The Fall of Skywalker (and Star Wars)

I wrote a review earlier this year of the latest theatrical Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, and I really didn't like it when I watched. As the months have gone by though my dislike has grown to hatred as I've watched plenty of people fixing not just that film, but the whole of the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. Disney not only had no plans on what to do with a billion dollar franchise they bought, but didn't bother to seriously analyze the scripts that the two directors, J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson, made that clashed with each other. The original Star Wars trilogy was also somewhat without a plan, but the people involved in all three films worked with one another to make sure things went smoothly. The prequels, though terrible, all had a somewhat smooth storyline since George Lucas had planned most of it out. But this new trilogy... No...

This article is going to be different because this isn't a review or a pitch. Instead I'm going to be mostly focusing on The Rise of Skywalker, talking about three of my biggest problems with the film. These problems will not be just simple like, "There should have been a better script," or "This character needed more screentime." I'm talking about plot points that can be dissected with the science and history found throughout the Star Wars lore. Not just opinion, but cold, hard facts and story that cannot be disputed. Now I will also go back to previous Star Wars films and talk about how this film has tried to assassinate every previous trilogy, but I'll try to mostly stick with the concrete information on the Star Wars universe.

They Fly Now?

I hate this scene more than life itself. But it reminds me a lot of the "I don't like sand," moment from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. It's incredible that somebody thought that this would pass as great dialogue, but it's so stupid that when I first saw that scene I literally had to pause the film and laugh for five minutes before I resumed the movie. For those who don't know what I'm talking about there is this one scene on a desert planet where Rey, Finn, Poe, and the droids C3PO, R2D2, and BB8 are all flee from some storm troopers. At once point these troopers are launched into the air and activate jetpacks, to which C3PO is like, "Oh, they fly now!" Then Finn is like, "They fly now?" and then Poe confirms, "They fly now." I believe that moment was trying to be comedy, but it's so dumb I that it's kind of angry trigger for me.

First off, the idea of Stormtroopers being suddenly able to fly is ridiculous because they've been flying for years! Decades even! Let's go back to the Star War prequels and the clone troopers, the first version of the now Stormtroopers. The Clone Wars, where the clone troopers first appeared, started around 22 BBY, which is 22 years before the events of A New Hope. From that we got 34 years into the future to the time when The Rise of Skywalker begins. So for troopers it's been at least 55 years since they got jetpacks. There should be absolutely no way that them being able to fly should be a surprise to anybody. But I'm only counting stormtroopers though, as their original designs came from the Mandalorians of Mandalore. They have been around for generations with that technology, so this goes way beyond fifty years.

Plus if Finn worked as a stormtrooper, shouldn't he have known this already? Normally it takes years to become a solider of any sort, including training in all different types of equipment. When I wrote my own Star Wars story, Storm, I wanted to show that troopers needed the training to become who they are, that they should be knowledgeable of all things of the Empire when it comes to combat. Now that is not a canon story in Star Wars, but to compare with real life the army, navy, air force, all of them and more require their participants to know as much of the equipment as possible in order to be fully accepted into those military units. The fact that Finn didn't know about jetpacks, especially since they've been around for decades, means a normal stormtrooper gets unforgivably bad training, which is dumb when the whole point of the Empire- I mean First Order, is to rule all the galaxy!

What's Happened with The Force

J.J. Abrams seems to have a philosophy about him similar to Michael Bay: If you make it bigger, it'll be better. He did that with the Star Trek reboot, he did it with The Force Awakens with Star Killer Base (which is basically a super-sized Death Star), and he's done it in The Rise of Skywalker in multiple ways. We're going to focus on how he's changed about The Force and how it's now out of control. Remember how Luke trained under Master Yoda in the swamps on Dagobah, how Yoda taught him to be one with the force and how Luke struggled? That was and still is an incredible sequence in cinema because there was real struggle for Luke to understand that the Force is more about lifting rocks. The first scene with Rey in The Rise of Skywalker shows her lifting a bunch of rocks and herself with little to no effort. This would have been a lot better shown in the previous movie under Luke's teachings and it's a little too late to show her struggling at all in the final film of the new trilogy.

