THE DARK AND LIGHT SIDE OF PRINT REVIEWS
Star Wars Episodes I-IX, as New York Times critics saw them
The critics’ consensus on The Rise Of Skywalker, the final instalment of Star Wars, is... not great. According to Rotten Tomatoes, before the movie opened, it stood at 57% fresh.
But reviews haven’t always been so harsh. At The New York Times, at least, the critics have positively endorsed some entries in the franchise, beginning with the first one in 1977, which Vincent Canby, senior critic at the time, described as “the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made”.
Here’s a look, in order of release date, at how The Times has reviewed the saga, episode by episode:
Published May 26, 1977:
STAR WARS
For the movie that started it all (technically Episode IV), Canby identified many of writer-director George Lucas’ influences, including Quo Vadis?, Buck Rogers, Ivanhoe, Superman, The Wizard Of Oz, The Gospel According To St. Mat
thew, the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. “The way definitely not to approach Star Wars,” Canby cautioned, “is to expect a film of cosmic implications or to footnote it with so many references that one anticipates it as if it were a literary duty. It’s fun and funny.” Although he got in a dig at the plot — “the story of Star Wars could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible” — Canby complimented Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (as Luke, Leia and Han Solo), noting that “everyone treats his material with the proper combination of solemnity and good humour that avoids condescension”, and called C-3PO and R2-D2 “the year’s best new comedy team”.
June 15, 1980:
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Presciently describing this first sequel (Episode V) as part of “a projected series that may last longer than the civilisation that produced it”, Canby spent a portion of his review on the sensation caused by the original Star Wars — not in a good way: “There is more nonsense being written, spoken and rumoured about movies today than about any of the other so-called popular arts except rock music. The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air,” he wrote, before going Back on to damn The Empire Strikes
with faint praise by comparing it to the first Star Wars: “It’s not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it’s also silly.” Or maybe they should be ashamed? He panned the director (Irvin Kershner) and the cast, in Fisher’s case, with a sexist comment.
May 25, 1983:
RETURN OF THE JEDI
The final entry (Episode VI) in this trilogy is also “by far the dimmest adventure of the lot” with “tiresome” fight scenes and a “virtually nonexistent” narrative, Canby wrote. “All of the members of the old Star Wars gang are back doing what they’ve done before but this time with a certain evident boredom.” He did find a few moments directed by Richard Marquand that “evoke legitimate smiles”, including the Ewoks whizzing around a forest, but they were the exceptions, not the rule.
May 19, 1999:
THE PHANTOM MENACE
A new trilogy called for a new reviewer, and Janet Maslin was drafted to weigh in on Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, which she deemed a Critic’s Pick. The release (with Lucas back as director) had been preceded by product tie-ins that reportedly promised to make the movie profitable even if no one bought a ticket, but Maslin declared that “stripped of hype and breathless expectations, Mr Lucas’ first instalment offers a happy surprise: it’s up to snuff. It sustains the gee-whiz spirit of the series and offers a swashbuckling extragalactic getaway”. Her praise was tempered. The cast, including Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala and Ewan McGregor as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, is “often sandbagged by the physical demands of their roles”; the “bland conception” of Anakin Skywalker (played by Jake
Lloyd) is a problem; and the film could do without the “noxious Jar Jar Binks” or the villains who sounded “embarrassingly like dated stereotypes from the sinister Orient”.
May 10, 2002:
ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Our current co-chief critic, A.O. Scott, took on Star Wars: Episode II — Attack
Of The Clones and described it as “many things — a two-hour-and-12-minute action-figure commercial, a demo reel heralding the latest advances in digital filmmaking, a chance for gifted actors to be handsomely paid for delivering the worst line readings of their careers”. But if you couldn’t guess already, it’s not, he wrote, much of a movie, “if by movie you mean a work of visual storytelling about the dramatic actions of a group of interesting characters”. Lucas, directing again, “seems to have lost his boyish glee” and has overseen “some of the most embarrassing romantic avowals in recent screen history” (involving Portman and Hayden Christensen, now playing Anakin Skywalker). The special effects “demonstrate impressive polish and visual integrity”, but, Scott added: “So what?”
May 16, 2005:
REVENGE OF THE SITH
After being disappointed by the first two entries in this trilogy, Scott was in for a surprise with Star Wars: Episode
III: Revenge Of The Sith. It turns out to be “by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr Lucas has directed. That’s right (and my inner 11-year-old shudders as I type this): It’s better than
Star Wars”. There were still problems with the acting and writing (Portman has little range and Christensen plays Anakin’s “descent into evil as a series of petulant bad moods”), but never mind those. “The sheer beauty, energy and visual coherence of Revenge Of The Sith is nothing short of breathtaking,” and as the flawed Anakin devolves into a terrifying villain, “it is a measure of the film’s accomplishment that this process is genuinely upsetting”. What’s more, “the rise of the Empire and the perdition of Anakin Skywalker are not the end of the story, and the inverted chronology turns out to be the most profound thing about the Star Wars epic”.
Dec 16, 2015:
THE FORCE AWAKENS
For the start of this trilogy, our co-chief critic Manohla Dargis got straight to the point: “The big news about Star Wars:
The Force Awakens is — spoiler alert — that it’s good!” Although Episode VII has the “usual toy-store-ready gizmos and critters”, there are also “appealingly imperfect men and women” played by the “charismatic, talented trio” of Oscar Isaac, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley as Poe, Finn and Rey. What’s more, the images of “Boyega and Ridley holding a lightsaber are among the most utopian moments in a Hollywood movie this year”. Thankfully, director J.J. Abrams, a fan of the Lucas movies, “doesn’t pile on the mayhem, and, for the most part, the pace remains fast without being overly frantic”. It could well be that the student has surpassed the master: Abrams “hasn’t made a film only for true believers; he has made a film for everyone (well, almost)”.
Dec 12, 2017:
THE LAST JEDI
Dargis was so enthralled with Episode
VIII that she made it a Critic’s Pick: “It has visual wit and a human touch, no small achievement for a seemingly indestructible machine that revved up 40 years ago.” Writer-director Rian Johnson tries to put “his fingerprints on a franchise that deliberately resists individual authorship” and “largely succeeds” with a tangled story “mitigated by Mr Johnson’s quick pace and the appealing performers”. Poe, Finn and Rey remain a “dream team”; Adam Driver as Kylo Ren “delivers a startlingly raw performance”; and added characters like Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose re-establish the franchise’s diversity bona fides — “a vision of the future you can recognise”. But mostly it’s the director’s touch that makes this episode work: Johnson “brings lightness to his banter, visual flair (not simply bleeding-edge special effects) to the design, and narrative savvy to Rey and Kylo Ren’s relationship”.
Dec 18, 2019:
THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
For Episode IX, A.O. Scott returned to the reviewer’s chair, and Abrams took back the directing reins. As you probably know by now, it’s not a positive notice. The new film reaffirms the franchise’s “commitment to dynastic bloodlines and messianic mumbo-jumbo”, while Ridley and Driver, as Rey and Kylo Ren, “are downright valiant in their pursuit of tragic dignity in increasingly preposterous circumstances”. Even worse, “the struggle of good against evil feels less like a cosmic battle than a long-standing sports rivalry”. Abrams, “perhaps the most consistent B student in modern popular culture”, has made the Star Wars galaxy “a more diverse and also a less idiosyncratic place”. In the end, the final episode “isn’t a great Star Wars movie, but that may be because there is no such thing”.
It’s not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive