Yeah I know, I know… I just stated I’d likely not do any new posts until the New Year and here I am, only two days later (but I tried to scratch out some time yesterday!) to add a new post.

The topic is pretty clear but I just thought it was too fascinating to ignore: Is the latest Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, any good?

Now, I haven’t seen it yet but I was somewhat shocked by the reviews that appeared yesterday/the day before that concerning the film. If you go over to rottentomatoes.com, the cumulative average of “professional” reviews is a rather anemic 58% positive while audience reaction is a far healthier 86%. Of course, this will likely change over time, particularly the audience reaction, as more and more people weigh in on their opinion.

I suspect the audience number will decrease -though who knows how much- in time, at least based on what I’m reading in various bulletin boards around the net.

Understand: I’m not saying a larger number of people hated the film, only that there does seem to be many people who, like The Last Jedi before it, aren’t fond of this new Star Wars offering.

Some of the more common reactions I’m find are that a) the film is too “rushed”, giving us a breakneck series of sequences that follow little -if any- logic, and b) the film seems to be going out of its way to eliminate The Last Jedi’s plot points.

There’s another underlying criticism that may be even more valid: That this “new” trilogy of films, starting with The Force Awakes, going through The Last Jedi and terminating with The Rise of Skywalker shows a fundamental error made by Disney/Lucasfilm, that they went into this new trilogy without a general story outline.

Thus, The Force Awakens has been (IMHO rightly) criticized as little more than a remake of the original Star Wars films (ie, A New Hope) but with new characters added to the old. That The Last Jedi attempted to subvert the “expected” Star Wars tropes but wound up being either too daring and/or dumb (there are many who have pointed to plot holes) and thus alienated too many fans. Now, Rise of Skywalker tries to clean up the whole thing by giving people more fan service and no controversial storylines/ideas.

Yeah, I’ve obviously read spoilers.

Regardless, I do believe this criticism is valid. I do believe the new trilogy began without any terribly strong ideas as to how the three films would play out.

This is NOT something new!

Those who are old enough -like me!- to recall going to see the original Star Wars (ie, A New Hope) in theaters remember that what got Luke Skywalker going on his mission was that he (avert your eyes, sensitive readers) totally fell in love with the holographic image of Princess Leia.

Yeah, it was about love/lust.

The whole movie -originally!- was about how this backwater boy was after this royal princess, someone far, far out of his league.

And then came the second movie, where we have Princess Leia passionately kiss Luke to instill jealousy in Han Solo. Then we get to Return of the Jedi where its revealed they’re brother and sister!

It’s no wonder the lust/love aspects were trampled down/cut out in the subsequent special editions because the storyline switched around and suddenly we couldn’t have brother lusting after his sister!

Ah well!

Still, if going into The Force Awakens the studio knew they were doing a third trilogy, perhaps they should have thought the overarching plot through a little more before committing to releasing them the way they were.

It is what it is and for those who are fans of Star Wars, I hope you find the movie to your liking!