Trollheart
Nothing Wicked This Way Comes...
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III: Galactic Ouroboros: The Final Circle Closes - Last Orders, Please!
Title: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
Year: 2019
Format: Movie
Broadcast chronology: After Solo: A Star Wars Story
Universe Chronology: Following directly on from The Last Jedi
Basic premise: The origin story of Han Solo
Starring: Mark Hammill as Luke Skywalker; Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa; Anthony Daniels as C3PO; Adam Driver as Kylo Ren; Daisy Ridley as Rey; Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca; John Boyega as Finn; Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron; Naomi Ackie as Jannah; Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux; Richard E. Grant as Allegiant General Pryde; Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata; Keri Russell as Zorii Bliss; Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico; Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine; Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
General reaction: Positive
Personal reaction: Positive
Rating: 8/10
Given who’s in it, character-wise, I have to assume this is somehow a prequel, as it were, to a prequel? I mean, Luke died at the end of The Last Jedi as did Han, whom I see reprises his role here (though it might be in a flashback, as Harrison Ford is not shown as one of the main cast) plus Rose Tico, who was killed too, is here. Well, we’ll see I guess. Again, not reading ahead before I watch the movie. One way or another, despite a promise from Disney of a new film every two to five years, this is intended to wrap up what has become known as the Skywalker Saga, which takes in all nine of what will, I guess, in time become known as the original movies as others are made, but essentially the first three trilogies, or nine movies, of which this is to be the last. After this, I imagine future films will focus on other characters and move outside of the main arc covered in episodes I-IX, so all loose ends (and there are a few) need to be tied up here. This is the last chance to place the final seal on a saga that has now run for most of my life, almost fifty years at this point, so they had better not f**k it up.
So, for the last time ever then, it’s that famous quote, the theme and the scene would not be complete without that downward camera angle, this time to a pretty hellish-looking planet, though at least for once the only ships to pass by are small TIE fighters, even if they are en route to a star destroyer in orbit. Seems Kylo Ren is the man in power now, with the emperor dead (though the scroll speaks of his voice having been heard from beyond the grave, threatening revenge) and the First Order (better than Last Orders anyway - oh wait; I’ve made that joke haven’t I? What do you mean, you’re not sure? You just skim the text of what? Well of all the nerve!) are on the rampage again. Kind of reminiscent of one of the opening scenes from Game of Thrones as he stands in the snow with a sword - okay, lightsaber, but his looks more like a sword than any of the others - in his hand and dead bodies of his enemies littering the ground. Looks like he’s found what he was looking for anyway, a nice tasteful green crystal to hang in his bathroom. Or it could be a tracker. Either are good.
Okay it was a tracker, and it seems to have led him to the emperor, who is far less dead than might have been reported. Oh please, for the love of all that is good, let there just this one not be a Death Star in this movie! Three is more than enough. We do not need a fourth. Please. I’m begging - no, I’m threatening you. Try to crowbar in yet another Death Star and I’m knocking a full point off the rating for this, no matter how I may like it. Or not. Okay let’s see: if Poe, Finn and Chewie are all playing the three-dimensional game thing, who’s flying the Falcon? Guess it’s on autopilot in orbit? Doesn’t Rey look like she’s auditioning for a new brand of shampoo in the zen garden thing? Plenty of action from the start anyway, in what we’ve come to expect from this trilogy ot trilogies. Still, you’d have to say that when Rey goes on her training obstacle course, it’s almost literally like she’s a character in a platform computer video game, jumping, crossing bridges, twirling and Lara Croft-ing her way through the forest. Ah, Disney! Never miss a chance to monetise eh?
