Welcome! If you know me at all, then you know that I am a pretty big movie fan. After watching The Rise of Skywalker last night, I've now seen 38 releases from 2019 and over the holidays I will catch up on some that I missed and see a couple more new releases like Uncut Gems and 1917. I'll be well over 40 movies for the year. That may not be much to a real film critic, but I think 40+ is a pretty high number for someone with a job or school that doesn't pay them to watch and critique movies. I like everything from superhero movies to rom-coms. It's a release for me, a way to forget about whatever is going on and just relax.
And that's what I want this to be. A common movie blog for common fans. I'm never going to tell someone not to like something because honestly, movies are just for fun and most of them are perfectly fine!
I wanted to share my love for movies and I decided to combine it with my passion for writing and that led me to create Drive in Double! I love the vintage feel of a drive in theater and it kinda sounds like something you would hear on a baseball diamond, so for me the name was a win win. I thought there was no better place to start than the end. The end of the year and the end of the Skywalker Saga. I hope to post on here about new releases for movies, maybe some TV, and other pop culture as well! If you aren't interested in The Rise of Skywalker, you can check out now, but I do hope you keep reading and come back for more content!
The Rise of Skywalker Review and thoughts on the Sequel Trilogy
I never want to spoil anything so this first section will be completely spoiler free and I will give plenty of warning before we get into the spoilery section for those that have seen the movie.
I saw TROS last night at 10:45 and left the theater after 1 am. I started putting these thoughts into words around 2 so bear with me if there are typos.
TROS did a lot of things that I really liked, and it did a lot of things that I didn't like. That's pretty on par with the rest of the trilogy. Overall, because this is a Star Wars movie, I had a lot of fun, liked it, and I'm excited to see it again tonight. Some criticism is that I thought JJ Abrams over-corrected hard in this movie and it felt like fan service to me. That's fine, I can't ever talk down on fan service because Avengers: Endgame was full of it and I love that movie. And this movie had a lot of Marvel vibes. But the difference is that Star Wars didn't need to do that. It is impossible to please every Star Wars fan. My brain was conflicted during TROS. Half of it was my fan-boy brain going nuts and trying to whoop it up, while the other half was my thinking cap brain saying, "whoa this movie is proceeding at break-neck speed and the script may have been fan written."
The acting in TROS was pretty good. Daisy Ridley has been great in the emotional moments. One of the strongest parts of this movie was the whole gang together and Rey, Poe, and Finn being able to riff off of each other. Adam Driver crushed it again. He's a powerhouse and Kylo Ren is the second best villain Star Wars has seen. Ian McDiarmid was great coming back as Palpatine and I really liked the new characters added for this movie. Zorii Bliss was cool, as was Dio. And Babu Frick was hilarious. The practical aliens look so good. If you're a C-3PO fan (I am NOT), you'll be pleased to hear that he shines in his best movie yet. Now please go kick rocks, 3PO.
TROS was a safe movie. It felt like they didn't want to step on any toes after some backlash from The Last Jedi. And like I said, there is nothing wrong with that at all. It's very entertaining, there is great action and comedy and moments that make you want to cheer (and people did clap in my theater at the credits, please don't be that person). The movie is fast. Real fast. Even in the opening crawl some really important stuff just kinda breezes by you. I wish they would have taken some time to explain a few things and laid a better foundation. Some new character arcs were opened and never really closed and I left with a lot of questions I felt went unanswered. I hoped TROS would put a nice bow on things and wrap up the trilogy. Didn't necessarily get that but I enjoyed myself as I think most Star Wars fans will.
Now if you haven't seen TROS yet and don't want it SPOILED check out here.
Last warning for spoilers..
So off the top, I said that this movie did a lot of things that I liked. One of those things was the continued expansion of the Force. JJ Abrams continued with Rian Johnson's vision of a Force bond between Rey and Kylo and I like that. That's one of the things I wanted to know more about! Why do they share this bond? What exactly is a Force Dyad? The Force was used a LOT in this movie and I love it. I counted pulls, pushes, chokes, lightning, ghosts, all in one Star Wars movie. Awesome. The very first shot of Rey was incredible with the floating rocks. When Chewbacca gets captured by the Knights of Ren and Rey tried to bring down their ship with the Force I very audibly said "oh crap," in the theater because that's how awesome that moment was! And Force healing! Rey heals that worm thing and Kylo! We've been getting that teased by Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian for weeks! Very cool to see that tie in.
