So Sue Me: Episode IX Review

I didn't like it. But then, I didn't expect to like it.

Like most people, I was intrigued when it was announced in 2012 that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm and would be producing a sequel trilogy. Not long afterwards, I watched the J.J. Abrams film Super 8. Suddenly I felt concerned. Super 8 was tantalizing before ultimately collapsing into an incoherent mess.

Having just forked over a wad of money to endure the ninth installment of the Skywalker Saga, I can now say that my concerns were not without merit. I was done with this one long before the closing credits rolled.

Here are my gripes with The Rise of Skywalker in no particular order:

First off, dumb title. What does it even mean? Rey's not really a Skywalker, and Luke is dead. What exactly is rising? Of course, none of the titles of the sequel trilogy have really been clever. It would have made more sense for Episode IX to be called The Last Jedi and call Episode XIII something else. I guess it's proof that they didn't really have a plan for any of this - just throwing crap against a wall and figuring out what sticks. Maybe J.J. will fix that in 20 years when we get the special edition re-edits.

Not a single memorable line of dialogue. Nothing clever. Nothing that even made you at least chuckle a little bit. No witty banter. A few solemn words spoken about the universe and how they're all going to show up and help if they just go fight the evil.

Poe and Finn are soooo boring. I know Poe is supposed to be the new version of Han Solo, the reckless nonconformist with amazing piloting skills, but let's be honest: no little kid is running around the house pretending to be Poe. And isn't that the name of the guy in Kung Fu Panda? As for Finn, in The Force Awakens, Finn seemed like he was going to have an important purpose in this new trilogy, but it turned out to be his ability to find equally pointless female characters to run around with. His was an interesting character idea but ultimately the idea went nowhere. I don't think there's much of a market for novelizations of the adventures of Poe and Finn post-Episode 9.

The undead Emperor Palpatine being all creepy down in the Sith cave was kind of cool. And the way they used him to tie up some loose ends worked fine. But it also seemed like they were admitting, "You know what? We tried creating some new characters, and they all suck." Did we need to see Han Solo again? (Nope) Did Lando really need to be in this to make it work? (Nothing against Lando, but the answer is no) If we think BB-8 is cool, why are C-3PO and R2-D2 still prominent? Threepio had way too many lines and was cringeworthy throughout. And when Luke showed up, I was fit to be tied. I'm so done with crusty old man Luke. I did not need to see him again.

Not much of a story. Just rushing from one video game sequence to another. It reminded me of a Marvel movie. And I don't like those either. Whatever story they try to tell is borrowed from the earlier movies.

I know it's science "fiction" but it doesn't even seem like they're trying to get you to suspend your disbelief anymore. I'm not a physicist, but fighting a battle on the surface of a Star Destroyer? Is that a thing that could happen, even in a galaxy far, far away?

Maybe they were using the force, because what can't the force do? Apparently it can pass physical objects through some dimension of space. And do video chats. And blow up ships. And heal. And suck the life force from people. Are Jedis in fact mutants from X-men? I've had this opinion for awhile but I think the Jedi have been weighing down the movies for too long. Rogue One and Solo were better films because they didn't have to be preoccupied so much with the force.

If Rey is the ultimate powerful Jedi, why did she need ghost Luke to pull his crappy X-wing out of the water with the force? Rey was blowing ships to smithereens using the force just an hour earlier. You know she had to use the force to get that forty year old piece of junk running. How many years had it been submerged like that? And she didn't even have a droid to help her fly it.

The Death Star ruins were also kind of cool. But it introduced a bunch of recycled ideas from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi: the Death Star throne room, Luke going into the cave and seeing his image in Vader's mask, Vader's deathbed repentance. Really? Nothing original?

I've always wondered about passage of time in these movies. And this is a gripe with all of them and not just the latest. It bugs me that they send out a signal and the entire fleet is on the scene in like 15 seconds but yet they're always losing maps and can't figure out where some of the worlds are. Rey never changed clothes once the entire film even though she'd been training and crawling around in an old Death Star and fighting lightsaber battles out in the rain. She probably really needed a shower.

No romance at all in this trilogy. We had Han and Leia in the original trilogy and Padme and Anakin in the prequels. Young Han and Qi'ra in Solo. But this trilogy? Nothing. They waved at it a few times, like with Finn and Rose in the last one and Poe and the Keri Russell character this time around, but nothing interesting or ongoing. I guess they would say Kylo and Rey, but that's still super weird. Did anyone really want to see them kiss? Not me.

The lesbian kiss wasn't that subtle. They might as well have zoomed in for the close-up. But if you're going to be woke, J.J., let's be woke! Don't waste the big moment on a couple of throwaway characters! I'm sure they could have figured out a way for Rey to kiss a CGI Leia or something. It wouldn't have been any more uncomfortable than her kissing Kylo and no one cares about any of these characters anymore anyways.

The ending was interesting. Return of the Jedi brought up questions of incest in a galaxy far, far, away when Leia and Luke were revealed to be twins. The last scene in The Rise of Skywalker could have been interpreted a little differently if they hadn't already spelled out Rey's parentage earlier in the movie...

Maybe I'm just too old and grumpy.  I had to be the guy afterwards who didn't like it when everyone else did.  Maybe if I go see it again I'll appreciate it a little more and I'll be like, yeah, it's so great. It doesn't matter because none of this is of any significant consequence to my life. And I'll be back in a couple of years when Disney releases the next one. Because I don't like the comic book movies and I have to have at least one movie event in my life that I can go participate in. So the joke's on me.