Review: STAR WARS EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

 

     This is, apparently, the end of the Star Wars series that started way back in 1977. And it's all over. We now know the stories of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia, plus their parents' stories, plus their kids' stories, and this is the end. It's over. Goodnight. And at a certain point near the end of the over-long Rise of Skywalker, when there are light saber battles going on at the same time as a fight in the sky involving flying ships shooting lasers at each other, I realized that this is a perfect time to end this thing. Not only because this has all been done before, but because I'm tired of it. This is boring. This is been-there-done-that. There is nothing new to add and nobody is going to outdo Star Wars from '77 or Empire from '79. That lightning in a bottle magic is ancient history and won't be repeated in new installments, so why even try anymore? This is the end, and it'd be nice if Disney actually realized that and did us all a favor and retired it forever.
     The best character in Rise of Skywalker is C3PO and the best scene in the entire film is when the "Star Wars" logo slams up onto the screen with the great beginning of John Williams' iconic score. I suppose that's saying something, that the best things literally involve nothing new about this modern trilogy of films. It's also pretty surprising that The Last Jedi, which most Star Wars fans think was akin to being stabbed in the back, is probably a better film than this final feature. So what happened exactly? What went wrong? Why have we arrived here, when a by-the-numbers, fairly entertaining, filled to the brim with fan service film is ultimately disappointing?
     Supposedly, before George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, he had been talking to the old gang (Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill) about reprising their roles. There's not really any point in wondering what a George Lucas written/directed 7th Star Wars film would have been like, because we're never going to see it and it probably would have been just as terrible as the awful prequel films. But in retrospect, did Disney do any better? Yes, the JJ Abrams directed 7th installment, The Force Awakens, was a good film. It was fun, simple, entertaining, and it was great to see Ford and Hamill and Fisher back in their old roles. Ultimately it was a misstep, though, as the story they concocted deprived the fans of what they wanted to see all along: a film not only starring the original gang back, but a film with them all together. But no, they came up with a story that left Luke Skywalker absent until the climax, killed off Han Solo before he could ever be in scenes with Luke, then killed off Luke in episode 8, then Carrie Fisher died in real life after episode 8. Disney ruined what everyone wanted to see in the first place. And while the new characters in The Force Awakens were supposed to carry the storyline, by the end of this final picture we now realize that the new character's storylines and arcs aren't that compelling, interesting, bold, new, or worth caring about.
     Besides Disney and the unfortunate script choices of The Force Awakens, you can blame writer/director Rian Johnson for the rest of the problems of this new trilogy. After the introduction of Rey, Finn, Poe, Snoke, and Kylo Ren in episode 7, you were curious and interested in their future. What drama would unfold between them? What great adventures would we see? What compelling stories would unfold? But after setting up the beginnings of the story, JJ Abrams left and gave the reigns to Rian Johnson, who apparently had other plans. Johnson killed off Snoke in episode 8 for no good reason, depriving episode 9 of a new, major, big bad to defeat. Johnson also threw away the plot surrounding the mystery of Rey's parents. Johnson not only killed off Luke Skywalker, but he made him give up on the force. So what does JJ Abrams do when he returns to finish off everything in episode 9? He changes everything back! It's almost like episode 8 never happened. Luke Skywalker is now back with the force and a gung-ho hero as if his mysterious, cranky-old-man phase never happened. The evil, big bad villain that was Snoke just becomes the evil, big bad Jedi villain, The Emperor, who somehow never died, simply because they needed a villain thanks to Johnson's failure. And that bit about Rey's parents? They might be somebodies in episode 7. In episode 8 they're just nobodies. Well it's episode 9 and now they're back to being somebodies. Cohesion, people! Is it that hard to write a three movie outline and stick to it? Thanks to a ton of mistakes in the writer's room, this new trilogy ends up a complete mess on numerous levels. And it's not even that the films are terrible. They're not. This new one actually has a great first half and some great special f/x and a fairly interesting story. The problem is that ultimately the potential for something epic and awesome was squandered.
     When episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker (which, let's face it, is the ultimate spoiler title), opens, we find the evil Kylo Ren searching and finding a beacon that will take him to a hidden realm amongst the stars where The Emperor, Senator Palpatine, is hiding. The last time we saw The Emperor he was being tossed down a shaft by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. It would've been nice if this trilogy had a great, all-star villain that is evil throughout three films and at the end there's an epic battle against him. Sadly, that's not in the cards.
