Well, it happened. The final installment of the Star Wars 42-year cinematic saga.
I thought I'd enjoy the film, maybe even write about it.
But here's the deal. It's bad. It's so, so bad. There are multiple levels of bad here. But, since I don't want to ruin the story for those who've yet to see it, I'll place the rest beneath a fold. Read on, only if spoilers be damned.
If you're still here, you want to know my down-low.
First, there's the film making. This is 2019, not 1977, so I have high expectations as a movie consumer. The film making itself in this one is so, so bad. This was the most shocking thing about IX. I knew Abrams would go for nostalgia and servicing fandom. I figured he'd undermine VIII. I didn't know he would make such a straightforwardly bad movie, one alternately boring and poorly told.
The opening 30 minutes in particular move so fast, across so many worlds and plot points and characters old and new, with such flat-footed awkwardness, that it feels as if Abrams stepped in as director to replace another director who had already filmed all this. But that's not what happened. It's all him. Working for Disney, that trillion-dollar behemoth with all the money and time in the world to let Abrams make the best movie he possibly he could. And the result is shoddy beyond belief.
There are moments of elegance and grandeur. Rey's duel with Ren in his TIE fighter. The unexpected, graceful healing of the serpent beneath the sands. (Nice nod to The Mandalorian, that.) The ocean duel. The Sith coliseum of dead souls, the undead Emperor upheld by a black claw. Finn and Poe shooting up a Star Destroyer while running towards a low-angled tracking camera. The lightsaber "swap" from Rey to Ren (the one good and successful extension of a Rian Johnson idea). The shocking accidental death of Chewbacca at Rey's hands --
Whoops! I forgot, nobody dies in Star Wars.
And there's the rub. The problem is the script. It feels like it was written by committee in a succession of a dozen drafts. The result, at least until the final act, comes across like a series of videogame player quests. The doohickeys sought don't matter in themselves. They're just the next required token to level up and receive the next assignment.
The other problem with the script is its bottomless well of bad ideas. Hux is a spy! (Dead Hux. Dad Hux!) Leia retconned into a Jedi! Leia as Rey's true Jedi Master! A fleet of thousands of Star Destroyers, each as powerful as a Death Star -- yet unable to move without being directed by a single frail antenna! (Dracula rules, as ever.)
Worst of all, Palpatine as Rey's grandfather and inexplicably alive after being thrown to his death by Vader in VI and the secret Blofeld-like master-puppeteer behind Snoke and the First Order. (Hey Abrams: The first order? No, it's THE FINAL ORDER! At least take your cue from a dictionary or something.) The opening words of the crawl read, "The dead speak!" A nice B-movie callback to the saga's origins. But also a foolish, self-parodying decision by a writer-director who quite literally has done nothing but make sequels and remakes for his entire career. The man does not know anything except what he watched as an adolescent. Sometimes he remixes it well. Here, not at all.
What Abrams needs is whatever happened to Lindelof while making The Leftovers. A kind of creative baptism, liberating him from his felt need to please fans by giving them what they think they want and instead steering into, rather than away from, the original and often deeply weird creative ideas that result.
What Abrams needs is an overseer -- what is often known outside this galaxy as an editor or producer -- who watches his back and tells him when he's gone astray. It turns out Kathleen Kennedy is not that person. After half a decade care-taking the new, post-Lucas Disney period of Star Wars, she has given us a track record by which to judge her. It's not pretty.
For example: Instead of the now-canonical opening lines of the crawl, the obvious opening words should have been, "General Leia Organa has died". Next: "The galaxy gathers to mourn its departed royal leader. Following the Battle of Crait and the mysterious passing of the beloved princess, people flock to join the Resistance in a final push to defeat the evil First Order".
Is that so hard?
Instead, Abrams thought to honor Carrie Fisher by using preexisting footage of her as Leia paired with digital work to map her face onto other actors in key moments. It doesn't work. It's clunky and forced and, wittingly or not, ends up putting more rather than less weight on her presence in the film.
What else?
Poe continues to be little more than Captain Earnest. Finn almost reveals his heart to Rey -- the film teases us with it -- and then it's left dangling. (Was a scene of closure left on the cutting room floor? Is it meant to pop back up in the next trilogy, when Old Finn and Old Rey lose their only child to the Supremely Final Order's Supremely Supreme Leader, a clone of a clone of Palpatine's great-grandfather's uncle? Yeah, I know, this is "the end". But I also know Disney and economics. Trust me, there will be a new trilogy -- and it will get worse.) At least in part it's left dangling because Abrams decides to make Rey and Ren's final moment a kiss. I'm sure some other version of this film could have sold that, but Abrams certainly doesn't.