Speaking of the previous movie, The Last Jedi introduced the force power of "Force Bond", which is when two force users form a unique connection that allows them to communicate with one another over long distances and, if the bond is strong enough, teleport matter or themselves to the other. When I saw The Last Jedi I didn't really understand or like the idea of teleporting matter with The Force. The connection yes because Luke Skywalker had that somewhat with his Father, Darth Vader/ Anakin Skywalker. It's also been an ability that's been around before The Rise of Skywalker in the CGI animated Clone Wars TV show, showing that a form of Force Bond is able to exist even between something simple like a master and apprentice. It's even said that a force bond can be created by a Sith to trick jedi into following them, similar to how Snoke tricked Ben Solo into joining the dark side and becoming Kylo Ren. However, it never evolved into the ability to teleport matter about and that is where things get messy.

Going through the non-canon Star Wars Legends I found one instance of teleporting matter with the force, which is called "Folding Space". Just one force user was capable of teleporting matter through space and it took a ton of training in order to do that. And that force use was none other than Luke Skywalker. He had to train really damn hard to get it right since he was the only one capable of doing it (as far as my research has shown) that means it's an extremely difficult technique to learn. Additionally it wasn't something that was done too often by Luke since it required a lot of concentration. Rey though, and eventually Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo, are able to transport matter at will like it's nothing, lead to some ridiculous fights as they teleport themselves about the galaxy to the other's location, as well as trading objects that save the other.

Think about this guys: If teleporting matter was so easy with the force, how come this was never a skill that was taught more to the Jedi or Sith? It seems like a very useful ability, especially if being able to teleport matter is one such trick you can accomplish with it. True, you need a bond with another force user in order to do this, but as I said this can be tricked into existence through manipulation. I mean Palpatine was able to easily Kylo Ren with his own force powers, making him believe he was Snoke and/or Vader. With this trilogy I wouldn't expect anything less.

The other force ability brought to life in The Rise of Skywalker is "Force Heal". Now that there I normally would not have a problem with because that has been around in plenty of Star Wars TV shows, as well as games and the now non-canon stories. However it wasn't never intended as a way to fully fix up injuries like a professional medic with bandages and shots and was more for gradual healing that would take hours to fully heal and be slow and precise. But as I said before, Abrams believes in bigger being better, so Rey and Kylo Ren are capable of healing massive wounds, including fatal injuries in a matter of seconds. This was never shown in the previous film, so Rey somehow mastered the skill in a year (that's the time between the end of TLJ and TROS) or was able to learn it during this film. That's bullshit.

If force heal could ever heal so much so quickly why haven't we ever seen it before? It would have been very useful in saving Qui-Gon Jinn after he got stabbed by Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Or what about when Padame was dying because of unknown reasons/ giving up on life after Anakin tried to choke her, that would have been useful there. Or what about after Darth Vader got struck by the Sith lightning from The Emperor during Return of the Jedi, Luke could have saved his life and he'd be a living and reformed Jedi. The writers of these films feel that Rey being a girl is a big character flaw, so they hold her hands and give her a ton of extra power that is way beyond any normal force user because they think because her being female means she can't do anything without extra help. That though is a different can of worms I don't want to open.

With Rey and Kylo Ren being able to use these skill right off the bat and so easily it just destroys a lot of the idea that you need to train to be able to master the force. Additionally, when Rey dies after defeating Palpatine once and for all (until Disney wants to retcon that), Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo brings her back to life. She could have saved him in some way since it's apparently so easy to transfer life force to one another, but she doesn't. What a jerk. With no training in either of these skills there's no sense of struggle for any characters, removing the impact of that training we see from the characters in the older movies, especially Luke's training with Yoda. That one especially changed cinema in a lot of ways because it showed that brute strength isn't all that great, that an open mind and an acceptance of the non-physical is more powerful than that.

