The dyad of Disney (with its sanitized and sanctimonious simplicities) and Abrams (with his scrawnily derivative sensibility, an echo of an echo) has become a Death Star.Īs for the story of “The Rise of Skywalker,” it’s centered on its two protagonists’ struggles with their civic duties and their personal identities. Lucas sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney, in 2012 now whatever’s left of his world view has been mined and refined into narrow and simplistic norms. (I’ll do my best to describe it while avoiding spoilers, but beware nonetheless.) This installment also repudiates what’s best in Star Wars, namely the idiosyncrasies and complexities of George Lucas’s last two prequels, where he flaunted the purpose and the playfulness, the intricate political intrigue and the high-style flourishes, that he had sublimated in decades of cultivating industrial-strength success. There are no such surprises, let alone audacities, in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” yet I confess that it’s nonetheless engaging to see how the movie’s ponderous banalities reveal the essence of the cycle’s four-decade slog. It would be fascinating to see the colossally derisive wreckage that Bay could make of the rigidities and pieties of “Star Wars.” It’s not good, but it’s at least full of surprises and provides a baseline astonishment. See the opening chase scene of Bay’s “6 Underground,” currently on Netflix, for a sense of what can be done with an emotionally stultified and dramatically trivial script. Since the prospect of a refined stylist such as Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola-who’d likely chafe at the narrow limits imposed by such a franchise film-is too much to ask for, a boldly imaginative vulgarian such as Bay would be a welcome substitute. His earnest and righteously grandiose direction evokes, as few movies do, a craving for Michael Bay at the controls. Abrams, is mainly a distiller and a magnifier, and brings virtually no originality to it. The faults of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” are those of the franchise over all, distilled and magnified because the film’s director, J.
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