#because everything seems to be leading up the reveal that jj is a lesbian and then she kisses will

[frankiebirds]

genuinely struggling to read emily's expression here as anything other than jealousy

[ninasfireescape]

The ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ review no one asked for

I wanted to enjoy it. I really did.

I was one of the people who didn’t dislike The Last Jedi. Sure, I didn’t love it. When I watched it, I thought it was too long and had made certain characters choices I wasn’t too happy with, but overall it was enjoyable and left me feeling satisfied. It was not as good as The Force Awakens however and hearing JJ Abrams was returning, I thought he might be able to restore the final episode to its former glory.

That indeed seemed like the case for the first hour. The gang were back together, it was quick-paced, I had an emotional investment in what was going on (and it seemed like they were taking the Finnrey route I wanted them too). I couldn’t exactly follow every plot specific but does that really matter in Star Wars when it’s so exciting? The bit on Star Killer base was genuinely inspired, I was laughing away at once again what terrible shots the stormtroopers were and at Hux being the spy. Every scene with Lando in was gold.

It was just after they got to the water planet that things started to go wrong. I’m not sure quite what it was exactly that made it so disappointing from this point onwards. Perhaps the gang splitting up or the rather horrifically done Leia death scene. I know they didn’t really have much choice with what footage they had but having watched each member of the original trio died, this death was devoid of emotion and predictable. And she died to make Kylo Ren hesitate for one moment. What a waste!

Then the pointless force ghosts! Seeing Luke was nice but it felt like he was just there to add clunky explanation since the plot made so little sense at this point. And when Han appeared, I actually laughed. It was so inconsistent with the tone of the film and he appeared all while Kylo Ren was standing in the middle of a stormy sea that he could fall into at any moment, right in the most climactic section of the film, just to have a conversation with the son who killed him! It was the most outrageous example of a fan service cameo that just didn’t assimilate with the rest of the film.

I don’t actually have a problem with Rey Palpatine. If anything, I thought it was really cool she was a Palpatine. I really didn’t want her to be a Skywalker because I felt it would be predictable and repetitive. Her being a Palpatine also sends the message to young viewers that blood relations don’t make a family which I think is very important for children to hear. Honestly, the only problem I have with it is that it means some poor lady had sex with Palpatine. I agree that it was a ridiculous retcon of The Last Jedi but then I didn’t like the reveal about her parents in TLJ anyway because of how it was executed. Another thing that bothers me about it is the utter lack of information we get about Villanelle Rey’s mother. Already we don’t know much about her father other than that he’s Palpatine’s son but with her mother, we get nothing. With Rey having wondered about who her parents were for so long, surely it would make sense for her to want to know more about her mother and maybe even take her surname in place of ‘Palpatine’. I also firmly believe Rey’s mother should have been played by Hayley Atwell because she looks so much like Daisy Ridley. And while Jodie Comer is an amazing actress, I think 1. She deserves a bigger role in the Star Wars franchise and 2. Her casting as Rey’s mother exemplifies Hollywood’s fear of casting older actresses as mothers. A twenty six year old as a mother!?

About Zurii, I always appreciate new female characters in Star Wars and I thought she had a great design. However, it is blatantly clear what her purpose in the film was. It was to stop people calling Poe gay, inserting a female character for one scene (she barely spoke in her other scenes so I’m not counting those) with no backstory of her own, just to prove he is attracted to women. Well, first of all, he can be bi, secondly, that’s not going to stop people shipping Finnpoe at all. I didn’t clock until afterwards when I saw people talking about it online, but it was super problematic to make Poe a former drug dealer. Sure, the only Latino character in this trilogy. Also, it in general complicates the little we know about Poe’s backstory so far.

With Rose, all our worst fears were confirmed. She just wasn’t there. She appeared in a couple of scenes and had some lines but you’d think she was no more than another miscellaneous rebel, no more significant a role than Billie Lourd’s character. Did they really give into the white fanboy pressure? How could they erase Rose when she was such a good character? She was tough and fought strongly for her beliefs, but she was also compassionate, sensitive. Now, I never particularly shipped Finn and Rose in TLJ. I thought it seemed a bit of a rushed romance and Finn didn’t seem that invested in the kiss they shared. However, you can’t just pretend they didn’t kiss in the last film. They interacted a few times but there was no sense of any bond between them. Where there relationship stood was unclear. Were they now a couple or had they had an offscreen conversation where they decided they were better off as friends? Who knows?