Good, if creepy to the max, to see that Kylo Ren has kept the head (or helmet, not sure which) of his granddaddy, and that the Vader theme plays when he goes to, um, worship it. Rey emulates Luke on Dagobah when he blew off his training to go try to rescue his chums, now she’s cutting her programme short to go seek the emperor and presumably ask him nicely not to use his Final Order (what a pity he didn’t call it… yes, yes okay), the largest fleet in the galaxy. It says here. Almost a retread of that scene from A New Hope where Vader first demonstrated his powers, and uttered the classic line “I find your lack of faith in the Force disturbing”, as Kylo Ren takes a board meeting and everyone around the table looks like they wish with all their black hearts they could be somewhere, anywhere else. Just to underline his nastiness, his own personal guards now wear black armour (with a little red flash; the Nazis are never far from the mind when it comes to fascist dictatorships) - oh and there it is! Another flunky who falls foul of the new Vader’s temper and ends up clutching at his throat, though this time the Dark Lord doesn’t trouble himself to lift his victim off the floor, he lets the Force do it.
Oh dear. Little Vader mentioned the Starkiller Base. Please please please, for the love of all… I know I’ve said it before, but it never hurts to appeal to the galactic gods as many times as you can. Please, for the… Good to see the original Lando, after having spent quality time with his younger, more cocky self. There’s the usual quote: “I got a bad feeling about this.” I think that covers all nine movies now. Nice. Another desert world, evoking the wastes of Tatooine, where it all began, forty-seven years ago as I write. It’s a bit late for Threepio to be reading out the old terms and conditions, isn’t it? Can’t translate Sith runes? What’s it gonna do: void his warranty? Oh dear again. We’re getting a little too PC with the nasty underground monster being just a big doggy in pain, aren’t we? I mean, I’m all for teaching the kids good lessons about treating all species well and not taking things at face value, but is this pushing it a little? Well, a ship must be a real pile of junk if, rather than fly it, the guys are saying “Let’s get back to the Falcon!” Remember Luke’s initial impression of Solo’s pride and joy?
Hey, is Chewbacca selling his friends out? Surely not. Rey’s acrobatic jump and slicing off of Ren’s engines, leaving his craft just a bouncing, burning sphere is hilarious, and reminiscent of his grandfather’s plight at the end of the first movie, but come on! Even Ben Kenobi had to shut off the Death Star’s force field the old-fashioned way, and he was a Jedi master! Now Rey can hold a damn space ship in place, prevent it leaving orbit with her hand? And shoot bolts of energy from it that destroy it? Uh, destroy it? Wasn’t the Wookie on board, and didn’t she know that? Oops! Even Ren looks aghast. Hey, I was just going to let the ship leave, dude! You gone and blew it up! That’s not cool. He was your friend. Maybe you won’t need so much turning to the Dark Side after all.
Ah, so Chewie isn’t dead. How exactly do they think they’re going to interrogate a Wookie? You have to say though, poor C3PO looks lost without his buddy doesn’t he? Nobody to boss around, nobody to deride, nobody to complain to: he’s like the straight man without his comedian. And he’s trying so desperately hard to fit in, but nobody seems interested. It’s almost as if he’s part of the “old guard” and the new young guns don’t really want anything to do with him, kind of like the old racist uncle insisting on coming on the kids’ road trip, or something. Can’t ride with him, can’t leave him by the side of the road. More scenery straight out of George R.R. Martin, and also reminds me of Corellia when they arrive in Kajimi. What the hell is the Flash doing here though, and why does she suddenly change from wanting to betray them to teaming up with them? Suppose a lightsaber pointed at your head might do that.
I must say, it’s touching when Threepio offers to sacrifice himself, and then says “I’m taking one last look at my friends.” Hopefully they’re not all thinking, we’re not your friends, dude. You’re just an annoyingly fussy droid who happens to tag along with us. Good reference back to the last movie, when none of the Alliance’s so-called allies would come to their aid. Oh god! I hope they said a moon in the Andor system and not in the Endor system! Please god I don’t believe in, no! Not the fucking Ewoks. Okay who would bet that, despite what he said about him, R2D2 will have a backup of C3PO’s memory at the end? I would say though there’s a lot of, not copying of the original movies but it’s quite similar - the battle on the ship, the capture, the meeting of Rey and Ren (sounds like something out of South Park, doesn’t it?), some of the dialogue - “Search your memory” etc. Perhaps a little disappointing, perhaps inevitable as the curtain begins to fall and to some extent it all goes back to where it began. Now if someone loses an arm…
Hmm. Back in the first movie (of these three) I postulated that Rey was Luke’s daughter. Now Ren tells her she’s the emperor’s granddaughter? Was I wrong? Is he lying to confuse her? The setting for the battle between the two of them is interesting, almost a parallel to Anakin Skywalker’s final battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi, with raging torrents of water and huge breakers replacing molten rivers of lava and mountains of fire. Yeah but I still have an issue with Jedis being able to all but fly: neither Kenobi nor Vader could do that in the original trilogy. It’s a bit too superhero-like for my money. In the end, the death of Kylo Ren is the death of his mother, as the final character from the main movies (other than Chewie and the droids) gives up their life for something greater than themselves. Eh, hold on: after fighting him literally to the death, Rey heals the bastard? Chewie’s grief at the death of Leia is odd: never thought they were that close. Of course, I suppose being Han’s wife she was the last link to his past, maybe. Nice that when she died they gave her the title we first knew her by, princess.
