Echoes of the Jedi
If you have not seen The Rise of Skywalker, this is your fair warning to wait until you have before you read the rest of this post.
A friend and sort of spiritual mentor to me brought me along to see Episode IX with him and a group of friends late Thursday night, so I was lucky to see it before the internet started spoiling the experience (Well, the internet desperately had tried to start spoiling it, but that's another story).
At the end of the film, I found myself wondering about of some of the details that were told in the story onscreen and off-screen for this trilogy, and I came back to the thought that I am glad the original trilogy holds a certain special place in my mind that no other side stories could soften.
But I want to address a few elements of the story.
First, there is Rey.
In the first film, she was a scavenger. She was alone, wandering the deserts of ... (not Tattooine) Jakku. She meets BB-8 and Finn (an ex-stormtrooper), and together they happen to meet Han Solo and Chewie, and through them Maz Kanata, who asks, "Who's the girl?" She exclaims "Luke Sky-walker! I thought he was a myth!" And then she finds out that Luke's lightsaber somehow is calling her, and we see her being separated from her parents, who leave in a ship **(edit: see footnote 1). She wonders who she is, and so do we, the audience.
Eventually, she meets Leia, then confronts Kylo Ren - who murders Han Solo - and learns that she is powerful in the Force. This Force, and a map provided by BB-8 and R2D2, leads her to a hidden island of the Jedi, where Luke Skywalker has been in hiding, living a reclusive life. When does Luke discover Rey's identity? That's a good question, and perhaps there is a bit in Episode IX that helps to answer Luke's approach in Episode VIII, in addition to what I've written about here. Does Luke discover it when Rey goes straight to the Dark side without much prompting? Does he sense something when he asks her, "Who are you?" or is it later?
Meanwhile, Kylo Ren has been making Force connections with her, and there is the slightest (but is it slight?) amount of male-female tension there... Rey rushes off to confront him - as Luke first did in Empire - and for her it ends up being just fine. Kylo/Ben slays his underdeveloped Master Smokescreen, Rey and Ben fight together, and then Rey escapes/leaves when Kylo has some aspirations (delusions of grandeur?) to be the Supreme Leader for a spell. Eventually, the (Rebel fleet) Resistance lands on a mysterious remaining fortress planet, and the First Order attacks them, trying to duplicate the Battle of Hoth. But Luke returns! Or does he? Either way, Luke distracts Kylo Ren enough to consume his attention, yes, but also to teach him a lesson. He calls him a kid, and earlier Ben had been missing his mother and was sympathetic to her, so there are the seeds of a further redemption. There is more good left in him than there was in Vader when Luke confronted him in Return of the Jedi.
That's where we join the story in The Rise of Skywalker... except more time has passed. Now, instead of Luke being the mysterious missing figure (as he was for all of The Force Awakens), the mysterious figure is Palpatine. That is, the former Emperor of the Galactic Empire, the Sith Lord who manipulated Anakin Skywalker to turn him to the Dark Side.
Palpatine's role in the Star Wars universe has been a mixed bag for me, and that continues in this story. Ultimately, though, I think his placement in this film is justified.
His role is mixed for me because of how he has been handled in the Star Wars franchise.
Originally. he was handled perfectly. Star Wars (IV) only mentions him in a small line, "How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy...?" in a scene better remembered for Darth Vader strangling a character (a scene that is basically re-enacted in this film). Then, Empire only included him as a holographic figure who communicates with Darth Vader, and then, more importantly, as part of Vader's "No, I am your father... Join me, and together we can..." pleading to Luke after dismembering his hand. Finally, he appears for most of Return of the Jedi and is central to the entire plot, especially to Luke's temptation and Anakin's redemption story.
All of that was great. [The only mixed element for me is when Lucas went back in the Special Edition and changed up the dialogue audio and visuals for the holographic scene.]
For me, the next time I saw the Emperor was actually in a clone form in the Dark Empire comic book/graphic novel. I really liked that first entry (never read the rest of it), and particularly liked the visuals. I felt conflicted (hah!) about the Emperor's reappearance and Luke's personal struggles with Dark Side temptation.... but the Clone War background story of the saga and Luke's own arc in the original trilogy helped to make the story there understandable.
And then came the prequels.
Senator Palpatine, as he is first introduced in the prequels, is essentially a Julius Caesar figure who manipulated a trade war behind the scenes and poisoned the thoughts of a growing Jedi who had "Chosen One" potential.
[By the way, there is a way to read Rey's arc as potentially being the one who actually brought "balance to the Force" but maybe that is all unnecessary... Anakin's offspring help nurture her throughout this newer trilogy, and, as Yoda said, "Misread the prophecy might have been."]
