believe there are plenty of people with reasonable criticisms of The Last Jedi. I don’t agree with them, but I also don’t want to lump them in with the man-children. Unfortunately, it was not them that Disney listened to. It was the man-children.

It’s immediately apparent that The Rise of Skywalker was not responding to reasonable criticisms because, regardless of the controversial decisions I’ll get to later, it’s already lacking in many basic areas. Its most obvious problem is its pacing. Abrams has always preferred the zippier approach; this was apparent in The Force Awakens, where his desire to get to the action meant the slightly complicated New Republic/Resistance/First Order set up wasn’t as thoroughly explored as I would’ve liked. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, this speed isn’t just to the detriment of some of the finer details of world-building but to the whole experience.

The Rise of Skywalker moves at such a ridiculous pace largely out of necessity. Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio (known for other famously well-written franchise hits such as Batman v Superman and Justice League) have effectively tried to squeeze two films into one — one to retcon The Last Jedi and one to actually conclude the saga. As a consequence, with the exception of some strategically placed comic relief, the dialogue is reduced to the most efficient method of delivering exposition. It’s not downright painful like the prequels, but it is rarely more than functional. Consequently, there are so few scenes dedicated to compelling things like character or theme and the ones that are want to be over as quickly as possible.

Since there’s no time to properly develop the characters, the film tricks us into feeling gripped by constantly appearing to kill them. However, in order to get through the plot we need as many people alive as possible, so few of them actually die. Even before it was released, The Rise of Skywalker established that death was flexible by resurrecting Palpatine. But the rest of the film takes this to absurd levels, pretending to kill off a character one minute and revealing they’re actually alive the next, robbing the film of any dramatic tension. By the time someone really dies you’re too suspicious to feel anything.

These problems are all a shame, but they’re not insurmountable. In fact, Abrams does a good job working around them. From a spectacle point of view, he is a very capable director, able to compose some arresting shots, orchestrate a thrilling action sequence and maintain a palpable sense of weight that anchors the visual wonder in something substantial. In other words, whilst you’re in the cinema, Abrams’ talent as a filmmaker mean these aforementioned problems are less noticeable, or at least forgivable, as he’s able to convince you you’re having a good time nonetheless. Unfortunately, there are much more fundamental problems with The Rise of Skywalker that no number of flashy lightsabre duels could excuse.


The most immediately exciting thing The Last Jedi gave the saga was a radically blank slate for The Rise of Skywalker to build on. One genius way Rian Johnson did this was by killing Snoke in the second act. The enigmatic big baddie who really pulls all the strings was fun in the original trilogy but now feels unsophisticated, having wrung out its limited potential years ago. By getting Snoke out of the way early on, Johnson created space for a more human primary antagonist, shifting the focus to Kylo Ren. In The Last Jedi, Ren is as down-to-earth as the rest of the characters, with the ability to feel emotions and form relationships that can be understood by audience members who aren’t also omnipotent dark emperors. All the next film had to do was have the guts to let go of that big baddie archetype and explore Ren’s potential to the fullest.

So, what’s the first major reveal we get from The Rise of Skywalker? Why, Palpatine’s back of course! This is the beginning of much squandering of potential, choosing in the face of Rian Johnson’s vast horizon of opportunity to return to the cave of familiarity. But this isn’t only a disappointment because it’s a tired dynamic. It’s disappointing because it stunts Kylo Ren’s character. Once again he is tethered to the will of a far more boring villain, unable to come into his own as an antagonist and doomed to go through the same redemption arc as another masked sith. Whilst I think it would’ve been exciting to see Kylo Ren just rage himself into pathetic fascist oblivion, I’m not inherently opposed to him being redeemed. But at least redeem him in a way that engages with his character! Instead, Rey kisses him and he dies a hero, immediately absolving him of his sins which, beyond being somewhat problematic, is just a major missed opportunity. It could’ve been fascinating to see Kylo wrestle with his past self in a way we didn’t get with Darth Vader. Instead, we get half-arsed Reylo pandering and a ‘tragic’ martyrdom that ignores the complexities of his character.

Here is the fundamental problem with The Rise of Skywalker: it’s too busy retconning The Last Jedi to develop a compelling alternative. Rather than progressing into new territory we spend most of our time retreading the same stuff as the previous film but with all the fresh ideas sucked out to please a whiny fandom. The relationship between Rey and Kylo is a perfect example of this; their force bond continues and Kylo is still trying tempt her to his side but the film’s reluctance to focus on character means these scenes lack the nuance and emotion that Johnson gave them. Instead, presumably to appease those unsatisfied with The Last Jedi’s duels, Abrams quickly finds an excuse to use them as conduits for a lightsabre fight. Which is cool, initially, but ultimately a shallow substitute for authentic character development. Unfortunately, this isn’t even The Rise of Skywalker’s greatest sin.


Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter. When this was first revealed in the cinema I physically shook my head. This is such a blatant and crushing betrayal of everything Johnson was trying to do with The Last Jedi I couldn’t quite believe it was real. Maybe Kylo was lying in order to make Rey vulnerable to temptation? He was seriously tying himself in knots to justify this flip-flop, claiming her parents were definitely still nobodies, they just chose to be nobodies. You know, keeping Rey safe by selling her into slavery on a hostile planet? But no, Kylo wasn’t messing with her, this is canon now and it really sucks.

