The film-makers behind Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final instalment in the nine-movie saga, want one thing to happen – for audiences to be convinced there has been a plan all along for this latest trilogy. And that JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson et al were not just making everything up as they went along.
There are so many threads from Abrams’ The Force Awakens that remain dangling in the ether that it is tempting to wonder if, in The Last Jedi, Johnson simply couldn’t be bothered to continue the story handed to him, and decided to go off on a completely different (albeit brilliantly entertaining) tangent. Yes, we found out in the 2017 film why Ben Solo turned to the dark side (he and Luke Skywalker had a moody Jedi spat), and began to understand that the ancient order might not ever be reformed.
But we still don’t have a clue who the knights of Ren are (from Ren’s freaky vision on Takodana), nor why Maz Kanata was holding Luke’s old lightsaber – the one that originally belonged to Anakin and was given to Luke by Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). We certainly don’t understand yet why the laser sword was calling to Daisy Ridley’s Rey in the first movie, nor why the latter was able to emerge as an almost fully powered Jedi in The Force Awakens, when it took Skywalker three movies to reach the same status.
We are also in the dark over who Supreme Leader Snoke was, how and why he came to set up the First Order, as well as what his connection might be to the old Empire of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Trailers for The Rise of Skywalker don’t bother to make any further mention of the now deceased Snoke, but we do get a heavy hint that Palpatine will be back. We hear his voice, while Rey visits what appear to be the ruins of the second Death Star.
So what is going on here? A new interview with Star Wars producer Michelle Rejwan suggests that the team behind the space saga are ultra-aware that reintroducing the saga’s big bad is risky at this late stage. They are trying to sell this to us as an obvious creative choice, when it is far from being so.
“I think there was a feeling of inevitability that Palpatine had been a part of all three [trilogies] and in the biggest picture of nine movies, he has been there from the very beginning,” Rejwan told sci-fi blog Io9. “And his presence in this movie, we will not spoil that, but when you see it […] not only does it have the feeling of inevitability, but the ending of where we left him last, in Return of the Jedi, was very important to JJ and [screenwriter] Chris [Terrio] and to all of us. We discussed it at great length. So no, I don’t think so. I think it definitely feels as though it is in the DNA of the nine. And it felt appropriate to have his presence be in this movie.”
This is utter space guff. At no point in either of the first two instalments in this trilogy were there any obvious seeds planted that would indicate Palpatine’s return in the third. Frankly, we would have been less surprised to see Darth Vader resurrected than the evil Emperor. The suspicion is that producers realised they had no idea what to do with Snoke, and instead decided to fall back on an older and more impressive villain.
In storytelling terms, this is a bit like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy deciding to dump Sauron as its major antagonist part way through The Two Towers, then bringing back Smaug the Dragon or Morgoth (Middle-earth’s first dark lord) for Return of the King. It feels like a cheat, and it will continue to do so unless The Rise of Skywalker manages to explain what the hell is going on.
The much maligned prequel trilogy, for all its faults, at least had a traceable beginning, middle and end. It documented the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. The original trilogy followed the journey of Anakin’s son, Luke, from Jedi wannabe to master, over the course of three movies. There were no major detours along the way.
If this new trilogy is to achieve the status of that classic triptych, it will need to prove with The Rise of Skywalker that these new films are about more than just filling multiplexes; that there is a heart and soul behind them; that there really is a story worth telling, and not just one that had to be told in order to sell merchandise and refill Disney’s coffers after it bought all rights to Star Wars for $4bn in 2012.
Abrams has the storytelling nous and creative verve to bring everything into full alignment by the end of The Rise of Skywalker. But there is still the nagging recollection that this is the guy who never really explained those blimmin’ numbers in Lost. Perhaps we need to close our eyes, the way Luke did during his early training from Obi-Wan, and trust our instincts rather than our senses. Then again, the younger Skywalker got blasted in the face quite a few times by that pesky Jedi training ball before he started to get the hang of it.