Now, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley have long been the best things about this third trilogy. And they do excellent work again in their roles. Were it not for them, the movie would be borderline unwatchable. But after Rian Johnson did not so much in The Last Jedi to move their characters along, Abrams freezes them in place until, with a snap of the fingers, their character arcs lurch into their foreordained change/resolution -- and off to the climax we go.
Note well: Abrams isn't only copying Lucas (again and again), he's copying himself. The big moment for Ren to turn from evil to good is prompted by nothing so much as an imaginary memory of the last conversation he shared with his father, Han Solo. So Abrams in effect recreates his own scene from VII on the bridge when Ren kills Han -- only this time, for no apparent reason, he throws away his lightsaber, having argued himself into it.
Whereas Rey, gone angry and Sith-y because bloodline, turns back to good after a handy chat with Luke in Force Ghost form. And then we're off to the races.
Writing all that out is downright painful. I have loved Star Wars since 1979. I even liked I and III. (Yeah, I'm admitting that publicly.)
But this IX? It's just so, so bad.
Not to mention Lando, featuring Billy Dee Williams playing Lando as Billy Dee Williams playing Lando. Or blink-and-you-miss-them new characters like Zorii or Jannah -- so full of potential, but too little too late. Oh, and Rose, who for no reason at all is relegated to Leia's babysitter. She could and should have been the Lando of this trilogy: Introduced mid-chapter, then a fellow front-liner in the finale. Why not include her with the trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe on their (three dozen) mission quests? Just one more way to stick it to Rian Johnson, apparently.
And that's going to be the real legacy of this film. Abrams' fundamental failure to understand what The Last Jedi accomplished, and what it made possible. Either Kathleen Kennedy agrees with Abrams in his estimation of that film, or she capitulated to fandom's purported desires (and thus lacks the insight or leadership to steer the ship). Either way, it's quite a thing to behold a billion-dollar franchise lack any semblance of vision across three films made in only a few years' time. (What makes III-VI so amazing is that they actually took the time to make the story and therefore the movies work in the imaginations of a generation.)
So Episode IX had all the potential to be something amazing. Special, even. Even granting the hand Johnson was dealt (not least the foolish decision to destroy the New Republic, thus reducing the trilogy to a rehash of the original, at least at the formal level), he set up the finale to tell a new story: No Supreme Leader, no Emperor, no Death Star, no consolidated Rebels ready for a Final Mission Once And For All. In Johnson's hands -- or Brad Bird's, or Christopher Nolan's, or Tony Gilroy's, or Sam Mendes's, or James Mangold's, or Kathryn Bigelow's, or whomever -- it could have been great. It could have been different, new, bold, and unexpected. It could have taken us by surprise, not by resurrecting the ancient dead of the Original Trilogy, but by telling a new story in a new way about these new characters we'd come to care for.
But in Abrams' hands, no one's ever really gone, and there's only ever one story to tell, and re-tell, over and over until the end of time. A pity.
So, on to some of the questions I know other Star Wars fans will want to know ...
Is IX worse than I-III? It's potentially worse than II. But I thought I and III were actually good. Episode II is the Worst. Movie. Ever. Made. But it's certainly a discussion whether Episode IX has now displaced Episode II. Moments here surpass moments there; but the filmmaking is less shoddy there than it is here. It's all a matter of taste, really. What sort of bad do you prefer your bad movie to be?
J.J. Abrams is the best caster in films, hands down. That's his destiny: A producer of blockbuster films who has veto power on all casting decisions. He may also be allowed to touch up dialogue. Otherwise he is not allowed anywhere near a script. Ever. He is not allowed to produce or direct films based on preexisting intellectual property. Ever. And he is only allowed to direct movies written by someone other than himself. Ever.
The biggest disappointment to the new trilogy has been Finn. He had such potential in the movies. He will always be the missed opportunity, in two respects: To explore the psychology of a turncoat stormtrooper, and to consider the moral ambiguity of fighting and killing an opposing military force largely made up of child soldiers (i.e., children kidnapped and brainwashed into service).
Lastly, the one thing that made my heart skip a beat in this movie? Rey's self-made yellow lightsaber. But it should have been modeled on her long staff: Either lengthier in form or double-bladed like Darth Maul's. So even her new lightsaber deserved more thought than it was obviously given.
