Skywalker a fitting farewell
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (M, 142 mins)
Directed by J J Abrams Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★
So here we are. At the very end of the third trilogy of
Star Wars, as jokingly promised by George Lucas 40-odd years ago. The ride has been bumpy. Not everyone has stayed on board for the journey. But, for some
of us, Star Wars has been there for our entire lives.
I cut school at the age of 11 to see
Episode IV: A New Hope. And on Thursday I was late to work because I was out at midnight to
catch the first screenings of Episode
IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Some
things never change.
And yes, The Rise of Skywalker does wrap up this trilogy of trilogies in a satisfying fashion, with very little left to say.
The story that began in a farmhouse on Tatooine, beneath the setting of two suns, truly does bring it all home in a few final moments that – if they didn’t exactly draw a contented sigh from me – at least inspired a small and wryly satisfied smile.
Star Wars as I know it is over. What on Earth am I going to do with the next 40 years of my life?
Rise picks up the action a short while after The Last Jedi wrapped. Whatever is left of the rebel fleet is hidden away on a forested world, but clearly it is only a matter of time before the Empire – sorry, ‘‘The First Order’’ – find and destroy them.
And, if that sounds to you like the starting-off point for more than a few of the Star Wars series, of course you’re right. It is.
As the film progresses, there will be a McGuffin that must be found on yet another planet, the unwelcome news that the enemy have constructed a huge and potentially devastating new fleet – one that can only be destroyed by the unlikely coincidence of a design flaw and few plucky battlers to exploit it.
And yet another revelation about parenthood – a literal ‘‘who’s your daddy?’’ moment – without which no self-respecting Star Wars plotline can be complete. And with the villain Snoke now dispatched, there is a return for the Emperor Palpatine, which seems like an admission on the part of
JJ Abrams that maybe he should have been there all along.
All of which cycles us back to something I’ve been wanting to say ever since I first realised it, driving home from the screening.
Star Wars is rubbish. Star Wars is and always has been a derivative load of old cobblers that couldn’t even stay true to its own internal mythology and so has to invent a whole pile of new mythologies just to go leaping over the conventions of storytelling and common sense from one film to the next.
I’ve laughed, loud and long, at the poor basement-dwellers who tried to start a campaign of internet resentment over The Last Jedi. You pathetic, entitled little weaklings.
You got upset because a woman got to drive a spaceship and Leia turned out to have a few forcepowers of her own? And you think that’s enough to justify not liking an episode of Star Wars?
Listen, me and my generation had to put up with ewoks, for God’s sake. And the realisation that the entire franchise was so bereft of ideas after only two films that
Return of the Jedi was basically just a remake of A New Hope, complete with another Death Star being shot down in a way that made absolutely no sense at all.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, try great big floating ghost heads in the sky smiling down as the ewoks let off fireworks to celebrate their victory. And you have the moxy to get your little feelings hurt by The Last Jedi?
Grow up, whingers. And learn what all true Star Wars fans come to know. Star Wars is rubbish.
From the moment you realised that Darth Vader – a man with ‘‘The Force’’ coursing through his veins like milk through a cow’s teat, apparently – still couldn’t recognise that the woman standing in front of him was his own daughter, then you knew, deep down, that Star Wars was rubbish.
And when does Vader meet Leia for the first time? About 30 minutes into the very first film. That’s when. And that, really, is the whole point. That is why we love this series. Not because they are ‘‘good’’ films. But because they are joyously, exuberantly, rubbish.
The production design, the art direction and the special effects have always been cutting-edge. But the writing, the storytelling and most of the dialogue are – and always have been – awful.
You become a true fan of Star
Wars on the day you admit that to yourself and still understand why you love Star Wars anyway.
Star Wars lets us be kids again. Star Wars is pirates and cowboys and ninjas and whatever else gets to occupy the sandpit at kindy these days.
It might make no sense, but the goodies get to win, the baddies will always build a fatal flaw into their secret weapon and, even when you die, you still get to come back and pass on what you have learnt to the living.
When every other day of your life is serious, fraught with risk and maybe things will not turn out as they should, Star Wars has – for 40 years – reliably been the complete rubbish you needed to escape for a few hours from all that.
So goodbye Star Wars. You have been rubbish. You have been exactly the glossy, noisy, goodnatured and always lovingly assembled pile of rubbish I needed, sometimes, to shield me from the indignities of life. And I’m going to miss you like hell.
Grow up, whingers. And learn what all true Star Wars fans come to know. Star Wars is rubbish.