Spoilers For Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Ahead!
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One of the biggest criticisms of The Rise Of Skywalker was the nature of Emperor Palpatine’s return, and the fact that he just sort of…showed up again, literally hanging out on a life-support crane suspended from the ceiling of an ancient Sith amphitheater hidden beneath a floating pyramid on the previously unknown planet of Exegol, which was described as a homeworld of the Sith – which, in and of itself, was confusing: wasn’t Moraband the homeworld of the Sith, according to The Clone Wars, season 6? As if that wasn’t enough, it was revealed soon afterwards that Palpatine had not been idle, and had built a massive army of mini Death Stars on Exegol (because the Death Star is an idea that will never not be reused in the Star Wars franchise), each manned by thousands of ex-Imperial warriors, including a new brand of bright red stormtroopers who were hyped up in the pre-release marketing and barely had a millisecond of screentime in the actual film.
Needless to say, Star Wars fans had a lot of questions about the mysterious planet after leaving the theater – and very few of them were answered at all satisfactorily. But because The Rise Of Skywalker developed something of a reputation for leaving questions unanswered, most fans have already moved on from the subject and stopped theorizing about things like “what even is an Exegol?”, taking it for granted that this, like many other unresolved subplots in the film, would probably be explained someday in a throwaway line from a producer or a semi-canonical graphic novel.
But I’m guessing that very few people, even those of us who actually enjoyed Rise Of Skywalker for what it was, suspected that we would ever get an entire movie set on Exegol. It’s not that a bleak, barren icy wasteland riddled with blinding lightning and haunted by Sith ghosts doesn’t sound like an interesting location for a movie, it’s just that…well, spending two hours there, maybe more, watching Palpatine’s limp dishrag of a body being wheeled around on a crane, overseeing the construction of a fleet of redundant planet-destroying weapons that we, the audience, know will be defeated in a few minutes by a nifty lightsaber trick? I don’t know, I think I’ll pass (I say that now).
We don’t yet know for certain whether the Exegol movie will be released theatrically, or on Disney+ – what we do know is that it is being developed by Sleight director J.D. Dillard and MCU writer Matt Owens, who crafted the two best seasons of the fantastic, underrated series Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. We also don’t know anything about the plot, time period, or cast of characters. It could follow a young Sith acolyte during Palpatine’s Final Order, but it’s just as likely that it documents the story of some of the first Sith in the galaxy far, far away – such as the rise of Darth Bane, or one of the characters from the Knights Of The Old Republic video games. Villain origin stories are all the rage nowadays: though typically not from Disney, the studio which not too long ago canceled a planned streaming series, which would have focused on iconic animated villains like Ursula and Maleficent, for being “too dark”. If a business-savvy octopus is too dark for Disney, then I have to imagine that an ancient, bloodthirsty evil that demands human sacrifice and a form of government best described as “murder see-saw” would be too.
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Who knows? Maybe it’ll be an ensemble movie about the Knights of Ren: you know, the ones who were rumored to be the greatest Sith warriors in the galaxy and were built up for two movies before becoming quick and easy lightsaber-fodder? You remember their names, right? Trudgen (Trenchen? Trunchen?), and something beginning with an A, and something with too many consonants (or was that the same one whose name began with A?), and the other one, the one whose job was to rebuild Kylo’s helmet? Remember them? Classic additions to Star Wars canon.
I actually did like The Rise Of Skywalker, I swear.
So what do you think of this news? Does the idea of watching a Star Wars movie focused on the Sith interest you, or does it seem too radically different from what we’ve seen before? Should the film follow Palpatine or a past Sith, or no Sith at all? Share your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
The long-running (and long-canceled) hit TV series The Clone Wars returns for its final season on Disney+ with a solid, if a bit wooden, pilot episode that gets the focus back on the Clones themselves. While the entire “Bad Batch” story arc that will kick off this season was written several years ago, this is the first time we’ve seen it played out onscreen: we’ll need to wait to see how it plays out before passing judgement, but for the moment we can assume that the clues and hints being dropped will lead to some pretty interesting interactions between our core cast of characters in the very near future.