Palpatine is mostly well-portrayed. Ian McDiarmid is a Shakespearean actor who generally pulls off the role, and yet he's forced to interact with bizarrely constructed alien species and to refer to characters with names such as Count Dooku, and when he manipulates Anakin by talking about the Sandpeople it just sounds funny... For me, though, the weirdest part is his physical and acting transition in Revenge of the Sith, where Lucas somehow directed his character into an exaggerated clownish version of the evil Sith Lord, as opposed to the clear, conniving dual-faced politician and mobster that he clearly is...
Which brings us to this film.
Visually, I think the role is mostly handled quite well. I have questions about the nature of this cloned form... which seems more like an inhabited corpse à la Frankenstein's creature than a clone, per se. And who are the Sith Lords (?) in the hall? Are they similarly demented spirits who appear like Force ghosts and congregate for some evil practices in this film? Maybe.
More important to the film, though, is Rey's relationship to Palpatine, Ben's relationship to Rey and Palpatine (and Smoke(screen)), Ben's relationship to Leia, Rey's relationship to Leia, and Palpatine's relationship to the Galaxy. The final battle, in fact, takes place in a setting that I essentially heard as anagram for Galaxy.
And, ultimately, there is Rey's relationship with herself.
What I appreciated about The Rise of Skywalker was that it completed the story arcs that it needed to complete, and it even completed some arcs that Star Wars fans did not expect to be completed. Rey, Ben, Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Palpatine, the Sith, and the Jedi all receive acknowledgement of who they were, who they became, and who they are.
There may be quibbles with how that all was told and some of the details of those stories, but there is enough acknowledgement of their general character that is really at the heart of the Star Wars films.
And that's why I'll be able to revisit this film with enjoyment again. Some of it was definitely weird, haha, but it also helped me conceptually look back on all the other Star Wars films with new and fun retrospection, and I guess that's what I hoped for in (a) the new trilogy.
There's always a different version of the story tucked away in my mind, but I am satisfied with what I have been able to consume.
Maybe next, I'll revisit the Extended Universe books and all of that, or I'll just enjoy side stories like The Mandalorian and others...
Or, you know, maybe I'll just re-watch the original trilogy (and sometimes others) for the (hundredth? tenth?) time.
Footnote 1: I originally intended to include a mention of the visual symmetry between Rey's parents' ship that leaves and the time when she shoots Force lightning bolts at what she believes is Chewie's ship. That moment connects to a wounding in her childhood that is important to her own wrestling with her identity.
A friend and sort of spiritual mentor to me brought me along to see Episode IX with him and a group of friends late Thursday night, so I was lucky to see it before the internet started spoiling the experience (Well, the internet desperately had tried to start spoiling it, but that's another story).
At the end of the film, I found myself wondering about of some of the details that were told in the story onscreen and off-screen for this trilogy, and I came back to the thought that I am glad the original trilogy holds a certain special place in my mind that no other side stories could soften.
But I want to address a few elements of the story.
First, there is Rey.
In the first film, she was a scavenger. She was alone, wandering the deserts of ... (not Tattooine) Jakku. She meets BB-8 and Finn (an ex-stormtrooper), and together they happen to meet Han Solo and Chewie, and through them Maz Kanata, who asks, "Who's the girl?" She exclaims "Luke Sky-walker! I thought he was a myth!" And then she finds out that Luke's lightsaber somehow is calling her, and we see her being separated from her parents, who leave in a ship **(edit: see footnote 1). She wonders who she is, and so do we, the audience.
Eventually, she meets Leia, then confronts Kylo Ren - who murders Han Solo - and learns that she is powerful in the Force. This Force, and a map provided by BB-8 and R2D2, leads her to a hidden island of the Jedi, where Luke Skywalker has been in hiding, living a reclusive life. When does Luke discover Rey's identity? That's a good question, and perhaps there is a bit in Episode IX that helps to answer Luke's approach in Episode VIII, in addition to what I've written about here. Does Luke discover it when Rey goes straight to the Dark side without much prompting? Does he sense something when he asks her, "Who are you?" or is it later?
Meanwhile, Kylo Ren has been making Force connections with her, and there is the slightest (but is it slight?) amount of male-female tension there... Rey rushes off to confront him - as Luke first did in Empire - and for her it ends up being just fine. Kylo/Ben slays his underdeveloped Master Smokescreen, Rey and Ben fight together, and then Rey escapes/leaves when Kylo has some aspirations (delusions of grandeur?) to be the Supreme Leader for a spell. Eventually, the (Rebel fleet) Resistance lands on a mysterious remaining fortress planet, and the First Order attacks them, trying to duplicate the Battle of Hoth. But Luke returns! Or does he? Either way, Luke distracts Kylo Ren enough to consume his attention, yes, but also to teach him a lesson. He calls him a kid, and earlier Ben had been missing his mother and was sympathetic to her, so there are the seeds of a further redemption. There is more good left in him than there was in Vader when Luke confronted him in Return of the Jedi.
