Secrets of the Force

by Edward Gross

  I had my lawyer write them a letter saying, “Unlike my sister, where you do have a nondisclosure agreement, you have nothing with me. So I’m just going to say whatever I feel and this is what I feel. If you don’t like it, explain yourself.” And I did. I never got into any great detail, but I knew there was unused footage of her. J.J. had told me there was footage. Then, of course, they embraced the obvious.

  J.J. ABRAMS

  We realized immediately that there was no way to conclude the Skywalker Saga without Leia. She’s too important and we obviously didn’t want to use a CG character—that never would have worked for us. And we didn’t want to recast, of course. And then we went back and looked at the footage that we had cut, which I had bemoaned doing at the time on Episode VII, and we realized that we had the answer to our impossible question, weirdly, in this footage. And it’s just her. I mean, she’s in the movie. It’s Carrie Fisher as Leia in a way that is still uncanny to me. Weirdly, it’s even more impossible that she’s not [actually here], because she was an actor in the film every day in the editing room, so it’s very strange.

  There were a bunch of challenges with this along the way, but the biggest was emotional. Everyone cared deeply and wanted to do the best that anyone in their positions could. It was incumbent upon me and Chris to make sure we were telling a story using the tools we had—and also the existing footage—to bring Leia to life. Carrie was a friend and I adored her and loved working with her; nothing was more important than doing right by her. The key was to understand the experience I wanted the audience to have, and the intention of that moment, and then make sure everything we were doing was saving that. In addition to the technical aspects of it, which were extensive, a lot of credit needs to go to the actors who performed in those scenes without Carrie.

  * * *

  Filming on The Rise of Skywalker began on August 1, 2018, at England’s Pinewood Studios, and concluded on February 15, 2019. It was produced for $275 million and had a worldwide gross of $1.1 billion. And the critical reaction was muted as well, with Rotten Tomatoes aggregating a rating of 51 percent based on 495 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. It’s considered the lowest-rated live-action film in the series’ long history.

  RAY MORTON

  The Rise of Skywalker is a terrible movie. It’s the worst of the sequels and the worst film in the entire nine-movie series. The story in the finished film is chaotic, convoluted, and at times incomprehensible. As is the case in the other sequels, there’s no overarching plot, just a collection of subplots scrambled together. There’s a whole bunch of frenetic running around in search of clues and objects and people, none of which ultimately mean a damn thing. The storytelling is frantic and confused, full of plot holes, hard to follow, exhausting to sit through, and absolutely no fun at all. We’re far, far away from the straightforward, compelling entertainment that was the original Star Wars. The script and the film lack the references to myths and fairy tales, religion, cinema, and pop culture that gave texture and resonance to the original trilogy’s narrative. In their place are nothing but references to other Star Wars movies. Most of the major elements in the script are recycled from the other films in the series in an endless stream of fan service, callbacks, and references. There’s absolutely nothing original in the piece.

  * * *

  In crafting the narrative, Abrams appears to have been determined to undo just about every innovation Rian Johnson incorporated into The Last Jedi, a charge he and cowriter Terrio deny. In the film, Kylo goes back to wearing his faux-Vader mask. The Last Jedi eliminated Snoke and made Kylo the trilogy’s big bad. Rise replaces Snoke with the formerly late Emperor Palpatine (who is resurrected out of nowhere) and moves Kylo back to the subordinate position. Rey’s parents are no longer nobodies. She is given the mysterious, connected-to-the-original-trilogy lineage that Johnson tried to get away from in Last Jedi, although the specific heritage she is given in Rise is the most ludicrous one imaginable—Rey is revealed to be Palpatine’s granddaughter. And Rose’s role in the story is reduced to little more than a glorified cameo.

  RAY MORTON

  This might not have been so bad except that every new idea Abrams and Terrio came up with was really, really terrible: the aforementioned return of Palpatine, which goes completely unexplained. In the end of Return of the Jedi, we saw Vader hurl the Emperor down the reactor shaft and explode and yet here he is again, unexploded and still cackling, with no explanation given. Apart from being a bad idea all by itself, reviving Palpatine is yet another nail in the coffin of the original trilogy hammered in by the sequels—now not only are Luke, Han, and Leia failures, but so is Vader. We thought he helped save the galaxy by killing the Emperor, but—nope—that didn’t happen either.

  The aforementioned familial connection between Rey and the Emperor. Apart from being the most horrible, fan-fiction-ish plot twist conceivable, this plot twist forces us to ponder the notion that while Palpatine was plotting to subvert the Republic to become the Emperor, lure Anakin Skywalker to the dark side, murder all the Jedi, and conquer the galaxy by building a few Death Stars, he found the time to go on a few dates, get married, raise a few little Siths, and then become a grandpappy. W. T. F.? Palpatine is given a stadium full of acolytes down in his Sith hole. Since there is only supposed to be two Sith at any one time, who are these worshipful onlookers? It turns out Palpatine has been behind all the evil events in the sequels (including Snoke, who the Emperor apparently whipped up in a lab). Like Blofeld in Spectre, he is apparently the author of everybody’s pain, even though he has been neither seen nor heard even once in this new trilogy up until now. It was a terrible idea in Spectre; it’s a terrible idea here.