Love the cameo with Harrison Ford, perfectly handled, very moving, especially when Ren calls him dad and Solo says, without his son saying the words, I know. Ren’s casting away of his lightsaber is symbolic, I guess, of his changing sides, coming, finally, from the Dark Side back to the one of light, in a total reversal of his grandfather’s journey. And speaking of journeys, what could make this more complete than one final appearance by the kid who started the whole thing, as the literal ghost of Luke Skywalker appears to give Rey some last advice from beyond the grave? Oh well, Luke’s X-Wing! What a cheer that must have elicited in the cinemas! And I was right about R2 having the backup, which is great, as really, Threepio didn’t deserve to forget all they’ve been through. So now it’s time for the final, final, final - no, we really mean it this time, honest! - final confrontation, and I like Poe’s speech “We won’t let what our mothers and fathers fought for die”, which is clearly a nod back to those of my generation, acknowledging our being there at the start. Nice.
Great to see the X-Wings in action again, thankfully not attacking another bloody Death Star. And now Rey is off to kill the emperor, and we all know where that leads don’t we? Strike me down and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete, let the hate flow through you etc etc. I wonder if that scene when she enters the, well, I guess you;d call it his throne room, though he might want to have a word with the maid, I wonder if it’s a sort of nod to Planet of the Apes as she looks up at the spiky shadow hovering over her? Maybe not, but it’s a point. I think it’s bloody impressive that the same actor has played the original emperor, the young senator who became emperor, and now the resurrected emperor too. Quite a feat. Another retread of the emperor’s taunt against Luke near the end of The Empire Strikes Back as the rebel fleet was being wiped out. Full circle indeed. Going to make a prediction here: Kylo Ren (now Ben Solo) is going to arrive, kill the emperor - possibly dying himself - and allowing Rey to save her friends. I think it has to happen.
Ah, and here he comes! And now the two are fighting together against the emperor, who, as usual when he doesn’t get his way, shoots blue electrical bolts at his enemy. Now it seems he’s leeching the energy from the two of them to revitalise himself. That’s not good. Better news is that the Alliance’s friends have finally turned up, and they outnumber the largest collection of star destroyers we’ve ever seen. Old Palaptine is certainly having fun with his new powers isn’t he? Thank you for installing Sith Lord v2.0; please use your power responsibly. Nah, we’re just kidding: kill everyone and everything that gets in your way! So finally it’s all the Sith against all the Jedi and the latter wins as the emperor finally burns, as does his throne and, just for good measure, all his little Sith acolytes. That’ll teach them! Looks like Ben Solo is gone though.
I would say the rescue of Finn and his new girlfriend is a little cloying; I mean, they’ve allowed major characters to die before. Why not let them make the ultimate sacrifice? Suppose they didn’t want it ending too dark. Still, bit of a cop-out I feel. Richard E. Grant looks suitably aghast when his shiny new command ship explodes from under him. Ah, even more improbably, Ben Solo is not dead, and returns to help heal Rey, then cashes out and for some reason vanishes, as does his mother. Oh f**k it was Endor, and they had to get those poxy Ewoks in, didn’t they? Well, at least it’s only two seconds, even if that’s two seconds too long. And now it appears we are literally back where it all began, at Luke’s home on Tatooine. Hey hold on: didn’t Vader’s stormtroopers burn that place to the ground? I will say, the way Rey comes to the top of the ridge and looks down is a wonderful call-back to one of the first scenes in the original movie, the first time we saw a young, idealistic farmboy who dreamed of adventures in the galaxy, taking on the empire and becoming a hero. Bravo.