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In the pilot, the Grand Army of the Republic, led by Jedi commanders Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker (voiced by Matt Lanter) find themselves fighting Separatist droids using their own strategies against them. Captain Rex (who, like all Clones, is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), enlists the help of Clone Unit 99, known simply as the Bad Batch, after whom the pilot is titled, to sneak behind the enemy’s front lines and get to the truth. The Bad Batch’s tactics are unconventional, to say the least, as one would expect from a team comprised of “defective clones with desirable mutations”.
The few action sequences with the Bad Batch are simply okay, however. Since the Batch’s strength comes from their individuality, I would have liked to have seen each of the characters’ skills exploited in clever ways: but only Crosshair, the team’s ultra-precise sniper, gets anything resembling a cool hero moment. Wrecker, the strongman, should have had one when he carries a wounded soldier out of the wreckage of an explosion he caused (one which he prefaces with the word “Boom”, delivered appropriately deadpan), but the shot is strangely framed as a close-up of Wrecker’s face, preventing you from getting the full effect.
Most of my complaints about the episode stem from the editing, which I felt was lacking. Despite ostensibly being the most violent Clones to date, the episode is cautious when it comes to actually depicting that violence: in one scene that I feel I’m probably nitpicking way too much, a transport ship is shot down by enemy fire and crashes – but where was the customary reaction shot of the pilot letting loose one final Wilhelm scream? Such a shot would surely have been shown in earlier seasons, and the whole scene feels oddly incomplete without it. Considering that The Clone Wars has never shied away from showing characters get shot, eaten by alien monsters, cut down by lightsabers, or sucked into the vacuum of space, and had built a reputation (before its cancellation for exactly this reason) of telling mature stories with a kid-friendly twist, this feels like a very different approach to storytelling, and one with which I’m not comfortable yet. Then again, we’re only a single episode in and we haven’t reached what are sure to be some of the entire series’ darkest moments.
Overall, the episode is less focused on the action than it is on the mystery, which it sets up very effectively. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, and are concerned about the SPOILERS AHEAD, then read no further.
Rex’s suspicions about the Separatists are confirmed when he and the Bad Batch break into a cyber station and decode secret communications with a human on the planet Skako Minor, who has been feeding the Separatists top-secret battle strategies. Rex is quickly able to determine that this human is none other than his long-lost teammate Echo, who was believed to have died in the battle of Lola Sayu. The operation to rescue him from the clutches of the Separatists, and specifically the repulsive Admiral Trench (also voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), will be the focus of the next few episodes – after that, we’re all in the dark as to what comes next, and how The Clone Wars, after six incredible seasons, will wrap up this final chapter of the story.
What did you think of the episode, and what are you excited to see next? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
Minor SPOILERS For Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Ahead!
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First up, an apology: in my Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Spoiler Review, I made the fictitious claim that a couple depicted kissing near the end of the movie was a lesbian couple. There is, in fact, no clear indication of the sexual orientations of either Commander Larma D’Acy or her partner – they could be lesbian, but there’s also nothing to suggest they aren’t pansexual, bisexual, or a different sexual orientation entirely. And that is part of the problem with Star Wars‘ small, misguided attempt at LGBTQ+ representation.
And it’s not like there wasn’t room in the story for that representation to emerge in a natural, organic method. Fans have long sensed an undercurrent of semi-romantic tension between Star Wars leads Finn (played by John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and even the actors themselves have made it pretty clear that they would have had no problems if the story had headed in that direction. Boyega himself has been a bit back-and-forth on the subject, and has made friendly jokes about the pairing, while also suggesting that he doesn’t “know how that would work”. But nobody has been onboard with the popular coupling like Oscar Isaac, who has been the unofficial voice of the LGBTQ+ Star Wars fanbase for years: at first, his support seemed like the typical sort of vague hand-waving, with comments like “Poe’s open to any kind of adventure”, but starting this year, the actor has been avidly on the side of Finnpoe fans: “I think he takes his love for Finn very seriously”, Isaac said of his character at Star Wars: Celebration. Since then, he’s noted that a gay romance between the two would be “a great way for the story to go”, admitted that “if they would’ve been boyfriends, that would have been fun”, and just yesterday confessed that, though he tried to advocate behind-the-scenes for a love story between the two men, “Disney overlords were not ready to do that”. Isaac’s strong approval is encouraging, but unfortunately, he’s only an actor and can’t really do much to influence the film’s scripts.
