Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of the Sheev Who Stole Christmas
The Senate in all his glory.
Directed by	U.S. Army Abrams Tank
Produced by	Not Kathleen Kennedy (thank God)
Written by	A Fish Tank
Starring	Cameos of everyone from the previous eight films
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Lensflare
Edited by	Breakneck
Production company	Lucasfilm
Distributed by	Disney
Release date(s)	December 19, 2019  (2019 -12-19)
Running time	450 minutes too long
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$100,000,000
Box office	Yes

“I hate Star Wars now.”

~ Fans after watching the movie

Star Wars Episode Nein: The Rise of Skywalker is the ninth and final (for now) installment in the Star Wars Skywalker Saga, chronologically that is. It is the sequel to the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special and the prequel to the 2020 Lego Star Wars Holiday Special. Having been released in December 2019, is also the first mainline Star Wars film to take place at Christmastime.

Set in 35 ABY, a year after the previous disaster, the film features the somehow-return of the evil Emperor Sheev Palpatine. The Rebel elves must race against the clock to find out his whereabouts, traveling around locations and plot scenarios from all the previous movies. Finn and Poe lead the Christmas Resistance to put a stop to the First Order's plans to destroy all holiday cheer, while Rey anticipates her inevitable will-they-or-won't-they confrontation with dreamy emo bad boy Kylo Ren.

After the backlash against The Last Jedi, Disney panicked and resorted to Plan B. J.J. Abrams was bought back after directing Episode VII and skipping Episode VIII for "personal reasons against the number 8." Unfortunately, the film was not able to recapture the Christmas spirit of the original trilogy from which it rehashed, and received the worst reviews of the entire saga.

Plot

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

STAR WARS
EPISODE IX
THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The dead talk! The galaxy has heard a stupid broadcast, a threat of POWER in the soft voice of the late EMPEROR SHEEV PALPATINE.

FIRST LADY LEIA ORGANA dispatches not-so-secret agents to retrieve a hard-drive, while REY, the last of the known Jedi, trains for battle against the diabolical DOWN WITH CHRISTMAS ORDER.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader KYLO FROST rages in search of the UNLIMITED POWER Emperor, determined to join anyone who poses a threat to the galaxy's HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS....

---

Instead of wrapping a cable around its legs to take down this AT-AT, you could just eat them.

After Emperor Sheev Palpatine is resurrected by the video game Fortnite, he threatens the entire galaxy by cancelling Christmas. Rey and Finn, who are big Christmas fans, are not going to allow Sheev to carry out his anti-holiday cheer plan. Kylo Ren, another Christmas hater, obtains a Sith compass (whatever that is) and travels to Exegol. Kylo joins Palps's merry band of Red Reindeer Troopers as Supreme Leader Frost.

Back at Santa's workshop, the Resistance fighters, better known as Elves, are preparing their assault against Sheev's fleet of Planet-Destroying Candy Cane Star Destroyers. Rey and Finn travel to the moon of the moon Endor (the moon's moon?), which is where the final battle of Return of the Jedi took place, to locate a knife that has an encryption on it made by invisible ink. While the two elves are on their side quest, Poe Dameron and Chewbacca travel to a sand planet that isn't Tatooine. Back on Endor, Finn and Rey meet a black horse lady who offers to cook them a plum pudding. Finn, hungry, says he could go for a bite. While the lady and Finn are eating, Rey sneaks off and steals the lady's yacht, and sails to the remains of the Second Death Star.

Meanwhile, Poe and Chewie are at a Pasaana desert frat party. The pair then come across a drunk Lando Calrissian who is singing Christmas karaoke to a group of Twi'leks. Poe and the Wookiee drag Lando out of the pub and into the blazing hot sand pool. The Knights of Grinch (Kylo Frost's World of Warcraft guild) show up and kidnap (Man-nap?....Wookiee-nap?) Chewbacca. Back on Endor, Rey docks at the Death Star II's boat ramp and goes inside. She has a "Force vision" where she has a double-bladed lightsaber (like Darth Maul) but in Christmas colors; one being red, the other green. She wakes up from the vision and in her hand is the secret knife that she came for (Marvel later repurposed this scene for Avengers: Infinity War).

