Star Wars: Chapter IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Happy New Year everybody! My first review for 2020 is actually for the last movie I watched in 2019. The movie everybody is talking about and wants to watch. The Rise of Skywalker promises to be THE final episode in the Star Wars saga that was first started some 43 years ago in 1977 by George Lucas. I may probably not be very popular here if I told you I found the finale disappointing ... I cannot really say I am surprised given that I have already seen the standard and style set by its predessors The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi which were a far cry from the classic and pure movie magic that were the original trilogy from George Lucas. Despite more light saber fights, more space dogfights, more explosions, and a longer running time, The Rise of Skywalker still felt lacking. I have always been a fan of JJ Abrams and he did fantastic jobs in his original materials like Cloverfield and in the reboot of the Star Trek movie series. However, I have to say that he failed to inject enough originality and creativity into the new Star Wars episodes. The story for one felt too similar to the original trilogy except we have new faces taking over the pivotal roles. The new actors are good but they lacked the natural chemistry or a witty unforgettable script that our beloved and original Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker had.  I would say that of the bunch of new and younger faces we have in the new trilogy, Adam Driver at least stands out while the others just seem to be trying (with limited success) to emulate the original cast. While there were some great nice emotional and even touching, moments and tributes to the original movie, these were standalone standouts rather than worked in coherance with the overall flow of the movie.

The main problem I had with these new episodes is that they present too many convenient plot twists everytime our heroes are caught seemingly in defeat. The notion of being able to resurrect people from the dead is another ridiculous plot device that undermines the audience intelligence. There are numerous and countless unexplained things that just happens so that the good guys miraculously wins over the bad guys at the end. Where simplicity to the plot would have worked, these new series instead let us down with a convoluted plot with too much happening and too much unexplained things.

Well at least we can be thankful that this should finally provide a closure to the 9 episodes saga. There will no doubt be many other stand-alone movies and TV series that take place in this vast Star Wars universe being churned out by Disney given its ownership of this lucrative franchise. At least those would not have the burden to live up to the original classic trilogy. If anything, all these past 40 over years of trying simply convince me that we have seen THE best already in the original trilogy and should be grateful at least for those. These had always been tough acts to follow and given the way movies have evolved since, it was unrealistic for all of us to keep wishing for the magic to be repeated. My humble advice to all die hard fans ... get yourself a good remastered copy of the original trilogy and rewatch them to relive the magic. The FORCE had never left us.