And yet, Rise Of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams himself has revealed that the diversity of Star Wars‘ ensemble cast is supposedly very important to him, and that he felt it necessary that it be increased in the franchise’s final chapter. “And in the case of the LGBTQ community,” he noted, “it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film”. When pressed on the issue, Abrams commented with vague assurance that “I did just say what I just said”.
Abrams’ comments should sound eerily (auto-correct suggested wearily, which also works) familiar to fans who may remember Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo saying virtually the same thing about the LGBTQ+ representation in their blockbuster hit back in April: “It was important to us as we did four of these films, we wanted a gay character somewhere in them…it is a perfect time, because one of the things that is compelling about the Marvel Universe moving forward is its focus on diversity”.
The similarities don’t stop there, though, because when it comes down to it, the LGBTQ+ representation in both films is also strangely identical. In Endgame, a minor, unnamed character played by Joe Russo himself, mentions dating another man in a throwaway line: this character has no purpose in the story, nor any significance beyond being gay, and is only shown this one time – the fact that he’s played by Joe Russo also makes the moment into a surprising cameo, distracting attention from the significance of his words. In Star Wars, the crucial representation is even less noticeable, though technically more significant: here, Commander Larma D’Acy, a minor character portrayed by Amanda Lawrence, is shown kissing another woman in an exceedingly brief moment – due to taking place in a crowd shot, during an emotional scene, you could easily watch the film without even noticing that you had just witnessed LGBTQ+ history. And I’m left wondering…was that the point?
A same-sex kiss of any kind is a strikingly powerful statement in a big franchise film such as this one, but Disney’s use of the kiss feels cheap, as if it’s reducing what should be important into a meaningless moment that, on the surface, looks like great representation. The audience has no emotional attachment to D’Acy and especially not to her girlfriend, who isn’t even named in the film (the newest Star Wars Visual Dictionary apparently does give her a name: Wrobbie Tryce). They have no reason to care about these two women or their two-second long relationship – and since the characters are so minor, and so deliberately overshadowed by other, more important characters, audiences don’t even have any good reason to notice them or their kiss. If it had been Finn and Poe kissing, even if only for two seconds or one, you would notice because it’s Finn and Poe: they’re lead characters, and the audience is familiar with them. Two extras somewhere in a crowd shot? Not so much.
Disney has just proven that simply including a gay kiss isn’t enough to constitute meaningful representation. People around the world have been rightfully outraged, since the film’s release, that this moment was what Abrams was referring to when he claimed that LGBTQ+ representation was one of his priorities when making The Rise Of Skywalker.
And here’s the thing: Abrams didn’t need to put LGBTQ+ representation into the film at all. As far as we know, this was his decision: nobody was forcing him to do it. And that should be applauded, because it is a step forward. What shouldn’t be applauded is the fact that Abrams, knowing full well just how brief and insignificant the kiss was, went around claiming that the two-second snippet of footage could or would make up for all of the lost opportunities with the Finnpoe relationship, or even amount to anything more than what it was – a two-second snippet of footage. Why not just admit upfront that there would be a small nod to the LGBTQ+ community, without stirring up more controversy and trouble for himself?
Because this is queer-baiting 101. Queer-baiting refers to the process of luring LGBTQ+ audiences to consume a product, be it a movie, TV show, book, etc, with the promise or hint of LGBTQ+ representation, only to reveal that there was little to no representation to begin with. Endgame was heavily criticized for queer-baiting, prompting the Russo Brothers to respond with the claim, as yet unverified, that more major Marvel characters will come out as LGBTQ+ in future movies. 2017’s Beauty And The Beast faced queer-baiting critiques after an “exclusively gay” scene hyped up in the film’s pre-release marketing turned out to be a single shot of two male characters dancing. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald was one of those especially awful cases where a director actually tells the truth and goes on record to say that a character will not be depicted as LGBTQ+ in his movie, only to have his working partner release a tweet disputing that claim – the latter being J.K. Rowling, who apparently didn’t realize she was lying, or simply didn’t care: the promised LGBTQ+ representation in that case actually referred to a single line of dialogue with only slightly gay connotations.