That's where we join the story in The Rise of Skywalker... except more time has passed. Now, instead of Luke being the mysterious missing figure (as he was for all of The Force Awakens), the mysterious figure is Palpatine. That is, the former Emperor of the Galactic Empire, the Sith Lord who manipulated Anakin Skywalker to turn him to the Dark Side.
Palpatine's role in the Star Wars universe has been a mixed bag for me, and that continues in this story. Ultimately, though, I think his placement in this film is justified.
His role is mixed for me because of how he has been handled in the Star Wars franchise.
Originally. he was handled perfectly. Star Wars (IV) only mentions him in a small line, "How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy...?" in a scene better remembered for Darth Vader strangling a character (a scene that is basically re-enacted in this film). Then, Empire only included him as a holographic figure who communicates with Darth Vader, and then, more importantly, as part of Vader's "No, I am your father... Join me, and together we can..." pleading to Luke after dismembering his hand. Finally, he appears for most of Return of the Jedi and is central to the entire plot, especially to Luke's temptation and Anakin's redemption story.
All of that was great. [The only mixed element for me is when Lucas went back in the Special Edition and changed up the dialogue audio and visuals for the holographic scene.]
For me, the next time I saw the Emperor was actually in a clone form in the Dark Empire comic book/graphic novel. I really liked that first entry (never read the rest of it), and particularly liked the visuals. I felt conflicted (hah!) about the Emperor's reappearance and Luke's personal struggles with Dark Side temptation.... but the Clone War background story of the saga and Luke's own arc in the original trilogy helped to make the story there understandable.
And then came the prequels.
Senator Palpatine, as he is first introduced in the prequels, is essentially a Julius Caesar figure who manipulated a trade war behind the scenes and poisoned the thoughts of a growing Jedi who had "Chosen One" potential.
[By the way, there is a way to read Rey's arc as potentially being the one who actually brought "balance to the Force" but maybe that is all unnecessary... Anakin's offspring help nurture her throughout this newer trilogy, and, as Yoda said, "Misread the prophecy might have been."]
Palpatine is mostly well-portrayed. Ian McDiarmid is a Shakespearean actor who generally pulls off the role, and yet he's forced to interact with bizarrely constructed alien species and to refer to characters with names such as Count Dooku, and when he manipulates Anakin by talking about the Sandpeople it just sounds funny... For me, though, the weirdest part is his physical and acting transition in Revenge of the Sith, where Lucas somehow directed his character into an exaggerated clownish version of the evil Sith Lord, as opposed to the clear, conniving dual-faced politician and mobster that he clearly is...
Which brings us to this film.
Visually, I think the role is mostly handled quite well. I have questions about the nature of this cloned form... which seems more like an inhabited corpse à la Frankenstein's creature than a clone, per se. And who are the Sith Lords (?) in the hall? Are they similarly demented spirits who appear like Force ghosts and congregate for some evil practices in this film? Maybe.
More important to the film, though, is Rey's relationship to Palpatine, Ben's relationship to Rey and Palpatine (and Smoke(screen)), Ben's relationship to Leia, Rey's relationship to Leia, and Palpatine's relationship to the Galaxy. The final battle, in fact, takes place in a setting that I essentially heard as anagram for Galaxy.
And, ultimately, there is Rey's relationship with herself.
What I appreciated about The Rise of Skywalker was that it completed the story arcs that it needed to complete, and it even completed some arcs that Star Wars fans did not expect to be completed. Rey, Ben, Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Palpatine, the Sith, and the Jedi all receive acknowledgement of who they were, who they became, and who they are.
There may be quibbles with how that all was told and some of the details of those stories, but there is enough acknowledgement of their general character that is really at the heart of the Star Wars films.
And that's why I'll be able to revisit this film with enjoyment again. Some of it was definitely weird, haha, but it also helped me conceptually look back on all the other Star Wars films with new and fun retrospection, and I guess that's what I hoped for in (a) the new trilogy.
There's always a different version of the story tucked away in my mind, but I am satisfied with what I have been able to consume.
Maybe next, I'll revisit the Extended Universe books and all of that, or I'll just enjoy side stories like The Mandalorian and others...
Or, you know, maybe I'll just re-watch the original trilogy (and sometimes others) for the (hundredth? tenth?) time.
Footnote 1: I originally intended to include a mention of the visual symmetry between Rey's parents' ship that leaves and the time when she shoots Force lightning bolts at what she believes is Chewie's ship. That moment connects to a wounding in her childhood that is important to her own wrestling with her identity.
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