THE EMPIRE SIGNS OFF! After 42 years and nine films the Star Wars saga is finally hanging up its lightsabers. But is the Force still strong with Rey and Co?
THE BIGGEST cinematic event of the year? The decade? The century? If the Millennium Falcon is your spiritual mothership, you will doubtless think so.
Even for those of us who never had a Darth Vader pencil case, and always thought that 1977 yielded much better films than the original Star Wars ( Annie Hall, just for starters), can recognise that the ninth and concluding movie in the saga needs a thunderous fanfare.
It certainly deserves one as an event, but what about as a film? As with all movies that bring the curtain down on a long-running series, the challenge is to tie up loose ends while also providing a satisfying well-rounded story. This, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker just about achieves. Of course, this is not the very end. Not really. There will be more spinoffs. Commercial juggernauts like the one sparked into life more than 40 years ago by George Lucas are never garaged for good. But it’s the end of the monumental Skywalker saga, and so can perhaps be forgiven its barrage of self-reverential nostalgia.
I attended an IMAX screening on Tuesday night in the company of what felt like a thousand others who look at life mainly by the glow of a lightsaber. There were sporadic cheers as they recognised arcane references to the 1977 original or 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back or indeed 2017’s slightly wobbly The Last Jedi. And applause when old favourites were crowbarred into the narrative, not least the late Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa, cleverly reanimated.
The film hardly bothers to introduce new characters — although Richard E. Grant can barely contain his delight at being cast as the First Order’s malevolent Allegiant General Pryde.
Tuesday’s audience also applauded an outrageously self- satisfied prelude to the movie, in which a procession of famous stars all try to tease plot secrets out of Daisy Ridley — the British actress who plays Jedi knight Rey, General Organa’s protegee, for those who haven’t been paying attention.
Ridley made her introduction as Rey in 2015’s The Force Awakens. She is the great-niece of Arnold Ridley, Dad’s Army’s sweet, weak bladdered Private Godfrey, a lineage that in my view can never be emphasised enough.
BUT DESPITE her glorious connection to dear, doddery old Godfrey, Ridley has always seemed about as substantial as his sister Dolly’s cucumber sandwiches. She looks like Keira Knightley but as an actress lacks even Knightley’s questionable heft.
So it is a gamble on the part of director J.J. Abrams and his cowriter Chris Terrio to place Rey so firmly at the heart of this film.
Happily, Ridley rises to the occasion, looking more able to carry a storyline on her slight shoulders than she has in the past. Maybe she’s had acting lessons.
The plot mostly springs from the complicated and mysterious connection between Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), enigmatic commander of the First Order, who, if he can find time to interrupt his satanic
efforts to extend his sovereignty over the entire galaxy, might just be able to give her a clue about her forebears.
Driver is the best thing in this movie by a million light years, not just because he’s an acting powerhouse, but also because his character is so much more interesting than those of any of the goodies, such as Rey’s fellow Resistance fighters Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac).
No amount of comic banter between them can overcome what the saga has lost since its early days, when the heroic likes of Luke Skywalker himself (Mark Hamill) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) were just as compelling as anyone on the Dark Side.
Speaking of which, it hardly counts as a spoiler to reveal that along with a few other old faces, Ian McDiarmid is back for the first time since 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith, hamming it up splendidly as the orthodontically-challenged Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
From his lair on the planet Exogol, Palpatine is trying to mentor Kylo Ren into acts of unimaginable evil, and to stamp out the Resistance once and for all.
Incidentally, Exogol is a new Star Wars planet. When the best planetary name they can come up with sounds like an eczema cream, after past corkers like Naboo, Jakku and Cantonica, perhaps it’s as good a suggestion as any that the franchise has finally run out of steam.
Palpatine doesn’t have it all his own way with Ren, who as we now know is not only the grandchild of Darth Vader but also the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, and the nephew of Luke Skywalker.
His villainy is deeply conflicted, but intriguingly this film also explores the notion that Rey might be similarly conflicted about her Jedi goodness.
AND lest you think that sounds altogether too complicated, the pair have a cracking lightsaber fight.
Battle and chase sequences are still what Star Wars does best, and there are some thrilling ones here. But diehards will also love the droid action, and some heartrending stuff involving cuddly old Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo).
It all adds up to yet another irresistible immersion into a galaxy far, far away, and while it’s not the best of the Skywalker saga, arguably not even in the top three, how can you possibly miss the cinematic event of the year/ decade/ century? Delete as you see fit.