Rise Of Skywalker
2020-01-03
The only question I had, going into this movie, was "what can they possibly do to salvage this?"
Enough people have talked (at great length) about individual aspects of all these movies. They’re analyzed to death. I’m not interested in rehashing "subversion of expectations" or anything. I liked the movie. The main thing I want to ask people who don’t like it is; what story could they have told which doesn’t suffer from these problems?
Last Jedi
Before going into the final movie, we have to outline the damage that the second movie did to the trilogy. It killed the main villain, killed the main plot hook from the previous movie (Luke), closed the doors to most character development (Rey clearly chooses to be a Jedi, not some middle-ground peaceful person), wasted character arcs (Finn is the most obvious example of someone who repeats the same arc from the first movie, and it isn’t allowed to complete in this one), and introduces useless characters.
We’re even leaving aside that it didn’t meaningfully advance any of the characters or the story. Half the movie was devoted to Canto Bite / the side mission, which was completely meaningless, since no characters grew, nobody consequential was introduced or exited, and it didn’t affect the villains or the heroes. The other half was spent dismantling any plot paths forward.
This is a lot of burden to start a third movie with. Thus my question; "what were they supposed to do?"
The repairs
No matter what they did, they need a new villain. The only two evil-ish characters they have left are Kylo (who is on a redemption arc, and who nobody sees as an actual villain) and Hux (who is a joke in both movies). They have no realistic options to promote an existing villain, so they have to invent a new one. It really doesn’t matter who the villain is, at this point, pulling a new villain out of thin air in the third act is going to feel contrived. At best, it’ll be a Man Behind The Man situation. At worst it’ll be a complete fabrication. What were they supposed to do?
Finn’s arc is also nebulous. His main foil, Phasma, was killed in the previous movie - making him go 2-0 against her. His redemption-of-cowardice line established in the first movie was just repeated in the second one, with his crescendo being thrown away at the last minute. Rose as a love interest not only is nonsensical, but doesn’t lead to anything. She’s not connected to the plot in any way, she’s just there. She has no real abilities, no arc of her own, no loose ends - she just exists. Now Finn is tied at the hip to her - so either they go all-in and invent some nonsense reason why she’s interesting (going against the second movie) or they cut her out (going against the second movie).
But what’s Finn’s arc, after that? Unclear. He also has no remaining ties, except to Rey and Poe. He’s repeated the same arc twice,