And now Star Wars faces those same complaints, for good reason. By promising something he couldn’t deliver, Abrams dug himself into his own grave. He wasn’t obliged to make any statement at all, but he did – and now he’s paying the price, as audiences riot against the director.
What could he have done to rectify the situation? Well, the easiest solution would have been to make D’Acy and her partner more prominent in the film. If that would have taken time away from the main cast, then why not have it be one of the main cast who turns out to be gay? Finn and Poe are literally right there. But if neither option was viable, then Abrams should simply have kept his mouth shut and not said anything at all. His idea of representation is outdated and honestly offensive, making it an unnecessarily problematic element in a movie that already has plenty of those.
I really don’t want to make a scene, and we know Larma D’Acy wouldn’t want me to (that’s her only significant line in two movies: you thought I wasn’t going to use it in some way?): I wish I could simply talk about how nobody, no matter how far away their galaxy is, should have to live with a name with Wrobbie – or Larma, for that matter. But I can’t stay silent when directors and filmmakers continue to shamelessly bait and trap LGBTQ+ audiences, taking their money in exchange for empty, unfulfilled promises. Hollywood is making progress, or at least, I hope that they are: Disney is making a big deal out of having their first openly gay character in next year’s Jungle Cruise (though the fact that the character is played by a straight comedian and described by test audiences as “hugely effete” isn’t exactly encouraging), and Marvel has promised their first gay character in The Eternals – rumored to be the demigod Phastos, a happily married man with children. But until these claims are backed up by hard facts (i.e. the films themselves), be wary of could be just another queer-baiting incident.
For now, let’s just take a moment to acknowledge that, no matter how briefly their relationship may be depicted onscreen, Larma D’Acy and Wrobbie Tryce are, canonically, Star Wars‘ very first same-sex couple, and the two characters deserve a little more respect and congratulatory praise than they received from J.J. Abrams. Hopefully they’ll be joined in the near future by a number of other LGBTQ+ characters: ones who aren’t betrayed by their own creators.
We are officially in the last leg of the long journey to Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, which means that the mighty Skywalker Saga, a story spanning forty years across films, books, comics, cartoons and video games is finally coming to a close – which in turn means that it’s time to reflect on that nine-part saga and take a good long look at the films that predate and inform Rise Of Skywalker‘s epic conclusion.
To do that, we’re going to have to discuss spoilers for each of the eight films in the Saga, so…SPOILERS AHEAD.
(Before we begin, be aware that I’m going through the list by order of release date: I understand that George Lucas wanted movies 4, 5 and 6 to be movies 1, 2 and 3 and to be treated as such – but they’re not good enough to warrant that distinction. Sorry, George).
Star Wars: A New Hope
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The movie that started it all: not just the opening chapter in the story of the Skywalker family and their tumultuous game of tug-of-war between opposing sides of the Force, but also the movie that birthed Hollywood’s current blockbuster trend (apart from the prequels, which were crushed under the hairy heels of hobbits, every Star Wars movie in the Skywalker Saga has been the highest-grossing movie in the year of its release). Star Wars is one of the defining checkpoints in cinematic history, and it will always have that distinction – few other films have shaped the entertainment industry, and pop culture in general, in the way that Star Wars did. Even in the days before the internet and social media, the film permeated every aspect of society, spawning merchandise, mantras, mannerisms, and that notorious Christmas special that George Lucas wants you to forget about. It makes Rise Of Skywalker all the more frightening – for the first time in forty-two years, the Star Wars franchise will have no clear direction, no overarching story, no Skywalker to follow into the future.
