Day 200: The Sixth Strikes Back: A Quick Review of the Third Star Wars Trilogy

Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Much like the Phantom Menace, this movie had a lot of hype surrounding it, but not as much. People were skeptical about the Disney take over and didn’t know what to expect. Because of the Star Wars habit of throwing in weird characters “for the kids” it only worried fans more that Disney would take that to another level. But we weren’t let down. Plus, the iconic J.J. Abrams was the chosen director!

Yes, as a story arc, The Force Awakens was not original. For many, it felt like it was trying to be A New Hope, but couldn’t quite pull it off. It’s definitely debatable, but I’m not doing that now.

For me, I just enjoyed having another Star Wars movie to watch. Overall, it’s a good movie. It has good character development with the new characters and the old. The writing is decent. The acting was good, for the most part. They killed Han! That was pretty epic. I was happy to see the movie twice in theaters. But it didn’t leave me blown away.

The flaws in the movie, I think, come directly from Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver. I don’t think he is a good actor because he doesn’t have much of a range. I could be in the minority, but there it is. The way that he was portrayed at the beginning of the movie was excellent! Holy crap, when he stopped the blaster laser I thought, “Heck yes! They finally made another badass villain on par with Darth Vader and Darth Maul. But no, they disappointed me again when they took off his mask. The contrast of his Kylo Ren’s character with the mask on and with it off was too apparent and in your face, with no subtleties. With the mask on he was evil. That was apparent in the dialogue and the action. With the mask off, he was a broken, whiny, boy just like his bad acting grandpa. I understand that the creators wanted to create that theme again of the internal struggle of dark and light, but it was too soggy.

My opinion of Kylo doesn’t really change throughout the trilogy, so I’ll just skip over those parts for the next two.

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

(Let’s speed this up.)

Pros:

- Luke Skywalker trains Rey

- The battle at the end was cool on the red sand planet.

- Kylo kills Snoke in a very mischievous fashion.

- Kylo and Rey team up in an awesome lightsaber battle with Snoke’s (former) bodyguards.

- Luke versus Kylo lightsaber battle, and Luke’s a hologram! New force powers!

- Laura Dern/Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo’s slicing through the New Order ship at lightspeed!

Cons:

- Luke milking the giant alien boob, taking a giant swig like it’s a goddamn German lager, and the alien looking way too pleased about the other scene.

- The entire second story with the New Order slowly chasing the Rebellion ship for two hours with nothing happening.

- The casino mission with Finn and Rose that doesn’t do anything for the plot or story except release a bunch of alien horses.

- Rose

- Vice Admiral Holdo’s weird reluctance to withhold information from Poe for no apparent reason other than “she’s the boss.”

- The whole storyline with Rey’s parents is not necessary. It’s played out and stale. You can’t repeat the shock effect of Darth Vader and Luke.

Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Out of the three films, I think this one is the most original. The story doesn’t follow a predictable path. The characters move organically and none of the movie is very predictable. It’s the end; anything can happen!

Like all Star Wars movies, despite the minor flaws, I still enjoyed watching it. Just like the other two movies in this saga, I saw it twice in theaters. Luckily, there isn’t too much to gripe about. I was impressed with the shift that the creators took with the story and the characters. Bringing back Palpatine was a good move, but I feel that it was a last-minute decision. The biggest flaw in this last trilogy is that they seemed to make every movie before thinking about the next one. There were no hints in either of the first two films about Palpatine pulling the strings. In the other two trilogies, the continuity was nearly flawless as far as the overall story went. Although I liked that the story comes full circle, I wished that the whole trilogy felt complete and together.

The Star Destroyer fleet is exactly what the series needed. As a viewer, it felt overwhelming, like there was no way that the Rebellion was going to survive this. The battle with the Star Destroyers at the end was fantastic. Well made. Well directed. Thank you, J.J. Abrams, for coming back. You should have been there for all three.

The lightsaber battles were okay. The one between Kylo and Rey on the ship was well done. I wished the one with Palpatine lasted a little longer, but he was never the lightsaber-wielding type. He wasn’t much of a fighter, just a lightning dude.

The amount of force use in this movie and this trilogy really took it up a notch. In the end, it all came full circle. Kylo Ren dies by saving Rey. She gives him a pity kiss and returns to Tatooine to stare at the sun and bury some lightsabers.

This is supposedly the last film in the whole Skywalker saga. I really hope so. There is no use in playing out the story any longer. The Star Wars universe is vast. They can make up anything they want and Disney has the budget to make it grand. They can throw away all the old arcs and expectations and start fresh. They have done well and need to leave the past in the past. Onward to the future!