![]() Even the actors felt removed from what they were experiencing. ![]() And a number of the story beats were simply Xeroxed whole cloth from the first films (Rey’s evil lineage a wooded planet as the refuge of the Rebellion, sorry, Resistance, etc.) Everything was a copy of a copy and as such was dull and slightly worn. The Emperor’s scary, spiky throne was a discarded design from original trilogy illustrator Ralph McQuarrie for Return of the Jedi. A submerged Death Star was a part of the treatment that Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt had cooked up for The Force Awakens. Clearly time (and the lack thereof) must have been a factor so many of the images and ideas were recycled from other places. Many of them undid the hard work that Johnson had done in the previous film but just as many were boneheaded for completely separate reasons. ![]() There were a number of baffling creative decisions made by Abrams and his collaborators. But a year ago, at the world premiere of the movie in Los Angeles, I was totally let down. I loved Star Wars and firmly believe that the previous saga installment The Last Jedi is a total masterpiece and one of the best movies of the past decade. Even though there were things that tripped my Spidey senses in the pre-release materials ( why did they need to bring back the Emperor?), I was still optimistic. Maybe you just didn’t see it the first time because you were so caught up in what it was supposed to be that you didn’t appreciate it for what it was. That the movie will, like some other films, reveal itself to be more complicated and lovable than you initially expected. Watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker again, which isn’t something that I’d recommend, exactly, you can still feel yourself getting tricked into thinking that maybe you’d missed something the first time. As it turns out, the saga didn’t end with a bang, but instead closed out with a whimper. A year after its release, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker remains a low point for the Star Wars franchise and for big budget filmmaking in general. After all, this was meant to be a victory lap, a way of tying up loose ends and ending the main Star Wars features in a place that felt emotionally satisfying and creatively dynamic. Sure, they were in a tough spot, but movies have survived lofty expectations and changes in leadership before. ![]() Abrams and the screenwriter behind the abominable Justice League. (Movies like Rogue One and Solo weren’t canonically “saga” tales they were Star Wars Stories.) Admittedly, that’s a lot of weight to rest on one movie’s shoulders, especially a movie that had a notoriously difficult production that saw the original director ( Colin Trevorrow) fired during pre-production and his script almost entirely thrown out, only to be replaced by Force Awakens filmmaker J.J. This wasn’t just the conclusion of the so-called sequel trilogy, which started with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and continued with 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, all of the marketing materials reminded us, but was rather the spectacular finale to the entire Star Wars saga. Released a year ago today, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was endlessly hyped in the pre-release build up. ![]()
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