  The movie does have a few good points: as always, the cast does its very best. Daisy Ridley continues to bring grace and dignity to Rey; Adam Driver continues to bring an impressive level of commitment to a difficult character; Ian McDiarmid is as good as always as Palpatine; Keri Russell is a lovely addition to the cast, even if we only get to see her eyes; it’s good to see Billy Dee Williams again; and one longs for a new Star Wars movie that contains as much charm and energy and good-natured high spirits as Oscar Isaac brings to the role of Poe Dameron. Lando and Chewie flying in with the rescue fleet at the climax of the movie is a wonderfully thrilling Star Wars moment. The scene in which the spirits of all the Jedi speak to Rey and urge her to carry on is powerful and moving. The moment at the end in which Rey claims the Skywalker name for herself does pull at the heartstrings. It doesn’t make much logical sense, but it does make emotional sense and it provides a lovely and poetic grace note to end the picture on. Unfortunately, these moments are diamonds in a field that otherwise consists of dross. If it wasn’t already, one thing The Rise of Skywalker makes abundantly clear is that there was never a master narrative plan for these sequels.

  PETER HOLMSTROM

  Disney/Lucasfilm flip-flops again with the firing of Colin Trevorrow and the nixing of his Duel of the Fates script. But, because so much money had already been put into the production, the hastily put together Rise of Skywalker ends up looking like, frankly, a made-for-TV movie. More plot holes than connecting threads, and a solidification of the inactivity of each of the main characters. None of them did anything to solve the problems of the movie—it was all done by people off-screen. Poor Rose Tico too. They’re pulling stuff from everywhere, and it ends up looking like a stringed-together Frankenstein’s Monster of a movie. Again, Disney listened first and foremost to the angry fanboys on Twitter when making this movie. “Rey needs a lineage? She’s a Palpatine! You hate Rose Tico? SHE’S GONE! You’re shipping Rey and Kylo? HERE YOU GO!” I was at the Rise of Skywalker panel at Star Wars Celebration Chicago, and there was a five-minute standing ovation for Kelly Marie Tran. Longer than any other part of that panel. Toxic fandom is a very small percentage of the fanbase, and studios need to stop chasing their approval. Rise of Skywalker is a very good example of what happens when you do.

  GLEN OLIVE
R

  Lucas’s genius is that he could see beyond the established conventions—and perceived limitations—of traditional filmmaking by taking a countertop of time-tested ingredients and convictions, and whipping up a new kind of cinematic soufflé on the spot. And when those conventions didn’t exist, he invented his way to a solution. Which is the mark of a great chef and an extraordinary filmmaker. Lucas himself never bested the original Star Wars. I’m not sure anyone ever will. Is it the greatest movie of all time? It’s really quite impossible to make that assertion, as time is still counting. Is it the most influential film of all time? There would be some very strong arguments for this. Which, at the end of the day, is a remarkable and admirable victory in itself.

  PETER HOLMSTROM

  Really think about character here. Who’s leading the charge? Who’s driving the action? No one. Lando “conveniently” convinces the galaxy to fight—in the most absurdly large fleet ever, I might add. Why now? First Order’s been killing people left and right, and all the galaxy needed was Lando to come and say, “Hello, what have we here?” The fleet arrives just in time (at the same time), but the Emperor’s fleet has difficulty leaving? Blah. Leia reaches out with the Force and brings Kylo back from darkness—again, no reason why she couldn’t have done that before. Rey defeats the Emperor, but only after a bunch of Jedi possess her—again, what’s so special about now? No structure, no emotional arcs—and I don’t care what J.J. Abrams says—Finn, in the finished film, is not Force-sensitive. He’s got the hots for Rey, wanted to tell her, but never did. That’s his arc. That’s what’s on the screen. And that’s (sadly) all he did.

  RAY MORTON

  From the release of The Force Awakens, Disney sold this new series of Star Wars movies as a trilogy—three films telling a single tale. But as the trio, and especially as The Rise of Skywalker, unfolds, it becomes increasingly obvious that the people responsible for making these new movies never bothered to sit down and work out exactly what the story was they wanted to tell. Instead, they just seemed to do the cinematic equivalent of throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks.

  GLEN OLIVER

  The sequel films don’t carry the same quality of Lucas’s. From the outset, and throughout the sequel trilogy, it was clear there wasn’t a particularly strong rudder steering these films towards any kind of discernible endgame. Each installment felt as if it was trying to reconcile itself with, and make the best of, the picture which had come before it. Each installment felt compromised in some way by what had become before, instead of empowered and emboldened by the previous narrative. Each film felt reluctantly informed by its predecessors. The Force Awakens felt hamstrung by its devotion to the original trilogy. The Last Jedi felt unsatisfied with The Force Awakens and reactive against its content. The Rise of Skywalker felt like a pushback against The Last Jedi, and like a frenzied attempt to reconcile itself with the challengingly, dangerously amorphous vagaries introduced in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The sequel trilogy was a scramble, a messy grab to try to compensate/cover up for the simple reality that there wasn’t a cohesive vision in place for the films from the outset.