But as that future is still more than a week away, let us savor this moment of blissful ignorance and return to the craggy deserts of Tatooine, a remote planet nestled in a forgotten corner of the Outer Rim, somewhere long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away – an inconspicuous space rock that, for whatever reason birthed the Star Wars franchise’s most iconic hero and villain. The harsh sand is illuminated by the planet’s dual suns (duality is Star Wars‘ most constant theme: make a note of that), and crawling with Jawas, Tusken Raiders, and the handful of moisture farmers who call the desert home. It’s probably the most iconic locale in all of science-fiction. But after all this time, surely both Tatooine’s rugged charm and Luke Skywalker’s simplistic journey to heroism have been antiquated by the deluge of even larger, more epic sci-fi stories that erupted in the film’s wake?
Nope. That is to say: yes, some parts of A New Hope maybe aren’t quite as spectacular and compelling as they were in 1977 – but all in all, the film is still extremely entertaining, ridiculously fun, and brilliantly unique. There are things I love about the movie – there are also things that I strongly dislike. And, in a couple of situations, there are things which would work, but don’t anymore because of the events of other Star Wars movies. Let’s run through the list.
What is still great about A New Hope? So much. But above anything else – the film’s story. I called it simplistic, and it is: but it’s archetypal, so it has to be. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) was never a very complex character in the original film – he was the standard white male protagonist whose inferior knockoffs have since infested every inch of genre fiction. Morally pure but headstrong, loyal but self-doubting, readily equipped with magic sword and grappling hook but pacifistic nevertheless (okay, the grappling hook is actually one of Luke’s more unique accessories: shamefully, it was only ever used once). Most of the ensemble cast are also fairly ordinary: the rogue with a heart of gold, the princess, the mentor figure unwillingly called out of retirement, the bumbling comic relief characters. And the film never does anything particularly unexpected or extraordinary with any of them – they go about their quest, and achieve it with a minimum amount of casualties (except for the mentor, of course: the mentor always dies). But there’s nothing wrong with a classic Hero’s Journey, and A New Hope arguably tells it better than almost any other example out there. And you have to first build a myth if you’re going to start deconstructing it.
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A New Hope also does a good job of disguising the fact that its characters are archetypes: for example, while Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is technically a “damsel in distress”, she never actually stresses or cracks under pressure. She resists the interrogations and torture methods employed upon her by the greatest Sith Lord in the universe, and even dares to lie to Grand Moff Tarkin (the fabulous Peter Cushing) in order to buy time for her friends: and once freed from prison, she grabs herself a blaster gun and takes part in the action. As soon as she returns to her Rebel hideout, she takes the reins and orchestrates the daredevil raid on the Death Star. And of course, she was the person entrusted with the Death Star plans in the first place.
Building off of that: spaceships and aliens. From the film’s opening shot (which has been mirrored and referred back to many times since), Star Wars has always been, at least partially, about building bigger and bigger spaceships and then finding ways to blow them up – after all, there wouldn’t be any star war to speak of if the Empire didn’t have a gazillion TIE-fighters and star destroyers, or if the Rebellion wasn’t armed with their battered fleet of X-Wings (and one Millennium Falcon). A New Hope has some great scenes in space, and some incredible spaceships – not to mention the mighty Death Star, a weapon of mass destruction that would be a lot more intimidating if it wasn’t basically the only idea the Empire ever had. Every ship in Star Wars, whether built to weather the sands of Tatooine or the cold void of space, has its own little quirks and characteristics: even if it’s often impossible to remember every spaceship’s name (the Falcon, Tantive IV, um…), they’re all still easily distinguishable.