     The rest of the plot has Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewbaca, and C3PO travelling to various worlds looking for the second beacon so that they, too, can find where The Emperor is hiding and kill him and also stop his army, which is now known as The Final Order. Is it me, or does it seem like in every Star Wars movie the villains have a whole army and a ton of ships and are ready to rule the universe and kill everyone but they lose...and then the next movie it happens all over again? Doesn't it take time, money, and people to build a whole army? Not only is this plot repetitive but it's ridiculous.
     During their adventures, Rey, Finn, Poe, and the crew are involved in a few interesting and exciting sequences. There's an entertaining, fast-paced battle with the heroes on flying vehicles racing across a desert planet. There's a pretty cool light saber battle on the remains of a Death Star ship that crashed in an ocean with giant waves. C3PO's quips and memory wipe storyline are amusing. Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron is a good hero. Finn and Rey, however, are the big stars and don't really get enough that's interesting to do to shine. Carrie Fisher is back thanks to unused old footage, but with so little footage to work with, it ends up being unsatisfying and weird.
     What The Rise of Skywalker does have, if you care, is fan service. You want fucking Ewoks? You got 'em! You want Lando Calrissian? You got 'em! You want Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill? You got 'em! What the film also has is cringe inducing silliness that a lot of the others have as well. While nothing in this film is as stupid as Jar Jar Binks or Leia flying through space, seeing The Emperor shooting lightning bolts at Rey while she painstakingly tries to fight it off with her lightsaber is groan-inducingly bad. And while Kylo Ren was at least once a semi-intriguing figure, his ultimate arc in this picture feels forced and unearned. And that's the big problem with this film and with these three new Star Wars films. The great drama of Luke vs. Darth Vader, the chemistry between Leia and Han, the bold, new, exciting scenes in Jaba the Hut's lair and the Walker assault on Hoth are nowhere to be found. This trilogy is just nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing worth caring about. Sure it's entertaining in spots, pretty to look at, amusing, sometimes funny, but it doesn't have the edge, that visceral excitement that the originals had.
     The last shot of Rise of the Skywalker is fantastic. It's Tatooine and there are two suns setting and the John Williams' score is playing and you should feel alive, you should feel like pumping your fist and leaving the theater with a big smile on your face. The problem is that the scene happened already. It was with Mark Hamill as Luke in Star Wars in '77. Disney can't even come up with anything new. They're recycling. And it's not working anymore. **1/2

Review: 1917

   
     Every year at Universal Studios for Halloween they introduce a bunch of new maze attractions. They're usually focused on random horror or something in pop culture. They did a maze based on The Walking Dead where you had to walk through a post-apocalyptic wasteland while zombies pop out. This year they had a frozen tundra maze with a Yetti where you have to walk around a Yukon gold mining set. The first half hour of the new Sam Mendes' film, 1917, is like if they did a WWI maze. You have to walk through trenches, across a muddy, desolate field filled with corpses and dead horses, weave through barbed wire, escape through cavernous, dark, subterranean tunnels. The reason the movie feels like this is because the film is in real time and, through motion picture magic, is just one shot. The camera seemingly never cuts and so you're travelling through these trenches and across this barbed wired landscape like you're really there. And that's the gimmick. A one-shot, real-time, World War I movie. And these days, with the endless plethora of war movies, TV shows, games, and books, you kind of need a gimmick to stand out.
     I've always complained about the saturation of WWII "entertainment." It sometimes seems like Hollywood often has no ideas anymore so they throw out Hitler and Nazi's and voila, movie made. I also can't really complain, as I read two WWII books this year, Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, and thought that one of the year's best films was the Hitler comedy, Jo-Jo Rabbit. But I have often wondered why they make so many WWII movies and TV shows and never touch WWI. I'm not entirely even sure what happened in WWI. Do they even bother to teach it in school? There's no compelling Hitler villain, no nuclear bombings, no greatest generation victory. So perhaps 1917 will change that. Or not. While it is a WWI film, it's an "in the trenches" affair, meaning you get to see and feel what it was like on the ground without any kind of obtrusive, outside interference like politics or history. You're literally thrown into a trench and off to the races for two hours without barely a breath. Which means that this is mere entertainment. Which is good and bad.
