The Rise of Skywalker: The Fall of In Media Res

The Rise of Skywalker is a perfectly fine entry into the canon. It’s tightly scripted and beautifully rendered, full of consequential situations and lots of action. It tells the story of the ragtag Resistance movement— still very reduced in size since the end of The Last Jedi— trying to find a hidden area of the galaxy where the “Final Order”— the successor to the First Order— is amassing a new fleet, lead by none other than Emperor Palpatine himself, back from the dead. It’s a complex goal, and it sets our heroes Finn, Poe and Rey on a literally non-stop quest. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, just an amazing actor) is on a singular collision course with Rey, who he wants to come over to the Dark Side. The film is full of neat cameos, some genuine surprises— and if you have been onboard with this franchise you’ll get a little weepy at the end. A fitting end to a truly spectacular franchise.

In broad strokes, Daniel is correct: The Rise of Skywalker is basically The Return of the Jedi after the application of Daniel's Remake Formula. The major story beats are pretty much the same. But without George Lucas mucking the thing up with Ewok kiddie pandering and a static mentor-father-son conflict at the center, it has been improved quite a bit.

Satisfying endings aside, one dissonant element shines through The Rise of Skywalker: the undeniable feeling of compromise, that the owners of this intellectual property are running scared. They’re scared of their own fans. They went out of their way to placate the vocal critics of the last entry, the controversial The Last Jedi, manifested as annoying notes throughout the new film. Rose, Finn’s plucky teammate, is completely sidelined. Kylo’s helmet, smashed to pieces in the previous film (and for good reason) is fixed as good as new. And there is one, huge, ridiculous erasure so egregious it made me say, “What?” out loud in a darkened theater.

The Mandolorian and "The Child." This show was also
influenced by the manga and film series "Lone Wolf and Cub"

Disney’s timid, full fan service approach to the IP is also evident in “The Mandalorian,” currently streaming on Disney+. In the details, the show is as rich as any canon entry, full of robots and aliens and great visual effects. But the story it tells is not nearly as rich. The premise is simple and episodic: The title character enters a situation, gets into a bit of a scrape, then gets out, ready for the next situation. It’s very 1970s-TV-like: It reminded me of the Bixby/Ferrigno “The Incredible Hulk” or (as John pointed out) “Kung Fu.” I’m not caught up and I’ve already seen story lifts from Shane, Seven Samurai and The Unforgiven. “Baby Yoda” is drawing all the attention now as only a beloved character redesigned as a tiny, high-eye-to-face-ratio character can, but it’s now depressingly clear this show is going out of its way not to stray from rote recitations from canon.

Werner Herzog as "The Client," making his own German
Chocolate Existential Ripple ice cream.

This need for fan service is why the most hilarious goof that ever appeared in any Star Wars film had to be ruined. Near the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when Lando Calrissian announces the evacuation of Bespin, we see in a crowd panic scene a guy carrying a plastic ice cream maker. It’s a bucket with a bar on the top to carry the inner container. They were common: I ate a lot of ice cream that came out of those things in the 1970s. It was very obviously thrown in so an extra could have something to do with his hands.

In episode 3 of “The Mandalorian” we see the title character get rewarded for a successful bounty job with stacks of special steel carried in a round bucket with a base on top. It even has a name: a "camtono." In this universe an ice cream maker is actually a safe, apparently. Goof erased.

What happened? As much as I’d like to blame Disney, I think 42 years of fandom has loved this franchise to death.

This isn't the beginning of a movie: it's the middle
of a complex sequence.

Consider the first film-- from a 1977 viewpoint. For kids and grownups who liked genre sci-fi films, Star Wars was an utter shock. The film BEGAN in the middle of a great space battle, and we were quickly introduced to a cast of androids and robots and a masked villain and a princess. As the story unfolded George Lucas refused to explain a single thing. Laser swords? Superluminal travel? A giant monkey dog thing? Nope, we were left as clueless as if we were randomly dropped into an exotic foreign city without a guidebook. The only explanations we were given about anything were plot points, usually one-on-one efforts to convince people to do things: to get Luke to leave his home, Leia to give up the rebel base, to get Han to rescue Leia, etc. But the super-weird stuff? Just a given. Pre-“Episode IV” Star Wars was perfect expression of in media res ("in the middle of things"): An entire self-contained universe we got to run around in for 135 minutes, which was a big part of the thrill. It hooked a lot of people, me included.

