Despite the impressive starts of retooling this franchise with The Force Awakens and Rogue One the rebellion comes crashing to a sputter with the Last Jedi and now the Rise of the Jedi.
Understandably there was huge pressure on the former two directors, Rian Johnson and J.J. Abrams to uphold the mighty weight of the final two Star Wars films, however, the two failed miserably in their attempts, dragging this piece of wreck to the final finish lines with its hollow plot lines and TV movie of the week twists.
I didn’t like the Last Jedi but compared to the Rise of the Jedi it’s a far superior film, which gives you a taste of how Abrams recent film faired.
What stands out most is that it’s cluttered, messy and incoherent, missing on many marks. Our characters begin to stale and their plight feels manufactured in this film rather than organic and every time our heroes are in trouble God comes from the heavens and hands them the item or person they need to continue the mission.
After The Last Jedi the lead villain is dead and our heroes are victorious and yet again we come back to the beginning of this film and the rebellion is nearly squashed, hanging to a loose thread of hope a la the exact transition from The Force Awakens to The Last Jedi.
And then out of nowhere we get our new villain… well kind of. Emperor Palpatine, who somehow after being sliced in half by Darth Vader decades ago, has come back from the dead and raised a massive army to end all wars.
And I get wanting to have Emperor Palpatine be the end all fight, however, there was no build up of him in the previous films and his display of powers was shown on a limited basis which dulls down his perceived might.
It almost feels like these new series were a bunch of self-contained films with differing visions of the end product and it shows because little makes rational sense in this self-contained universe.
The visuals were top notch, which is expected and the battle between Rey and Kylo Ren on the destroyed death star in the ocean was pretty epic, however it’s not enough to save this doomed saga but at least it gives you a new hope that this horrible reboot of a once proud franchise truly comes to an end.
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