And now onto the worst part of the film: Kylo Ren and more specifically that kiss. Gross. Okay, to be clear, I wasn’t entirely opposed to a redemption arc for Kylo Ren. Sure, it would be predictable, but it’s not like Kylo Ren’s crimes are any worse than those of Darth Vader and he was still capable of redemption. I liked Kylo Ren as a villain. He perfectly depicted that type of whiny, entitled white man who we see so commonly in real life, but again, he could have achieved some redemption if it were implemented correctly. What we got in the film was not this. He was still committing genocide at the start and carried out one good deed which was saving the woman he had a crush on. For this one good act, he was entirely forgiven and somehow all of the genocide wasn’t his fault. And he got rewarded with the woman! If anything, I’d call that act selfish since he only wanted to save the woman he liked. Adam Driver did the best he could with it but everything about it was awful. And it was out of character for Rey to kiss him and forgive him. She stabbed him little more than half an hour earlier! At the end of the last film, she slammed a door in his face. It makes no sense to me how she could suddenly be so invested in him becoming a better person. There’s also the fact that wasn’t included in the films that Rey and Kylo Ren are related (aunt and nephew to be exact). I wasn’t aware this was Game of Thrones! And according to Wookiepedia, Rey was 18 at the start of the films and is now 20 whereas Kylo Ren is now 30. A ten year age different would be fine if Rey were older but at this point, the age gap is uncomfortable and very borderline.

If they’re going to make the claim that it wasn’t actually Kylo Ren who was doing the evil deeds but some dark force corrupting him, they should have explained how the mechanism works. At least in the prequels, we got some sense of Anakin slowly being corrupted. To me, it reads like in some horror films when the abusive characters are found to have been possessed by demons or something. It trivializes abuse which is something very real, acting instead as if no abusers can actually be responsible for their actions and it is the cause of some supernatural force instead. I suppose the kiss doesn’t have to mean anything. After all, Leia and Luke kissed in the original trilogy and Finn and Rose kissed and apparently that meant nothing.

I firmly believe the series intended a Finn and Rey romance. Lest we forget The Force Awakens, Finn awkwardly asking Rey if she had a boyfriend. That was clear coding for him having a crush on her. In that film, the two developed such a strong bond, and they have so much more chemistry than Rey and Kylo Ren ever had. All the scenes with Rey and Finn (and Poe) were full of light and emotion. The scene at the end where the three of them hugged was honestly the high point of the film. Now, when I left the cinema, what was plaguing my mind the most was that throughout the film, Finn had a secret he wanted to tell Rey. It was first suggested when they thought they were going to die in the quicksand. “Wait, Rey, I never told you!” It had to be that he loved her. What else could it be? Supposedly, it was that he was force sensitive. I don’t believe that for one second. If he needed to tell her that, why couldn’t Poe be included? And why did he never get the chance to tell her? It was a build-up I got invested in with no payoff. It must have been that he loved her. So, if that was the case, that leaves us with two options. Either there was a Finnrey subplot that got cut but they forgot to cut these scenes out (or simply couldn’t be bothered to), or they thought it would be funny to have the black supposed male lead chasing after the white female lead who didn’t love him back because she was instead in love with the genocidal white villain. I ship Finnrey so much and find the second option so horrific but I wouldn’t put it past the writers. Finn played such a significant role in the first half of the film, as he should since he’s meant to be the male lead in the series, but after that, he was dangerously underutilized. At least the ending where no one ends up with each other is compliant with my headcanon that Rey, Finn and Poe (and I don’t mind Rose being in the mix too) all end up married to each other and adopt a bunch of porgs.

And lastly, the lesbian scene. Pathetic. We don’t know the character names and I can’t even find out who the actresses were that played them. Okay, they kissed which is a pretty big deal (even though kisses apparently mean nothing in Star Wars) and it’s certainly a step forward from the Avengers: Endgame ‘’’’representation’’’’, but it’s still rather useless considering the big deal JJ Abrams made about how there would be representation.