This is an awful decision on a number of levels. Firstly, it’s not an interesting twist. We’ve already seen Luke wrestle with having dark side heritage, we don’t need to do it again. Secondly, by revealing it in the final film (and a film that’s so opposed to having dedicated character moments at that) there’s hardly enough time to explore it anyway. Daisy Ridley does her best to act as if she’s going through an engaging character arc but she’s still barely recovered from the supposed revelation that her parents are nobodies. Rather than any emotional resonance, the overriding effect of this second twist is whiplash and Rey hardly grapples with it in any depth. Her character arc effectively goes from looking angry at Palpatine to telling some random person on Tatooine that she’s actually a Skywalker now. I’d hoped Star Wars had moved on from the misconception that being related to a recognisable face is character development.

As rubbish as this reveal is for Rey’s character, it’s even worse on a philosophical level. The implications of Rey being a nobody were vast and revolutionary, establishing that the force was not a hereditary privilege but a power that anybody, including nobodies, can wield. With The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson opened up the Star Wars universe in a radical way, giving everybody the chance to be important rather than a particular gene pool. This was crucial to the franchise on a storytelling level, breaking away from its soapy obsession with family drama and, as the final shot with the Force wielding 'broom boy' established, setting it up for the future with heroes who can be defined by who they are rather than where they came from. But as a message to audiences it was even more vital. In a diverse world that’s increasingly finding value outside of the kinds of people who have traditionally inherited it, showing that the force was no longer tied to such antiquated concepts was deeply powerful.

A particularly vocal portion of the fandom were not ready for this progression. It was too much for them to cope with being attached to characters who aren’t related to an older white guy they recognise from when they were kids. As proven by the reversal of Rey’s parentage, this was the portion of the fandom Disney listened to. Perhaps they were attempting a compromise between Johnson’s vision and the fandom’s whining. Kylo Ren does awkwardly maintain that Rey’s parents are still nobodies and Finn spends the film attempting to tell Rey that he’s also force sensitive. But the former claim is immediately undermined by the whole Palpatine business and the latter is completely lost in the cacophony of the rest of the film; Finn never actually tells Rey anything and we only found out what he wanted to say because Abrams confirmed it in an interview. If Disney were going for a compromise, they did a pathetic job.

The film’s most shameful decision, however, is its treatment of Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico. Following her appearance in The Last Jedi, Tran was subjected to a barrage of racist and sexist abuse for having the audacity to be an Asian-American woman in a Star Wars film. So, what did Disney do? Did they stand up to this bigotry and continue to treat Rose as a principal member of the cast? Or did they capitulate to the hate mob and give her exactly 1 minute and 16 seconds of screen time? Yeah, they did the latter. I can’t really emphasise how disgusted I am by this. Obviously Disney don’t really care about anything other than making money but here they definitively established that the opinions of abusive racists are of the utmost importance to them, whilst women of colour like Tran are to be left in the dust. The split second of a lesbian kiss in the background of a crowded wide shot comes off as even more hollow and offensive in the wake of this. The Rise of Skywalker has a generally reactionary attitude towards its predecessor but this is the ugliest symptom.


In an interview with the LA Times in 2018, Johnson was asked about pushing things forward with the Star Wars franchise:

When people ask me, ‘Don’t you think people are going to get sick of ‘Star Wars’ movies?’ to me that question indicates that they’re thinking of ‘Star Wars’ movies as a museum exhibit that is wheeled out once a year so you can say, ‘Oh, I loved that thing. Oh, I remember that thing!’ And yes, if ‘Star Wars’ is that, people are going to get sick of it really quickly. But if ‘Star Wars’ are great new movies that are exciting and fresh, and that challenge you and surprise you and make you feel things and engage you the way that those original movies did — but always taking you to new places, both in the galaxy and emotionally — that’s never going to get old. That’s what it’s all about.

Personally, I think Johnson nailed this with The Last Jedi and even if you have your criticisms of the film, surely you can admit this is a noble and necessary goal if Star Wars is going to endure? And perhaps Disney will realise Johnson was right. Like The Last Jedi, his latest film Knives Out focuses on a protagonist of humble origins undermining hereditary privilege in an empowering and exhilarating way. Unlike The Rise of Skywalker’s mixed reception, it’s received rave reviews, as well as box office success despite lacking a recognisable franchise identity. Johnson did supposedly have his own Star Wars trilogy in development, dedicated to as of yet unexplored corners of the galaxy. Hopefully, with the success of Knives Out and the Game of Thrones creators abandoning their planned trilogy, Disney will bring Johnson’s into existence as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, we’re left with The Rise of Skywalker. If you enjoyed this film, I don’t blame you. As previously mentioned, Abrams is a skilled director who knows how to construct an entertaining package. And perhaps it’s foolish of me to expect more of Star Wars. If you took The Last Jedi out of the equation, the approach of The Rise of Skywalker would feel completely consistent. But no, I refuse to settle for less when The Last Jedi demonstrated we could have so much more. The reactionary fans who won’t grow up and embrace a more mature and inclusive Star Wars should not be allowed to dictate the direction of a franchise that means so much to so many different people. Unfortunately, whilst it’s unfair to call The Rise of Skywalker a disaster, it is ultimately a regressive disappointment. Too cowardly to harness the potential of its predecessor and too ready to fall back on the crutch of nostalgia, it should have concluded the Skywalker Saga with the promise of a bright future for the franchise. Instead, it ended with a whimper.