The Retcon of the Jedi
On second thought after watching ‘The Rise of Skywalker’…
Okay, I saw The Rise of Skywalker a second time, just to gut-check my initial reaction. Which, again, was not great. If anything, I feel more strongly now.
To be clear, The Rise of Skywalker is an enjoyable watch. It’s a Star Wars movie, escapism at its finest, what’s not to love? The issue is more one of disappointment. Both in terms of what the movie could have been — but more importantly, what the entire “final” trilogy should have been, in order to wrap up the entire saga.
Of course, it’s easy to second-guess decisions, especially ones you’re light years away from. But thinking about it more, this is less about nitpicking any individual decisions — I’ve already done that — and more about the overall strategy for this trilogy. Which is to say that I believe these final chapters were doomed before they were ever filmed. And that’s because they didn’t do enough of the build-out, cohesive work ahead of time, clearly. Or they did, and scrapped it.
Things started out well enough with The Force Awakens. Sure, it’s a bit derivative, and maybe too nostalgic, but it worked. And that was largely because what the franchise needed after the disastrous second trilogy was a reset. A reminder of what we all loved about Star Wars in the first place. J.J. Abrams delivered this. In spades. And then he left. And all hell broke loose.
Perhaps because the intention was never to have Abrams very involved beyond the first film and because he’s such a big name, a lot of leeway was granted to Rian Johnson, the director of the second installment, to put his own stamp on the franchise and universe. On paper, this sounds fantastic. Especially for a filmmaker as talented and opinionated as Johnson. But in practice, this started us down a very problematic path. Not because The Last Jedi isn’t any good — it is good on its own merits — but I would argue it’s not very good in the context of the first film.
That is to say, I think Disney/Lucasfilm would have seen more success (both in continuity and perhaps at the box office — who knows…) if they had picked a more… amenable director to continue down the path Abrams laid out. This is sort of a lame argument, believe me, I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. For an example of this, see the original Star Wars trilogy.
For The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas brought on Irvin Kershner to direct. Prior to that, Kershner wasn’t a completely unknown director, but he wasn’t exactly a household name.¹ Unless you’re a certain type of film nerd, you’ve likely never heard of a movie he directed before Empire.² But he took the groundwork that Lucas laid and, in the eyes of most critics and everyone now, elevated it.³
What he did not do was look at what Lucas was trying to do in Star Wars and say, “nah”. To be fair, I’m quite certain he would not have been able to do that. But that’s the point! In picking Johnson to direct the second installment of this trilogy, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy made a bold choice when history dictated a less bold one. Again, it sounds ridiculous to ridicule such a move — and particularly harsh with the benefit of hindsight — but again, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Johnson, of course, went on to retcon many key parts of what Abrams laid out. Did he do this because pretty much the only negative feedback about The Force Awakens was that it was too derivative? Who’s to say? I imagine it just has more to do with Johnson being a bold filmmaker. A true auteur, being asked to do not just a franchise film, but the franchise film.
Stamps are gonna stamp.
The next mistake came in the form of Kennedy picking Colin Trevorrow, another strong-minded, if more unproven director, to helm what would become The Rise of Skywalker. For whatever reason — sorry, for whatever “creative differences” — he was out before he even began. One has to wonder if he looked at the circle he was being asked to square in the dichotomy of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and didn’t know where to even begin, let alone end. More likely, Kennedy and crew looked at the relative disappointment of The Last Jedi, saw all the complaints about the direction in which it headed, saw Trevorrow’s own recent box office disaster, and decided to change the engine mid-flight. But in order to land the plane, they put in the trusty engine that helped it take off.
Again, on paper, this is all logical. But in film form, you were asking a director who laid out the original vision to go back to conclude that vision. Looking at it in a vacuum, that’s essentially what Abrams did with The Rise of Skywalker. Unfortunately, that original vision got sent in an entirely different direction with the aforementioned second film, so… the retconning struck back.
And this is why the third film just doesn’t work. It has to spend way too much time undoing what the second film did, which, if anything, spent too little time undoing what the first film did! The Rise of Skywalker is too long, and I think you could easily cut 30 minutes off the runtime if Abrams didn’t have to spend so much time on the above.
Or, perhaps even better, if he could have spent those 30 minutes to build up scenes and fully bake interactions for earned payoffs. Watching it this second time, The Rise of Skywalker fails at this over and over again. And it’s pretty clear why: they ran out of time to do the scenes required to make the movie as a whole work.⁴
In this regard, it reminds me a bit of the last season of Game of Thrones. The first seven seasons were so, so, so good. Then the last season, save for a few individual episodes, largely whiffed. Why? Part of it was undoubtedly building without the scaffolding of George R. R. Martin’s core text (as it wasn’t done yet — it’s still not done yet). But more fundamentally, the creators just ran out of time. The last season could have and probably should have been double the length that it was. Again, that’s easy to say in hindsight, but that doesn’t make it wrong. The payoffs were not fully earned as a result.
Would this final trilogy of Star Wars been different had J.J. Abrams simply directed the entire thing? Yes. Would it have been better? I have to believe it would have been for continuity’s sake, if nothing else.⁵ It still would have been divisive, no doubt — Abrams himself acknowledges that he’s not as good at ending stories as he is at starting them — but it would have been a single vision, not two warring cooks in the kitchen. That’s ultimately what was so hard to watch.
And so as The Rise of Skywalker was winding down in this second viewing, I found myself with an extreme thought: what if they simply remade this final trilogy? This will be highly blasphemous in some circles, I know. But I’m not sure that this trilogy and another take on this trilogy couldn’t live side-by-side. Two takes on the story. Maybe the plot is similar — like a cover version of a song — maybe it’s not — like a remix of a song. Maybe it’s entirely different. But is there any reason we must hold this story so sacred? I mean, it’s just a movie.
This takes me back to Game of Thrones. If and when (this may be too optimistic, I realize) Martin finishes the final books, they’re undoubtedly going to be quite different than the show. And I’m going to guess that someone makes his version into a new show/movie. And that will be fine. And so I think it should be fine to do with Star Wars Episodes VII — IX. But this time, hold the retcons.
¹ From Entertainment Weekly: “When Lucas offered the job to the then-57-year-old Kershner over lunch, he asked, ‘Of all the younger guys around, all the hot shots, why me?’ Lucas replied, ‘Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you’re not Hollywood.’
² And after, we have the James Bond weird alternative-universe Thunderball remake with elder Sean Connery, Never Say Never Again — and… RoboCop 2. Enough said.
³ You could definitely argue that it was the writing of Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett that really elevated the film, and I would not argue with you!
⁴ And they’re clearly pushing some of this work to tangential properties such as comics and The Clone Wars television show. This is simply too much to ask for the casual viewer. You need to make these movies as self-contained as possible. To 99% of viewers, questions were left unanswered, or worse.
⁵ The king of continuity in this regard happens to also work at Disney — just in that Marvel division. Kevin Feige, aka the man who made The Avengers not only possible, but good against all odds. And he’s apparently coming over to work on at least one Star Wars project…