I thought I'd enjoy the film, maybe even write about it.
But here's the deal. It's bad. It's so, so bad. There are multiple levels of bad here. But, since I don't want to ruin the story for those who've yet to see it, I'll place the rest beneath a fold. Read on, only if spoilers be damned.
If you're still here, you want to know my down-low.
First, there's the film making. This is 2019, not 1977, so I have high expectations as a movie consumer. The film making itself in this one is so, so bad. This was the most shocking thing about IX. I knew Abrams would go for nostalgia and servicing fandom. I figured he'd undermine VIII. I didn't know he would make such a straightforwardly bad movie, one alternately boring and poorly told.
The opening 30 minutes in particular move so fast, across so many worlds and plot points and characters old and new, with such flat-footed awkwardness, that it feels as if Abrams stepped in as director to replace another director who had already filmed all this. But that's not what happened. It's all him. Working for Disney, that trillion-dollar behemoth with all the money and time in the world to let Abrams make the best movie he possibly he could. And the result is shoddy beyond belief.
There are moments of elegance and grandeur. Rey's duel with Ren in his TIE fighter. The unexpected, graceful healing of the serpent beneath the sands. (Nice nod to The Mandalorian, that.) The ocean duel. The Sith coliseum of dead souls, the undead Emperor upheld by a black claw. Finn and Poe shooting up a Star Destroyer while running towards a low-angled tracking camera. The lightsaber "swap" from Rey to Ren (the one good and successful extension of a Rian Johnson idea). The shocking accidental death of Chewbacca at Rey's hands --
Whoops! I forgot, nobody dies in Star Wars.
And there's the rub. The problem is the script. It feels like it was written by committee in a succession of a dozen drafts. The result, at least until the final act, comes across like a series of videogame player quests. The doohickeys sought don't matter in themselves. They're just the next required token to level up and receive the next assignment.
The other problem with the script is its bottomless well of bad ideas. Hux is a spy! (Dead Hux. Dad Hux!) Leia retconned into a Jedi! Leia as Rey's true Jedi Master! A fleet of thousands of Star Destroyers, each as powerful as a Death Star -- yet unable to move without being directed by a single frail antenna! (Dracula rules, as ever.)
Worst of all, Palpatine as Rey's grandfather and inexplicably alive after being thrown to his death by Vader in VI and the secret Blofeld-like master-puppeteer behind Snoke and the First Order. (Hey Abrams: The first order? No, it's THE FINAL ORDER! At least take your cue from a dictionary or something.) The opening words of the crawl read, "The dead speak!" A nice B-movie callback to the saga's origins. But also a foolish, self-parodying decision by a writer-director who quite literally has done nothing but make sequels and remakes for his entire career. The man does not know anything except what he watched as an adolescent. Sometimes he remixes it well. Here, not at all.
What Abrams needs is whatever happened to Lindelof while making The Leftovers. A kind of creative baptism, liberating him from his felt need to please fans by giving them what they think they want and instead steering into, rather than away from, the original and often deeply weird creative ideas that result.
What Abrams needs is an overseer -- what is often known outside this galaxy as an editor or producer -- who watches his back and tells him when he's gone astray. It turns out Kathleen Kennedy is not that person. After half a decade care-taking the new, post-Lucas Disney period of Star Wars, she has given us a track record by which to judge her. It's not pretty.
For example: Instead of the now-canonical opening lines of the crawl, the obvious opening words should have been, "General Leia Organa has died". Next: "The galaxy gathers to mourn its departed royal leader. Following the Battle of Crait and the mysterious passing of the beloved princess, people flock to join the Resistance in a final push to defeat the evil First Order".
Is that so hard?
Instead, Abrams thought to honor Carrie Fisher by using preexisting footage of her as Leia paired with digital work to map her face onto other actors in key moments. It doesn't work. It's clunky and forced and, wittingly or not, ends up putting more rather than less weight on her presence in the film.
What else?
Poe continues to be little more than Captain Earnest. Finn almost reveals his heart to Rey -- the film teases us with it -- and then it's left dangling. (Was a scene of closure left on the cutting room floor? Is it meant to pop back up in the next trilogy, when Old Finn and Old Rey lose their only child to the Supremely Final Order's Supremely Supreme Leader, a clone of a clone of Palpatine's great-grandfather's uncle? Yeah, I know, this is "the end". But I also know Disney and economics. Trust me, there will be a new trilogy -- and it will get worse.) At least in part it's left dangling because Abrams decides to make Rey and Ren's final moment a kiss. I'm sure some other version of this film could have sold that, but Abrams certainly doesn't.
