Why I won’t review The Rise of Skywalker

December 19th, 2019. The final installment of the Disney trilogy has been released and reviews are coming in. They seem to be very bad across the board. For once, audiences and critics seem to be in agreement. Being a lifelong Star Wars fan, perhaps I should write my own review. Except I can’t, because I haven’t seen the movie and I’m not planning on seeing it any time soon.

So instead of reviewing The Rise of Skywalker, I want to take this opportunity to recount my own history with the Star Wars universe and conclude with how I feel about this whole thing and the way it’s coming down.

The early days

I was born in 1982 and I grew up with Star Wars. I never had that big experience of seeing the first movie for the first time on the big screen. We had the whole trilogy on home video (Betamax copies, actually) and I seem to remember them always being there. As a small child, I didn’t understand any of it but the visuals fascinated me. Then as I grew older, I came to appreciate the story and the characters and I started to really like Star Wars. Seeing the special edition of Return of the Jedi on the big screen was what really made me a fan. I loved the original trilogy. I didn’t have a favourite movie, but I did have favourite parts: basically all the stuff relating to Darth Vader and the Jedi, and the space battles. I never really cared for the rubber aliens in the cantina and Jabba’s palace. Star Wars was clearly something very special, but I also had a feeling that it could be “more” somehow. I wanted to see more of the exotic locations, understand more about this universe and its inhabitants and learn about its history.

The prequel era

So then, the prequels came. That era was the height of my Star Wars obsession. I was really excited for Episode I, so much so that I read the novel before I saw the movie (most American movies were released months later in Belgium than they were in the US back then) and I loved the book. When I saw the film, I felt it went by a bit too fast but I did love everything about it. I read a whole bunch of negative reactions online and I couldn’t understand them. To me, The Phantom Menace was precisely what I had always wanted from Star Wars. It made me learn about the characters, the world, the history, and it made the whole universe come so much more alive.

Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were even better for me. Sith in particular, fulfilled the vision that I had always dreamed Star Wars could be: grand, operatic, fantastical but relatable, and in the end, just the right amount of silly as well. But throughout the whole run of the prequel trilogy, my love and enthusiasm for these movies was always met with fierce resistance from older fans who loathed and despised the new ones. It may sound silly, but that experience was heartbreaking for me.

Knights of the Old Republic

Luckily, there was one thing that those older fans and myself could agree on, and that was our love for Knights of the Old Republic. Being a video game, KOTOR may not be considered part of the

official Star Wars canon, but to me that game was what truly fulfilled my personal vision of “what Star Wars could be” even more than any of the movies. And when that era was fleshed out even more with KOTOR II, the Old Republic MMO, the comic book series and novels about Darth Bane, Revan and Plagueis, the Old Republic became even more interesting. Then the Clone Wars animated series came out and it really connected all the dots for me. Slowly, my fandom of Star Wars became all about the Old Republic, the Clone Wars and the prequel era. The original trilogy faded a bit into the background. I suppose to me, it was similar to the way a lot of Trekkies view the original series of that show: the OT is charming and fun and contains a lot of the ideas that make Star Wars great, but it is really only the seed, and the real tree that grew out of it was everything that happened before A New Hope.

I never liked the post-Return of the Jedi EU. I think the widely praised Timothy Zahn novels are incredibly boring and don’t represent what I love about Star Wars at all. But I know they are viewed as the best the EU has to offer. So I did figure out at some point that I’m a different kind of Star Wars fan than the majority of people out there. That’s why I was a bit apprehensive when the news came that George Lucas had sold the rights to Disney and that an Episode VII was in the making.

The Force Awakens

I distinctly remember what I thought when I read the headline: I was sure it had to be a prank. I couldn’t believe it. I was neither excited nor horrified, but just baffled and puzzled. Later on, I let the news sink in and I thought: “Okay, if George Lucas has faith in Disney, then I guess that’s good enough for me. Let’s just see how it turns out”. But something about the whole thing troubled me. What if these new movies would cater so much to the original trilogy fans that they would throw the prequels under the bus? What if I would hate the movie and everyone else would love it, and see it as further proof that the prequels sucked? The whole prequel-bashing nonsense would start all over again. In fact, it was already seeing something of a resurgence around that time and I hated that. Trust me, it’s not fun to have unpopular opinions and constantly being reminded of that. It becomes personal after a while, and you start to feel pretty lonely. Then the trailer for The Force Awakens was released and it was pure nostalgia – which more or less confirmed my anxiety. I already had this blog back then and even wrote a piece about it back in May of 2015.