Poe, Finn, and Rey regroup and find out that in order to read the invisible ink on the knife, they need to hack into C-3PO's memory, as apposed to just using a lemon. They hire a dark web space hacker to bypass all the tech mumbo jumbo in 3-PO's head. Kylo Frost sends Rey a letter via snail mail to inform her that he has Chewbacca as a prisoner of war (...a Star War?). The trio fly to Kylo's Star Destroyer and rescue the Wookiee like it was a walk in the park; however, before they could leave, Kylo "Force-hacks" into Rey's mind and tells her that she is, in fact, Palpatine's biological granddaughter. They escape and return to the Talking Computer Repair Shop to pick up a now jailbroken C-3PO.

Threepio informs the trio that Palps is on Exegol before shutting down forever. They then forward this information to the rest of the Christmas Resistance to help assist them. A giant space battle with starships, X-maswings, space horses, space people, space aliens, space everything commences on Exegol; it was a real Star War, and an Endgame ripoff...Rey and Kylo, now Ben Solo after being redeemed off-camera, fight a crippled Darth Sidious. Ben is stabbed and gets to kiss Daisy Ridley before turning into a Force Ghost. Rey defeats her grandpa with his own Force lightning.

The Resistance and the galaxy celebrate their victory while Rey visits Luke Skywalker's old homestead on Tatooine. An old lady who just so happened to be passing by asks her name. Rey responds, "Rey....", before being cut off by the end credits, making the movie end on a cliffhanger and setting up a possible tenth film and fourth trilogy.

Cast and characters

• Daisy Ridley as Female Elf aka Rey Last Name Unknown (It's Palpatine): A scavenger Jedi who learns she's related not to nobodies as thought in the previous movie, but to Space Hitler of all things.
• John Boyega as Black Elf aka Shark Finn Soup: A stormtrooper-turned-Resistance-soldier who had the potential to be a full-blown Force-sensitive Jedi, but J.J. blew (or un-full-blew?) it.
• Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron aka Poe Pudding: A brash Resistance pilot who utters the immortal words "Somehow, Palpatine returned."
• Adam Driver as Kylo Ren aka Kylo Frost: The angsty faux-leader of the First Order who is pulled back to the light side by Rey, but ends up sacrificing himself to save her, and doesn't even get a Force Ghost for his troubles. Anakin got one, so why not Ben?
• Mark Hamill as Santa Claus aka the Ghost of Luke Skywalker Present: Now a Force Ghost and back to his old optimistic self, Luke goes back on every cynical thing he told Rey about the Jedi in the last movie, all for the sake of fan appeasement.

Admiral Ackbar came out of retirement, only to lose his veteran's pension.

• Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa aka Mrs. Claus (who is also his sister): The leader of the Resistance who commits Force-suicide in an attempt to defend Rey from Kylo via astral projection.
• Harrison Ford as Han Solo aka Old Man Scrooge: Comes back as a Force Ghost after being killed off in Episode VII, despite not even being a Force user (let alone Force believer) himself.
• Antwan Danyells as C-3PO: A prissy gold protocol droid with a witty sense of humor. At one point Rey, Finn, and Poe have to erase his memory to find the location of an ancient Sith MacGuffin, falsely leading viewers to believe there will be some actual character development. This gets thrown out the window anyway when R2 restores Threepio's memory in the next scene.
• A Midget as R2-D2: An astromech droid who restores C-3PO's memory, even though it pained him to do so.
• Peter Mayhew Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca: The lovable Wookiee who, as of this movie, no longer has most of his old friends (Han, Luke, and Leia) left, as Disney cruelly killed them all.
• Dave Chapman and Brian Herring as BB-8: A soccerball droid who befriends a megaphone-wheel droid named D-O (as in "Just do it").
• Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico: The boisterous mechanic who has a greatly reduced role in this movie due to fan backlash.
• Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata: That wrinkled orange-faced lady returns, but now she looks like a weird muppet instead of an expressive CGI character.
• The Redhead That Played the Oldest Weasley in Harry Potter (Domhnall Gleeson) as General Hux: Turns out to be a spy like his hero James Bond.
• Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian: A veteran of the Rebel Alliance, former owner of the Millennium Falcon, the last old friend of Chewbacca who hasn't died yet, and the only black guy in the galaxy other than Finn and Mace Windu. For whatever reason, Disney made him pansexual in this movie, as he tells Rey to give Leia his love.
• Ian McDiarmid as Sheev Palpatine aka Sheev Palpatine Pt. 2: Turns out he survived Return of the Jedi, making the entire original and prequel trilogies pointless — all just so Disney can sell more tickets with "nostalgia".
• Naomi Ackie as Jannah: Another ex-stormtrooper who ends up defecting to the Resistance like Finn.
• Keri Russell as Zorii Bliss: A helmeted scoundrel from the planet Kijimi, and an old acquaintance of Poe's.
• Richard E. Grant as Allegiant General Pryde: A high-ranking general and second-in-command of the First Order (later the Final Order), who previously served in the Galactic Empire even though we never saw him in the original movies.

Production

After Rian "Subverted Expectations" Johnson wrote the series into a corner with the disastrous waste of time known as The Last Jedi, Disney fired him and bought brought back Force Awakens director J.J. "Mystery Box" Abrams to hastily assemble a safe and marketable conclusion. Abrams had intended to finish off his "vision" for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but since Rian had already jammed his "vision" into the ST (i.e. Snoke dying prematurely, Rey's parents being nobodies), this tug-of-war did not turn out that well. As was the case with Episode VII, Abrams took bits and pieces from previous Star Wars movies (particularly the original trilogy, but also more prequel references here than Force Awakens due to /r/prequelmemes becoming popular in-between the two's releases) to create a "greatest hits", where fans would clap because they recognize old characters.

With John Williams having composed the music for all other eight main Star Wars films, he was bought back to do most of the work this time around also for "continuity" or something. Despite this, however, Williams was unable to make a "catchy" Christmas tune so instead, Disney turned to pop rock band Weezer to compose the main theme. With Rivers Cuomo being a lazy bastard, he reused the 2008 Weezer version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" for the main theme and Mickey Mouse was none the wiser. Apparently Disney forgot that Meco and Jon Bon Jovi had done Star Wars Christmas songs in the '80s that they could've repurposed for this movie, like "Christmas in the Stars" and "What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)".

Reception

The film received mixed reviews, and was not in fact as spirit-rising as many expected it would be. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 52% with an average score of 6.1/10, based on 512 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "TROS suffers from a frustrating lack of imaaagination, but concludes this beloved saga with fan-wish-fulfillment checklist devotion." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 53 out of 100 based on 61 critics, indicating "Somehow, mediocrity returned." Many fans said the film broke them on a personal level and made them renounce their Star Wars fandom, due to its generic rehashing of past movies, not explaining how Sheev came back, and rushed or dangling plot threads.

Australian Star Wars fans were not very happy about the representation surrounding the conditions due to the very different Christmas in Australia celebrations. Disney did in fact plan ahead for the Aussie backlash by adding in the one sand planet but it was not enough to please the nerds Down Under. In response, a special, limited, Australian Summer Chrissy Edition of Rise of Skywalker, Rise of the Senate (or Rise of Christmas, depending on your region), was made and released to Australian stores Target, Kmart, and Big W, as well as JB Hi-Fi in the Northern Territory.