Ten years prior “Star Trek” had done something similar in science fiction, but that universe was our universe, just in the future. But know one thing about the humans in the Star Wars universe: they look like us, are similar to us in most ways… but they aren’t us at all. The opening title card “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” has never been explained.

Star Wars was a huge success, and it spawned a dedicated fanbase: a sequel HAD to be made, even though the first episode had a tight ending and only one open end (Darth Vader survived). This sequel— The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was remarkably good. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, It matured the space-opera story of the first movie, introduced romance and mysticism and had a plot with genuine consequences. It also had the best final reveal in any popular film, maybe ever. It was a triumph, not only because it was not the “Star Wars Goes Hawaiian” sequel everyone expected, but it rewarded every fan, deepening their relationship to the franchise AND raising their expectations.

Like I said, Empire was good. Maybe too good: It raised fan expectations so high the franchise had nowhere go but down. This may well have been the place where fandom began to fray, leading to the awful state it is in today.

The ecstasy of fandom is how it creates personal meaning and forges communities. But the tragedy of fandom is this emotional satisfaction comes with a relentless need to identify, classify and explain. Humans are pattern-seeking, storytelling creatures: it's our nature. To draw deeper meaning from a hermetic work like the original Star Wars, we needed all those mysterious little details explained so we could feel more at home there.

When the second set of trilogies came around, George Lucas adamantly refused to bow to fan service. His ideas concerning his own creation had changed and matured between 1983 and 1999, and he had whole host of things to say, some of them quite bizarre. He wanted to explain things, but he did it with complex political discourses and the added existence of a symbiotic organism which “gave” people The Force. He also added more of the feeble kiddie pandering he hinted at in Return of the Jedi, but to his credit he corrected it by Episode II. Lucas clearly didn’t quite understand what the franchise’s fanbase had evolved into-- and, delightfully, he really didn’t have to care.

The throne room from The Rise of Skywalker

But he eventually sold off his franchise, and the new owners— Disney— were aimed like a laser beam at giving fans what they want. The overarching theme of the entire third trilogy of Star Wars films is how their new IP has been guided by the expectations of the fan base. Every fan has a strong opinion about what Star Wars is and should be: some foolish, some nuanced. They started out strong with The Force Awakens and successfully deepened their commitment to original storytelling with Rogue One: a Star Wars Story.

But The Last Jedi was the tearing point. Rian Johnson’s film got a lot done in its exceeding length: it deconstructed George Lucas’s galaxy as a place of irredeemable corruption, where noble causes were not worth much more than the sinister ones. It pulled away from the Holy Skywalker family, establishing that Rey was a Jedi from nowhere, just as Annikin Skywalker came from nowhere. As for Luke Skywalker himself, he was disgusted with the Jedi and saw it as a pointless cult that needed to die.

There were a lot of Star Wars fans who were okay with this redefinition, mostly because it represented a fresh viewpoint, a way to appreciate this universe with added complexity and nuance.

Rian Johnson directing Daisy Ridley on the Throne Room
set in The Last Jedi. Rian's use of red in this film was
incredible. Apparently the curtains on this set were made
from real red velvet.

But there were an equal number of Star Wars fans who HATED what Rian Johnson was doing, and wanted it stopped. For them, they needed the comfort of a black-and-white universe. They needed the saga to be about powerful families: the galaxy far, far away was to be administered by the Kennedys and the Windsors and the Rockefellers. They spoke loud and long, loud enough to spook the IP’s new masters at Disney. Revealing new things is anathema: they wanted stories that explained things. In media res, the style that animated the first film, was extinct by the last one.

When it came time to make Episode IX, guess who Disney listened to?

Still, I am putting in a very strong recommendation to go see The Rise of Skywalker. It is still an immensely entertaining film, especially If you have been a fan of the series. You will leave very satisfied— even if part of you will always wonder what might have been if we hadn’t screwed it up.

In a strange, roundabout way the evolution of Star Wars fandom from awestruck enthusiasm to toxic, second-guessing complaining is a tonic: it makes it easier to say goodbye to the franchise.