The aliens, while undoubtedly being some of Star Wars‘ most iconic characters, are rather few and far between in A New Hope. With each new movie in the franchise, the Rebellion has become more and more diverse, but the original film’s trusty team of fighter pilots consisted entirely of white men. Chewbacca the Wookie (Peter Mayhew) is the only alien present in the film’s epic finale (and it feels mean to call him an alien: Chewie is part of the family). This is something that feels even weirder when you consider that the crew of pilots and soldiers in Rogue One (which is set only about a week before the events of A New Hope) is much more diverse, with women, people of color, and aliens all piloting spaceships and taking part in the Rebellion. But there are enough aliens packed into the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine to fill roughly thirty who’s-who books: Figrin D’an and his groovy band, the Modal Nodes; Greedo, the rubbery green rat who may or may not have shot first (more on that in a moment); Jawas, furtive junk-traders and robbers eternally swaddled in dark robes; the barbaric Tusken Raiders, who are indirectly responsible for Darth Vader; and of course, the mighty Jabba the Hutt, who was digitally added into the film during one of George Lucas’ many attempts to retouch the original trilogy with fancier special effects.
And now we have to get into the bad stuff: specifically, the awkward mishmash of VFX and practical effects that Lucas’ tampering is responsible for – in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, not content with allowing the original films to age gracefully, Lucas, who was at that point busy suffocating his prequel trilogy in horrendous CGI nonsense, decided to go back and insert some of his new favorite ingredient into the older films: the result is…unfortunate, to say the least. Not only because the CGI is bad, inconsistent, and messily applied, but also because it robs A New Hope of a lot of its charm. Is it kind of silly that spaceships and entire planets explode into sparkling smoke in the original film? Yes, of course: for example, it’s a bit of a downgrade to go from watching 2016’s Rogue One (which, again, is set only a few days before A New Hope), which does a great job of displaying the Death Star’s horrific powers – to the original Death Star, which just zaps planets out of existence in two seconds with a pyrotechnics flash, before itself being zapped. But that wasn’t even the only sort of thing that George Lucas was interested in changing: apparently dissatisfied with the story he had crafted, he also edited scenes differently to present different narratives – which is how we ended up with the “Han shot first” debacle.
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The “Han shot first” debacle is the Star Wars fandom’s equivalent of “do Balrogs have wings?”, or “how did Steve return the Soul Stone?”. Back in 1977, it wasn’t even a question: when Han Solo (Harrison Ford) was accosted by the green space alien mercenary Greedo (Paul Blake) in the Mos Eisley cantina, he undeniably shot first, before Greedo had a chance to move. And for most people, that was perfectly fine: it was totally in character for the rogue, and it was a cool, tense scene. But for George Lucas, it painted Han Solo as a merciless killer, so he tinkered with it to add in a few frames where Greedo shoots first, missing Han (which doesn’t even make sense, considering he was sitting about two feet away from him), and giving Han justification for firing back. In 2004, Lucas changed it again, having both Han and Greedo fire at the same time, with Han somehow dodging Greedo’s shot. And now, the controversy has been stirred up again by the Disney+ version of the film, which gives Greedo an added line of dialogue, in which he threatens Han with the menacing word “maclunkey” before shooting. The debacle has sparked outrage on both sides of the argument: Lucas claims that it was always meant to be that way (despite original scripts proving otherwise); Paul Blake is outraged that his character shot first, saying it makes Greedo look pathetic for missing at such short range; and Harrison Ford doesn’t know or care who shot first. The question of which version is “right” is bound to linger for many more years to come. For more info on the subject, you can check out Wikipedia’s entire article on “Han shot first”.
Lucas’ meddling has done a great deal of damage to the franchise: the attempt to blend the styles of the first two trilogies into one cohesive whole isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it doesn’t work; Lucas’ insistence that 1977 audiences accidentally fell in love with only “half a completed film” feels like a slap in the face to the franchise’s earliest fans; and his eventual decision to step away from Star Wars entirely seems, in hindsight, like sore losing, as if he can’t quite understand that his films don’t need to be 100% perfect in order to be good. They’re beloved classics already: they should remain classic.
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So does A New Hope still hold up after all this time? I think that, if you can look past the film’s very few flaws (most of which are the fault of George Lucas’ perfectionism), then you’ll find that the very first Star Wars movie is still one of the franchise’s very best. It’s not as visionary as The Empire Strikes Back or The Last Jedi, nor even as complex as The Revenge Of The Sith, but it’s still just as much (if not more) fun than all three of those entries.