  RAY MORTON

  Whether intentionally or not, there’s an arrogance in this—a sense that the companies felt that fans would buy any old junk that was thrown on them as long as the name Star Wars was slapped on it and that the companies were perfectly okay with this—that makes the whole thing feel like more than a bit of a cynical cash grab. This is something George Lucas would never have tolerated—even when the results weren’t always as good as we would have liked them to be, there was never a sense that Lucas was trying to give the audience anything less than the very best movies and experiences he was capable of giving them.

  JOHN KENNETH MUIR

  (author, Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of the 1970s)

  The Rise of Skywalker is the worst Star Wars movie ever made. In forty plus years, I have never felt so uninvolved in a Star Wars film; never felt that I was watching something utterly overproduced, but totally underplanned. Nothing in the movie matters, because as long as Disney strip-mines the property, there will never be a meaningful end to Star Wars. That knowledge robs the movie of any sense of importance or nostalgia. The plot is nonsensical, impossible to follow, and, most damningly, largely uninteresting. The promise of The Force Awakens is long since squandered. This is the worst film of the Disney trilogy, which is saying something. Watching it, I remember thinking how utterly mediocre the film is. It never creates any groundswell of emotion or nostalgia in the viewer. It’s just … fast moving. It substitutes velocity for meaning; speed for intelligence.

  Looking at the trilogy as a whole, it is apparent that Disney took arguably the most valuable IP in the world (and perhaps, in the history of the world) and utterly squandered its potential by failing to plan a three-movie arc that would complete the Star Wars saga in a meaningful and lasting way. That said, I love Rogue One and Solo. For me, Disney’s only success with the property has been in the “side” movies or one-offs. The Disney trilogy is a mess.

  GLEN OLIVER

  The movies are playing it safe. The prevailing aesthetic is, largely, filled with aggravatingly neutral colors. How many sand/desert planets do we really need to see? The current films feel like they’re set in a universe that is being controlled by a rigid, rigid, corporatized dogma of what Star Wars is, as opposed to imagining what Star Wars could be. I’ve seen it argued that fan investment in Star Wars is wobbling to some extent. I’d argue that, if this is true, it’s likely due to the fact that the current iteration of Star Wars looks … literally … like the same old thing, over and over again. A phenomenon exacerbated considerably by Disney’s proclivity to lean into nostalgia when cutting promos for the films, instead of exemplifying how each film feels distinctive from the last. It feels like protection and exploitation of investment over narrative sanctity.

  RAY MORTON

  And that brings us to the one thing that the sequel trilogy proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. Disney’s goal with the sequels was to create a series of films that looked and felt like the films in the original trilogy. They managed to create three movies that reasonably approximated the imagery and the tone of those initial three pictures. However, they left out one crucial ingredient—the vision. What the sequel trilogy shows us is that while others may be capable of making movies that simulate the original three movies, in the end, Star Wars without George Lucas just ain’t Star Wars.

  GLEN OLIVER

  Paradoxically, the current animated television product—which is as canonical as the films—feels much broader and less restrained in its interpretation of Star Wars. I’m guessing this is because they’re cheaper to produce, have a smaller audience to upset, thus, exploring the potentials of the asset leads to less risk all around. It’ll be interesting to see if, in the long run, in terms of texture and vibe and imagination, the new live-action shows feel more “familiar”—like the movies—or are wilder and more exploratory, like the cartoons. I’m betting they feel more familiar, because they will cost quite a bit more to make, and taking chances will seem less appealing in those instances. If I am wrong, I look forward to being wrong.

  DALE POLLOCK

  (author, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas)

  I actually found the film very satisfying, kind of a suitable conclusion. Originally Lucas had this idea of three trilogies, so this really does tie into what he originally conceived of. To me, it was pretty satisfying emotionally. If you had told me in 1977 that this series would end on a female-centric note, where the real hero would be a woman, no one would have believed you. I think that says a lot about how the series reflects what’s really going on in our world. I thought that by the end he really did reinforce the message that he wanted, which was compassion and love versus revenge and death, although there are a lot of deaths in that movie without a doubt. I don’t know how much creative impact he had in these final films—very little, actually,
I think—but the attitude towards him was take your money and go away. But I do think it ended up reinforcing the values he set out to instill in his audience.

  DAN MADSEN

  (owner, the Official Lucasfilm/Star Wars Fan Club, 1987–2001)

  I don’t want them to make mediocre Star Wars. That, in my opinion, is what really killed Star Trek for a while. They were just making mediocre Star Trek, and that’s just not good enough to keep the audience coming back and keep them interested. I don’t want to see Star Wars fall into that. That’s why I was really concerned when they were doing one a year. I was saying, “No, that’s just too much!” Part of the fun of the Star Wars films is getting to wait a couple of years and building up, waiting for the next movie to come out. But when it’s like, “BAM, BAM, BAM”—one every year—you’re not making it special anymore. Give people time to wait and build up that anticipation and make it really good.