The Final Order's Massive Orgy

Okay, you're probably wonder, "What the hell is with that title?" Well in The Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine has a whole private army on his planet of Exegol consisting of over a thousand Star Destroyers, more than any ever seen in Star Wars before. All of them are raised by Palpatine at once out of the ice of the planet (which is overpowered as hell to the point of laughable) and the when I first saw that in the trailer I called bullshit. Then I found out that all of them have their own Death Star laser, meaning all of them can destroy planets with ease. Again, Abams loves his Michael Bay philosophies. There are multiple problems with this writing though besides how many ships there are, including where all the crew came from.

Let's start with the first problem. According to my research these new Star Destroyer vessels each require a crew of 29,585 people in order to function. With these being around or over a thousand of these destroyer craft that means 29,585,000 people are required to run all of these ships. That doesn't include the soldiers to pilot TIE fighters, ground troopers, and the others that fulfill other roles or pilot other vehicles. Now you might think this would be easy with cloning as an option since this movie's Palpatine is also a clone, but there several problems with that, the most obvious one being that none of the of the Final Order are clones. We can clearly see plenty of differences in physical appearance, age, gender, etc. Even if this was somehow started right after Palpatine came into power after Order 66 in 19 BBY that would mean that over 30 million new soldiers would have to be produced in less than 53 years. That's like creating a population just slightly bigger than Texas. And that means an orgy, disgusting as that sounds.

Even if they somehow were all clones it takes 10 years to have them at least ready for combat training and the amount of equipment needed to clone this many individuals would be so much that it would be extremely obvious that a clone army was being produced. At the start of the Clone Wars there was only 200,000 clones on hand for combat, eventually growing beyond 3 million clones. But more importantly, even with such an army there's the requirement of sustenance, of food and water needed to keep everyone healthy. Exegol is a not a suitable place to grow or hunt for food with its barrens lands and very broken terrain, which means it all has to be delivered by cargo. All +30 million followers of his must be fed for years, even decades, which is just plain ludicrous considering Exegol's inability to produce and how the planet cannot be found except with a Way Finder, both of which are off the planet. This is especially the case since all the ships and their crews were buried deep under the ice of Exegol, making transporting foods to the crews extremely difficult.

Palatine(s) Ruin Everything

They really do guys. I'm not just talking about The Emperor but also Rey Palpatine. I refuse to add the title of Skywalker to her name because she basically stole it. I was originally going to split this section into two parts, but since they're both Palpatines and I hate both their appearances in this movie I'm going to keep them together. In interviews about the film Ian McDiarmid, the man who has continually played The Emperor, has stated that the he was surprised that Disney wanted him back to play the iconic character once more, that it came out of nowhere and a year before The Rise of Skywalker was released. It shows that Snoke was originally intended as the final villain of the sequel trilogy, but that got scrapped by Rain Johnson. I have a hard time deciding which one is worse in this movie.

Sheev Palpatine (The Emperor) was born on Naboo in 84 BBY and "died" on the Death Star on 4 ABY, which made him around 88 years old when died for the first time. Now if we roll back to when the Clone Wars ended with Order 66 (which killed almost all the Jedi) at 32 BBY, that means he was around 52 years old. Now studies have shown that men can lower chance of producing strong sperm after their forties, so the chances of siring a child at that age is not as strong. I haven't been able to find out when Rey's mother was born, but from I found out it seems that Rey's mother was born most likely sometime after Palaptine was raised to power and after Order 66. That means that Palpatine most likely had sex with somebody with his messed up face. Now this is wrong in multiple ways. First the idea of somebody not minding making out or having sex with somebody so disfigured is disgusting. The very idea is enough to make me vomit. Second, if they did resist I believe that Palpatine wouldn't be bothered at all to force himself upon her (pun not intended). I'm going with the latter because Palpatine as a character is one who is more than willing to force or manipulate people to obey him. Just thinking of it gives me goosebumps and makes me want throw up violently.

