‘The Rise of Skywalker’ spoiler-free review: Excitement first, story second

There’s an old parlor game called Consequences. In its most advanced form, you write a paragraph on a sheet of paper, fold the paper over leaving the last line exposed, and then the next person has to pick up the story without full knowledge of what you were aiming for. Hilarious, disjointed stories result, with the occasional flash of serendipity. 

With the release of its final episode, The Rise of Skywalker this Friday, the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy is about to reveal itself as a multibillion-dollar game of Consequences. Director J.J. Abrams’ first paragraph was The Force Awakens (2015), in which he and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan played it fast and loose with their homage. They wanted only characters and scenes that would “surprise and delight” themselves as Star Wars fans first and foremost. Clearly, Abrams wants that again here. 

In between the Abrams paragraphs, the page was handed to Rian Johnson, whose impish choices in The Last Jedi (2017), took the story in another direction, creating the most deft and painful portrayal of what happens when heroes fail since The Empire Strikes Back. The sharp turn was praised by critics hungry for edgier storytelling, and won over a clear majority of audiences. But it also helped create one of the noisiest cultural divides in a decade: even two years later, The Last Jedi Wars, between pro- and anti- forces, rage on every social media platform. 

The Consequences game is “the right metaphor” for what happened when the page was handed back to J.J. Abrams for the final episode (after a few false starts with players ejected from the game). That’s what co-writer Chris Terrio conceded to me before I saw The Rise of Skywalker. 

“We started by asking ‘What do we want to emotionally experience as an audience in our last 2 hours 15 minutes of Star Wars?’” Terrio said. “Then we’d play this narrative game: What is the last place in the galaxy each of these characters would want to go?”

There are zero revelations in this review for what followed from those questions. (After all, if you’ve made it this far, you’re all but certain to go see it yourself; best to stay unspoiled). But I do have one piece of advice for how to frame your expectations, and it’s this: 

If you treat The Rise of Skywalker as an exciting visual experience first and foremost, and think of its plot simply the last paragraph in a narrative game, you will have a fine time. This movie is an explosive, action-packed visual feast that starts in the thick of things and doesn’t let go. Don’t overthink it. 

But who am I kidding? Millions of Star Wars fans overthink just about everything, myself included. So if you have spent the last four years combing over every detail of the sequel trilogy story, and you expect answers and a perfectly polished plot with neat bows everywhere … well, then your reaction is likely more of a crapshoot. 

You may get the answers you wanted and like it; you may get the answers you wanted and not like it, sensing a whiff of condescension in Abrams’ crowd-pleasing approach. Some ‘shippers will be frustrated as hell; others happy as clams. 

Particularly obsessive fans may expect to spend days or weeks in a white-hot rage over one controversial storytelling decision in particular. Just as in a real game of Consequences, some of the aspects of this final paragraph feel like they came out of nowhere. 

Obsessive fans may expect to spend days or weeks in a white-hot rage over one controversial storytelling decision 

And as was the case with some of the head-scratching twists and turns of the prequel trilogy, it will be up to the other forms of Star Wars media — books and comics, mostly — to paper over the cracks. Part of Lucasfilm’s job now is to make the whole narrative game seem more pre-ordained than it actually was. 

Abrams and Terrio seem to have been operating in full awareness of this plot safety net. And so they race through a dizzying number of visual and emotional beats at breakneck speed, barely fleshing any of them out. There are just a shade too many characters overall, and the most well-drawn, compelling ones, ironically, are the ones newly introduced in this film. 

The Rise of Skywalker does remember to slow down every so often to let us and the characters take a well-earned break, but such breathers are fewer and further between than in any Star Wars films past. I had a recurring sense that I was involuntarily watching the movie the way I listen to podcasts: on 1.25x speed. 

Lines are short, but everyone talks fast. Focus turns on a dime. It’s snappy but disjointed. The plot and dialogue are a lot to take in at once, as the critical consensus had it after Monday night’s premiere. Here was my first thought on exiting the Dolby theater:

To be fair to Abrams and Terrio, they were handed an almost impossible assignment. Popular epic tales are notoriously hard to bring in for a smooth landing, especially on deadline: just ask George R.R. Martin. By focusing on emotional experiences first, and leaving a few of the big questions open, Abrams is allowing us to end the trilogy (and the trilogy of trilogies) in our own way, with a sprinkling of headcanon. 

In this the director is following a path well trodden by his idol, George Lucas. Both directors know the importance of the mystery box. And we can at least be glad that Abrams has not indulged his worst mystery box tendencies, the ones he is famous for. We’re lucky we got anything answered at all.

But then there is Abrams’ other worst tendency, and I’m not talking about lens flare. 

He’s a people pleaser who is allergic to controversy, and he can let it override his instincts. (Take the lens flare thing, which he has never done since we started poking fun.) He wants to have things both ways; he wants to straddle a giant cultural divide. He’s a centrist in an age of extremes. 

Which is great when you’re talking about 90 percent of what Star Wars is, in its DNA: simple accessible fun, the first great global myth. But George Lucas took risks, didn’t care about being liked, and liked to switch things up, hence the prequels. Abrams not only shies away from the full consequences of his own bold moves — both in The Force Awakens and here — he seems to feel the need to kick some dust over the bold moves of others. This is not always a movie in the best “yes, and” spirit of improv. 

This is a necessarily vague statement, of course. Suffice to say that Abrams has been playing Consequences, writing that last paragraph of the experimental story, in a very performative way. He’s aware of the audience in every move of the pen, it seems, in much the same way that the later Game of Thrones seasons seemed suddenly hyper-aware of its global audience. 

Time will tell whether Abrams has succeeded in uniting the fandom again with his last lines — or whether, in trying to unite it, he has managed to please neither side of the great divide.