Now, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley have long been the best things about this third trilogy. And they do excellent work again in their roles. Were it not for them, the movie would be borderline unwatchable. But after Rian Johnson did not so much in The Last Jedi to move their characters along, Abrams freezes them in place until, with a snap of the fingers, their character arcs lurch into their foreordained change/resolution -- and off to the climax we go.
Note well: Abrams isn't only copying Lucas (again and again), he's copying himself. The big moment for Ren to turn from evil to good is prompted by nothing so much as an imaginary memory of the last conversation he shared with his father, Han Solo. So Abrams in effect recreates his own scene from VII on the bridge when Ren kills Han -- only this time, for no apparent reason, he throws away his lightsaber, having argued himself into it.
Whereas Rey, gone angry and Sith-y because bloodline, turns back to good after a handy chat with Luke in Force Ghost form. And then we're off to the races.
Writing all that out is downright painful. I have loved Star Wars since 1979. I even liked I and III. (Yeah, I'm admitting that publicly.)
But this IX? It's just so, so bad.
Not to mention Lando, featuring Billy Dee Williams playing Lando as Billy Dee Williams playing Lando. Or blink-and-you-miss-them new characters like Zorii or Jannah -- so full of potential, but too little too late. Oh, and Rose, who for no reason at all is relegated to Leia's babysitter. She could and should have been the Lando of this trilogy: Introduced mid-chapter, then a fellow front-liner in the finale. Why not include her with the trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe on their (three dozen) mission quests? Just one more way to stick it to Rian Johnson, apparently.
And that's going to be the real legacy of this film. Abrams' fundamental failure to understand what The Last Jedi accomplished, and what it made possible. Either Kathleen Kennedy agrees with Abrams in his estimation of that film, or she capitulated to fandom's purported desires (and thus lacks the insight or leadership to steer the ship). Either way, it's quite a thing to behold a billion-dollar franchise lack any semblance of vision across three films made in only a few years' time. (What makes III-VI so amazing is that they actually took the time to make the story and therefore the movies work in the imaginations of a generation.)
So Episode IX had all the potential to be something amazing. Special, even. Even granting the hand Johnson was dealt (not least the foolish decision to destroy the New Republic, thus reducing the trilogy to a rehash of the original, at least at the formal level), he set up the finale to tell a new story: No Supreme Leader, no Emperor, no Death Star, no consolidated Rebels ready for a Final Mission Once And For All. In Johnson's hands -- or Brad Bird's, or Christopher Nolan's, or Tony Gilroy's, or Sam Mendes's, or James Mangold's, or Kathryn Bigelow's, or whomever -- it could have been great. It could have been different, new, bold, and unexpected. It could have taken us by surprise, not by resurrecting the ancient dead of the Original Trilogy, but by telling a new story in a new way about these new characters we'd come to care for.
But in Abrams' hands, no one's ever really gone, and there's only ever one story to tell, and re-tell, over and over until the end of time. A pity.
So, on to some of the questions I know other Star Wars fans will want to know ...
Is IX worse than I-III? It's potentially worse than II. But I thought I and III were actually good. Episode II is the Worst. Movie. Ever. Made. But it's certainly a discussion whether Episode IX has now displaced Episode II. Moments here surpass moments there; but the filmmaking is less shoddy there than it is here. It's all a matter of taste, really. What sort of bad do you prefer your bad movie to be?
J.J. Abrams is the best caster in films, hands down. That's his destiny: A producer of blockbuster films who has veto power on all casting decisions. He may also be allowed to touch up dialogue. Otherwise he is not allowed anywhere near a script. Ever. He is not allowed to produce or direct films based on preexisting intellectual property. Ever. And he is only allowed to direct movies written by someone other than himself. Ever.
The biggest disappointment to the new trilogy has been Finn. He had such potential in the movies. He will always be the missed opportunity, in two respects: To explore the psychology of a turncoat stormtrooper, and to consider the moral ambiguity of fighting and killing an opposing military force largely made up of child soldiers (i.e., children kidnapped and brainwashed into service).
Lastly, the one thing that made my heart skip a beat in this movie? Rey's self-made yellow lightsaber. But it should have been modeled on her long staff: Either lengthier in form or double-bladed like Darth Maul's. So even her new lightsaber deserved more thought than it was obviously given.