Now what's just as bad for Palpatine being a part of the movie is the fact he should be canonically dead. As I mentioned he died on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi at the age of 88, meaning he was already old and grey when he was thrown down that long shaft into the reactor of the Death Star. Then it violently exploded, wiping out millions of lives on that station. Nothing should have been able to survive that. Now his survival is a massive slap in the faces of long-time Star Wars fans because Anakin Skywalker/ Darth Vader was supposed to be bring balance to the force. At the end of the prequels it was believed by the other characters that he did so by bringing about the death of most of the Jedi order. However in the original trilogy, when he only know him as Vader, he kills Palpatine and completes the prophecy in its entirety. Now the Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker is a clone, but idea of him surviving that Death Star explosion and Vader's sacrfice totally undermines decades of love toward the previous Star Wars films.

Let's focus to Rey now. The idea of her being a Palpatine isn't entirely a bad idea and it was a theory that people had after The Force Awakens since she was powerful with the force and we had no idea of her origins. However, with Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi saying that Rey is a nobody, that her parents sold her for drinking money, that she's not special or chosen, put that theory to rest in a brutal way. As time has went on I actually have come to really like that choice of Rian because it removes the idea that family or blood ties effects how the Force how much control and power of the force comes to people. This would tie into the Prequels and how the Jedi would take children from many different types of species and families and not just a few groups. If the power and control of the Force was based on bloodlines then there would be no rules permitting love and there would be less diversity in species. But most people were not happy about the "subversion of expectations" Rian did and Disney, not realizing the harm they were about to bring, scrapped Rian's idea and said that Rey is really Palpatine's granddaughter. While that does make sense a bit since she's so powerful, it feels like a rushed idea since Rian killed of the previous main villain of the story and they needed to bring in somebody new to be the new big villain.

And then we reach the finale of the movie, a part that I heard is real, but I just thought those rumors were just jokes, that it couldn't be real. But it is... Rey changes her name from Rey Palpatine to Rey Skywalker. She does so on the planet of Tatoonie, a place she has never been to before and has no connection with, a place that Luke Skywalker wanted to escape from, which Leia hated because of Jabba the Hut dressing her in a bikini as his dancing slave, and which Anakin/ Vader hated because he was a slave on it and lost his mommy on there. Then the twin suns appear to try and wow people with nostalgia, but again Rey has absolutely no ties with the planet which makes the scene pointless. Rey took Luke's lightsaber, his friends, his legacy of helping to restore balance to the force, and finally his name. And most likely Rey took the Millennium Falcon as well. What a bitch.

Conclusion

The Rise of Skywalker screwed over a lot of Star Wars. Its fans, its lore, and its future. There are so many more things I could rip apart, but that require me to write a full book on this. I just... I hate The Rise of Skywalker, it's not just a terrible Star Wars film, but a terrible film in general. Sure it looks nice and the effects are pretty cool, but with that philosophy you can say that jangling keys in front of a person is entertainment. To be honest though my dislike of J.J. Abrams has lessen a bit since I'm pretty sure Disney had like a gun to his head to fix The Last Jedi as soon as possible. I'm pretty sure Disney could have delayed the film until they got a proper script done, but they didn't and we got... this.

Now if this is all what I've gathered through research and the information that's currently available on Star Wars. If new, concrete information that isn't silly/ has real grounds of being genuine comes up that somehow can disprove my observations I can admit I was wrong and these can be scrapped. However the chances of Disney actually coming up with reasonable defense for their dumb writing is extremely small. There are books out right now that give a bunch of BS on some of the technology, like how Starkiller Base had so much power in it. I... I don't want to talk about this anymore, the sequel trilogy should be buried in the ground and left for dead.

What his movie and The Mandalorian have made me realize is that I'd rather be a Mandalorian than a force user, especially since they just keep making problems for themselves and others.