Like I said earlier, I also loved the whole gang being together. Oscar Isaac and John Boyega play together well and the kinda brother-sister headbutting between Rey and Poe worked for me too. The squad all together made for some of the best dialogue in the movie. I've never been a huge fan of Finn, in fact I thought it would have played well for him to die on Crete in The Last Jedi, but his little comments in this movie intrigued me. When he told Rey he had something he wanted to tell her and then him telling Jannah about a feeling he had? Finn is definitely Force sensitive, right? Or at least he thinks he is? Again, another question I left the theater with. In The Last Jedi, Poe was a hot head, know it all leader. I loved the progression we got from him in TROS. He's more grounded and unsure of himself and I liked the spice runner backstory. It made me want more from these characters.
The character that spends most of his time alone is the best one in this trilogy. Kylo Ren is my favorite character from the sequels and I think it's partly because his character is consistent and partly because Adam Driver is just that good. From the moment Leia gives her life to save Kylo up until the end was fantastic Kylo stuff for me. The callback with Han worked well and him destroying the Knights of Ren was my favorite scene in the whole movie. He killed someone 5 seconds after the crawl ended, gotta be the fastest kill in Star Wars history.
I really loved all the Jedi speaking to Rey in her final stand off with the Emperor. That was really cool and a moment that had big Marvel vibes along with Lando flying in and basically going "On your left" to Poe. Instead of "I am Iron Man," Rey gave us "I am all the Jedi." Wrapping up her story with the binary sunset on Tatooine felt good.
So now a few things I did not love about The Rise of Skywalker:
Can the bad guys in Star Wars stop destroying planets? Enough already. I did not need every Sith ship to have that capability. Of all the things I loved about Kylo in this movie, I wasn't on board the Ben Solo redemption train. Just like Darth Vader, the dude has committed multiple atrocities and murdered billions across the galaxy and with one final good deed we are supposed to forgive and forget? And that kiss man, that stunk. It felt so out of character for Rey. With the Force bond between her and Ben I always looked at their relationship in a platonic fashion, transcending romance.
But my biggest issue with this movie had to do with Rey's character arc. And this ties in perfectly to my thoughts on the trilogy as a whole. We just spent two movies, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, building Rey up as a scavenger who came from nothing. As a girl whose parents were no one. Telling her to be herself and forge her own story. She's a self made hero that was thrust into a war she never belonged in because a BB unit showed up at her door on Jakku. But after TROS all that was just wiped out. Rey Palpatine/Skywalker carries not one, but two(!!) familial legacies with her. There is no reason to make Rey a Palpatine. This movie works just fine if she's not one. And I honestly believe it was rushed in at the last minute and is the most obvious sign that this sequel trilogy never had a true vision.
Say what you will about George Lucas, but his Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy both had an overarching story that three movies achieved together. Now the prequels are all worse than any of the Sequel Trilogy by far but at least they tried to be cohesive. The Sequel Trilogy felt like we were trying to finish a puzzle, but the final three pieces all came out of a different box. The never fit together and felt discombobulated, as we see with Rey's story. Individually, TFA, TLJ, and TROS are all good films. But when you put them together they just don't work well and that I think, is my biggest issue. And it's not Rian Johnson's or JJ Abrams fault. It's the higher ups at Disney like Kathleen Kennedy. Maybe it's time for Star Wars to get away from trilogies and into more stand alone films and shows. Use these characters more! I have tons of intrigue about them after the loose ends in The Rise of Skywalker. I want to like them, I really, really do because I love Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac and John Boyega, but I have had a hard time feeling anything for a character outside of Kylo Ren.
All in all, I did enjoy The Rise of Skywalker and I'm looking forward to seeing it in theaters again with my family. I think I'm just disappointed in the lack of coordination and cohesion of the Sequel Trilogy. It had potential to be special and just didn't quite stick the landing. Go watch a Star War and have fun when you do!!
If you enjoyed reading this please let me know with a comment or like! I would love to hear from you guys and have a discussion about movies! I hope to put out my top movies of 2019 before the year ends and also a preview of what I'm most excited for in 2020! Have a wonderful Christmas season and may the Force be with you!
- BH
Comments