So I’m just gonna get out of the way of this one and have you watch the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (no really) trailer. Meet me back here after:
So, uh, lot to unpack there, huh? I’ll be honest, I was picking up what this trailer was laying down… right up until the last moment.
I understand that JJ Abrams is trying to put a real bow on the nine-film saga by tying everything together and such, but… I’m not entirely sold on the notion of bringing back Palpatine, to put it mildly. Hopefully his return is more of a McGuffin-y/legacy holocron type thing than an actual flesh and blood Ian McDiarmid returning to life. And the title? WOOF. Again, I get that JJ is going for a REVENGE/RETURN/RISE motif here, but there had to be some way to make that land less clunkily.
All that said, the rest of the trailer leading up to that last tease/title was really solid, with lots of great Star Wars-y stuff. Luke voiceover nicely setting the mood, Rey doing a backflip over Kylo’s starfighter, Kylo cuttin’ down dudes in a forest, the return of Lando, some clever trickery to insert the late Carrie Fisher, and the Death Star wreckage (which is clearly JJ going back to his “Death Star remains” idea that he scrapped from The Force Awakens).
Ah well. I loved The Last Jedi (in this house we do), so I guess I’ll sit through two hours of a fan service retread ending with a cast of characters I really like. What say you?
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker1 hits on December 20.