Still, I decided to go in with an open mind and went to see Episode VII on opening night. My initial reaction to the movie was fairly tame. I more or less accepted it for what it was, but I knew right away that this wasn’t “my Star Wars”. In fact, it was pretty much the exact opposite direction of that mysterious quality that I had always called “what Star Wars could be”, which had found its fulfillment in Revenge of the Sith and Knights of the Old Republic for me. But then my fears came true and everyone loved it and used it to further bash the prequels. And that made me somewhat resentful, especially since upon a second and third viewing, the glaring problems with Episode VII became clearer and bigger for me. Not only was it “not my Star Wars”, but it also made a lot of objective mistakes. It was a jumbled mess of a plot without any real direction, and it was very clearly made by Hollywood people, not fans of the wider Star Wars universe. I could tell that Abrams loved the original trilogy, but couldn’t tell a Twi’lek from a Sullustan and had no idea of who Darth Plagueis was. The makers of this movie weren’t my kind of fans, but they were officially in charge of Star Wars now. And so I gradually came to accept that the Disney era was simply something different, not meant for me but for another audience. I entered into a kind of “Star Wars hibernation”, focusing on other things instead. After all, I had always been an even bigger Tolkien fan than a Star Wars fan anyway.

The Last Jedi

When The Last Jedi was about to be released, I picked up some interest again. Even though I wasn’t a fan of the new visual style of these movies (which – again – pretty much represented the opposite of the prequels and my vision of Star Wars) , the trailer did look cool. It seemed to hold the promise of something more fresh than The Force Awakens and since Luke Skywalker was in it, I was hoping it would contain more interesting Jedi-related material. But still I was apprehensive and I didn’t want to support Disney, because by now their blatant and callous disregard for George Lucas and his vision had become very clear and that was downright unacceptable to me.

So I watched it online – which is something I usually don’t do, because I tend to be pretty principled about these things. When I saw The Last Jedi, my jaw dropped somewhere halfway through the movie (I think it was during the animal rescue scene). This movie was a fan’s worst nightmare. It was horrible in every conceivable way, and I was baffled by it. That’s when everything around me changed.

All of a sudden, the attitude of the fans changed overnight. The Last Jedi was reviled by the majority of them, although it became the darling of critics and left-wing people, who championed it for its political themes. I know a few people who are not particularly leftists who did love it, but when I hear them talk about why, their reasons seem to be mostly about cool visuals and beautiful music by John Williams. And even I’ll admit those were present.

Two very interesting things happened along with the massive backlash against Episode VIII.

The first was that a lot of people also changed their views on The Force Awakens. Shaken out of their hype-mode, they suddenly saw that many of the problems of The Last Jedi were set up by its predecessor: the failure to reunite the original cast, the flatness of the new characters, the mistreatment of the old ones and the inconsistency of the plot were all logical results of what had happened in Episode VII.

The second change was even more interesting: suddenly, prequel fans emerged everywhere. I now think they had always been there, and they had now finally found the confidence to speak up online. In addition, many people who had bashed Lucas’ vision for Episodes I-III were now rethinking their position, and even came to appreciate these movies after all. In a way, The Last Jedi brought the vindication that I had been hoping for for a long, long time. And I couldn’t help but be happy about that. Finally, people could talk about George Lucas’ saga as a whole without having to crap on the movies that were my favourites anymore.

The Rise of Skywalker

And so for two years, the online wars over The Last Jedi continued to rage. After a while, that led into the run-up to Episode IX, and I couldn’t help myself: I followed it online. I can’t really say why, because I didn’t care about this trilogy anymore at all. I knew it was unfixable and no matter what JJ Abrams would try, he couldn’t possibly make up for both The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens. The characters of Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo don’t mean anything to me, so it doesn’t matter one bit if Rey turns out to be Luke’s daughter or Kylo becomes the Sith Emperor of the universe forever. To me, Star Wars ended with Return of the Jedi – a sentiment that I’ve now read countless times in YouTube comments. Finally, I’m not alone anymore. I’m now part of the majority who hate the new movies.

But here’s the thing: I remember what it was like when I was one of the few people who loved the prequels, and defended them at every opportunity. I still have to do that when talking about Star Wars with people my own age.

I remember what it was like when I was excited and everyone around me was cynical all the time and bashing the things that I loved. And come to think of it, I don’t want to be on the other side now. I don’t want to ruin the fun for those people who will watch The Rise of Skywalker and love it. I know they exist, even though they may be in the minority. It can’t be fun to be surrounded by relentless negativity and cynicism if you just want to enjoy the movie and be excited about it. I know, because I’ve been there several times as a fan. So, I’m just going to leave The Rise of Skywalker alone. It’s not “my Star Wars” anyway. I probably won’t even see it. I’ll simply let the fans of this series enjoy it (or not, whatever the case may be), while I’ll mostly stick with Episodes I to VI and the Old Republic novels and games. The truth is that Star Wars is simply not one brand anymore. It’s become so big that it got divided into several different streams, and I know which one is mine. I’ll leave Episode IX for others to pick apart.