The Rise of Skywalker is supposed to be the final film in “The Skywalker saga” of episodes 1-9 (although we’ve heard that before). Presumably, there will be other, non-saga films at some point in the future (earliest possibly being 2022) but for now, that’s a wrap.
RISE takes the curious step of revealing that, like his plan in the prequels and plot to ensnare the rebels in ROTJ, it was Palpatine all along, more or less-or at least the Snoke/Ren part of the First Order. The “Aftermath” novels which are considered part of the Disney canon seem to state that it’s mainly got it’s start as an Imperial remnant that fled into deep space and hid, rebuilding, and was mostly led by a former Grand Admiral and General Hux’s father. How Snoke & Ren fit in isn’t really explained (Although there’s a current comic series out there trying ), although the movie does reveal and imply that Palpatine created Snoke, and perhaps trained him as well. It’s unclear what Palpatine’s plans were had Snoke survived TLJ.
Although TLJ pretty much inferred that the First Order had more or less reconquered a chunk of the galaxy thanks in part to destroying the Republic capitol world, Palpatine offers to give them more ships-Imperial Star Destroyers fitted with superlaser/Death star style weapons. He also wants Rey dead…sort of. Oh yeah, and he’s got a secret about her too.
Funny thing is, apart from the obvious weapon change, they’re pretty much the same type of Star Destroyer first seen in “A New Hope” but also in “Rogue One” and “Solo”. Disney must really like the design.
“Empire” redesigned the ship in a few ways, but the most notable is the smaller tower on top of the bridge, which is given a more streamlined, lass radar-ish look.
The Sith fleet also seems to have it’s own uniform designs, TIE fighters and Stormtroopers, although it’s a bit unclear if these are just First Order troops transferred over or people from this new Sith planet, Exegol. We don’t learn much about these residents apart that they dress up like Palpatine himself and talk in a language very similar to Darth Maul’s music in The Phantom Menace.
Despite being pumped up in merchandise, the Sith troopers don’t really make much of an impression. Neither surprisingly are the Knights of Ren, who reappear here. Rogue One’s Deathtroopers gave more of an effort (and have now shown up in the Mandalorian as well).
Palpatine returns in a scene that’s pretty much the reason why the film was given an epilepsy warning. After this pretty dark opening, we’re back with the Falcon, where Poe, Finn, R2-D2, Chewbacca and a resistance alien of some kind are getting some intel from a First Order mole via a horned alien. (Who later winds up on the Supreme council’s table…minus his body).
Here we get the film’s first major action scene. In general, the ship gets a lot more to do here than it did in The Last Jedi, where it was largely just parked on Ach-To until the end of the film. We’re also given a new hyperspace trick, “hyperspace skipping” where the ship makes a few hyper jumps.
The TIE fighters also jump, something we’ve never seen in the films-the dialogue in “Star Wars” when the Falcon first encounter them at Alderaan’s debris seems to imply that TIEs are “short-range”, so the first order probably souped them up a bit.
After their little adventure we see Rey, who is Jedi training with Leia. Carrie Fisher died in 2016 and never filmed anything for Rise of Skywalker, however Abrams used what footage he could use from TFA and TLJ and somehow made it work with no obvious problems. It’s actually way more convincing than the partially CG-ed Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One.
Poe and co. arrive with the bad news: Palpatine is definitely back. We also see Rey actually have a conversation with Poe who she’s mad at for damaging the falcon with the skipping, but Poe hits back with BB8 being accidentally damaged during her Jedi training sessions. There’s a bit more bickering between the three in this film; whereas we only saw a bit of that in TFA with Rey and Finn, here they’re pretty much all kind of bickering, somewhat similar to the Luke, Han and Leia dynamic in the very first movie (and some parts of the prequels between Obi-Wan and Anakin) Here we’re also introduced to Dominic Moyhagen’s Resistance character, who’s not given much development but a line about Sith magic and cloning or something which I found kind of funny, considering one of his other famous roles, which also involved a thought-dead Dark Lord rising again to finish what he started-he just needs one more thing to do it….
Rey, from her reading of the Jedi lore, figures there’s only one way to get to the Sith planet-items called the “Wayfinder”-one of which captured by Ren already-and another on some other planet-Pannasos-that Luke was apparently looking for, but didn’t find.
Curiously, the Wayfinder prop is a glowing pyramid that very strongly resembles the “Holocron”. Holocrons were small holographic devices introduced in the 1991 comic series DARK EMPIRE, and are meant as teaching devices to Jedi and Sith. Although DE was later erased from canon (although a lot of DE’s plot points are shared by this film!) the holocrons showed up in Clone Wars and Rebels. While the Jedi Crons are normally cubes, the Sith ones are pyramids. Although in this case, the Wayfinders are really just plug-ins for ships, and don’t do any hologram stuff.
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We get a nice scene with the three main heroes-along with Chewie and Threepio-decide to head on the Falcon together to find the Wayfinder. In particular there’s this nice exchange between 3PO and R2D2 where he calls him his best friend. The two actually haven’t had much interaction in the last two movies-R2 didn’t reactivate until the end of The Force Awakens, and then he was off to Ach-To while 3PO stayed with the fleet pretty much. They’re separated again here, but still it’s better than a lot of what we got with the duo in the last two films.
Panassa is yet another desert planet, something there seems to be an abundance of in Disney’s take on the Star Wars galaxy (Although Geonosis from Lucas’s prequel trilogy was kind of a desert planet too, although more Mars-ish)
We get another scene with Kylo, who is now back with the Knights of Ren (It’s not really explained anymore about what they are, or where they were during Last Jedi) although one Stormtrooper says “Cool!”. Ren decides to put his old helmet back together.
He meets with the supreme council about the new Sith fleet, which includes the returning general Hux, some nameless First Order generals and a new, really loyal bad guy, Allegiant general Pryde, a veteran of the original Empire, so naturally he likes the idea that the First Order is getting his old leader back. Ren and Hux of course still don’t get along, and Ren of course is not pleased about the spy news. He also force chokes AND levitates a voice of dissent (not Hux).
Passsana is having a celebration that happens every 42 years (a nod to how long Star Wars has been going on itself). It’s being held by the Aki-Aki, who sort of an elephant/walrus type alien species. It’s an interesting and colorful scene, although of course it complicates their search for the Wayfinder.
Here, Ren goes into a force bond with Rey, talking a bit more about how he knows about her parents. To find out where she is, he rips off her necklace(!) Yep, the force can teleport physical stuff now.
Granted, it’s not entirely without setup. Ren’s wet hand in TLJ, although it can possibly be interpreted as tears by some, could also be spray from Ach-To.
After the Bond ends, a Stormtrooper shows up but is quickly impaled in the visor by an arrow by a mysterious masked man, who beckons the heroes into his vehicle. Turns out to be….wait…this is interesting…Lando!
Next: Continuing the breakdown of the story, my thoughts, trivia etc. as Rey begins to uncover secrets about her past, Poe gets secrets found about his past, and we get a fake-out “death”,
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