     The most famous one-shot film is probably Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, although it's been tried numerous times. I remember that lame Johnny Depp movie Nick of Time did it, and Mr. Robot did it in an episode in their third season that included an office building attack. The last interesting movie that tried it was Victoria, from Germany, which had the audacity to actually film the entire thing in real time (it even featured a bank robbery...which isn't as good as it sounds). 1917 does, unfortunately, deliver a one-shot film in real time but gives us a trick in the middle. The trick ultimately ruins the gimmick and cheats the audience. The reason for this is obvious; director Sam Mendes wanted to showcase sequences at night and during the day and couldn't do that in two hours if it takes place in real time. I don't mind the cheat, as the visually cool night sequence uses shadows, the lights of flare guns, and the light of a church on fire to induce great dramatic effect. And that's basically what's good and what the purpose of the film is, ultimately. It's an attempt to get our pulse racing, to heave us into this world at the lowly, teenage soldier boy, grunt's level. To experience war how it was. And for the most part, the film succeeds.
     The basic story of 1917 is quite simple. Two British soldiers are tasked with travelling by themselves to warn another infantry about a surprise attack. The problem is they have to travel miles across dangerous territory in the middle of war torn France to do it. This premise reminded me of the movie Cold Mountain, which was a take on The Odyssey. Traveling alone, constantly threatened, across a country broken by war while getting into various adventures at every turn, meeting new friends and villains along the way, never thinking you'll get to your ultimate destination but doing anything to get there. It certainly helps if you care about the protagonist, and at least early on you do, as George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, who play the two soldiers, do a good enough job playing off each other as just two dudes stuck together in war and making the best of it. Mendes mentioned that he didn't want to cast stars in the main roles as you'd obviously know who would die if there was a major movie star cast. Mendes probably should have taken that advice for all of the roles, as it's unfortunately jarring when Benedict Cumberbatch shows up as an officer and it takes you out of the movie. But that's a minor misstep, and obviously the movie was expensive to make so they need some names. And while the movie is good not great, it only has a few flaws. The one glaring one is the sequence featuring the cute, young, French lass that practically falls in love with one of the soldiers two seconds after meeting him. Ugh. I suppose they thought they needed a slow, peaceful, somewhat happy scene amidst the carnage but having a bombed out city just happen to have a pretty, French girl show up out of nowhere to be kind is ludicrous. And while the film attempts to be realistic in the real-time, one-shot, horrors of war right in your face, right now, right here, really happened, feel it type of way, it doesn't exactly help that one of the soldiers practically becomes Superman by the end by being shot at a dozen times and living, running and avoiding multiple bombs going off around him, somehow not drowning in a river, somehow not being killed by a plane, tunnel collapse, etc., etc., etc. I guess if you really did make a movie about the realistic side of war it'd be the most boring thing ever filmed, so Hollywood has to pizzazz it up.
     Sam Mendes, who also co-wrote the film with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, is pretty much the perfect fit for a film like 1917. It's sort of an art house film and sort of a typical, big budget, entertainment picture and he's been straddling that line all of his career. He of course made it big twenty years ago with American Beauty, and the last we saw of him in the movie world he was directing two James Bond flicks that were entertaining but not particularly memorable. He directed two good shows that made it to Broadway in the last few years that I saw, The Ferryman and the Alan Cumming Cabaret return. And 1917 is pretty much the opposite of a meaty, wordy Broadway show. 1917 doesn't really have any great characters or story. It's all sumptuous visuals and it looks gorgeous (Roger Deakins, director of photography, should win the Oscar). The big money shot, which features one of the soldiers running across a field avoiding bombs, looks impressive in the trailer but the obvious, fake, special f/x mar it on screen in the final, longer version. But there are numerous other, wonderful, impressive, stylish as hell scenes filled with high tension that are worth the price of admission. The sequence with the crashing plane heading right at the soldiers is awe-inspiring. And the best sequence involves the soldiers running for their life in a subterranean, German tunnel. The use of shadows and light is excellent. The picture is beautiful to look at. Few squabbles aside, it's one of the better films of the year. Another war picture to entertain us. I suppose that's never going to change. ***