The careful burying of the two lightsabers - Luke’s and Leia’s - puts a final full stop at the end of the story, and Rey’s taking the name Skywalker then walking beneath that by-now familiar double sunset is a perfect ending. Even got some jawas in there. Youwould probably have to say, something really for everyone. Even Chewie gets a medal, though didn’t he get one in the original movies? I’m sure he did. Overall, I think it’s hard to find too much fault with this as it does tie the entire saga very well together and more or less answers all the questions and neatly does up the loose ends, but as I said above earlier, a lot of it really is just repeating or copying events and scenes and even dialogue from the first original trilogy, which makes it look at times a little lazy and out of ideas. The battle against the Final Order is basically a retread of the attack on the Death Star (any one, take your pick) and while the nature of the Force is explored well and the Sith are done to death finally and for good (we hope), this almost felt like a movie that never needed to be made. I mean, in the end, Rey calls herself Skywalker, but she’s not, is she? Were her parents Skywalkers? I don’t think so. In which case, the title is somewhat misleading.
I wouldn’t go down too hard on it. No matter what they did, this was going to be one horse that would be next to impossible to ride, and it would have been hard, if even possible, to satisfy everyone. But I think they did a good job, even if the ghost of the original trilogy hangs heavy over almost every scene, and it seems more an exercise in nostalgia than anything else. For the younger generation, it was probably seen as a good adventure/science fiction flick, while for people my age it was really bidding farewell to friends who have carried us through almost our entire adult lives. It’s perhaps a little like the final “original” Star Trek movie, when the cast signed off over the credits. We knew it was over, and it felt like a real ending (though Kirk would return to die in the first TNG one, but that’s another story). This felt like a thank you, a goodbye and, too, at times, almost an apology. We had waited, at this point, forty-two years for a conclusion to the story, and in the end what we got was, well, really Return of the Jedi Redux.
That is, in a nutshell, the problem. Everything I can cite about this movie that is good, I can only do so because it speaks to my nostalgia, reminding me of the original trilogy. I think that’s fine, in many ways - we want to know we haven’t been forgotten or left behind; after all, we were the original ones who made this such a worldwide phenomenon, in a time when such things really didn’t happen with movies at all - but it does make it difficult to appraise the film on its own merits. In other words, say for some reason you knew absolutely nothing about Star Wars and happened to watch this: would you enjoy it on the level that I, and every other fan, can? I very much doubt it. In fact, to a non-fan, this would be just an all right sci-fi movie. It’s the weight of its history and its past and its legacy that keeps it afloat, so to speak, and also, paradoxically, threatens to drag it under.
But then, really, thinking about it, how else could it have gone? In essence, at its heart, this is the conclusion of a nine-movie saga that tells one overarching story, the rise, struggle against, attempted return of and final defeat of a galactic empire. It’s not as if it was going to be able to go off on too many tangents; every main strand of the plot had to remain anchored, so to speak, to the main storyline, and while you could have subplots running off here and there, in the end it all had to tie up together to tell the story Lucas set out to do in 1977. So it’s not really as if they took the easy way out: there weren’t too many other avenues available to them, and in the end I think they wrapped it up well, and quite probably in the only way they could. There are some tired reused ideas, such as (chortle) Rey being the granddaughter of the emperor (“Rey! I am your grandpa! Why don’t you visit me more?”) which I thought was skating far too close to the original big reveal for comfort, and I would have thought her being the daughter of Luke would have made more sense, but I really can’t have too many complaints.
Everyone will have their own opinion, of course, but what can’t be denied is that this marks the very end of the Skywalker saga, and that the next movies, when they are made, if they are made (what do I mean, if?) will focus more on the “new” characters and new adventures for them. We’re not going to be seeing Lando any more I would think, Leia is dead, Luke is dead, Chewie might be back but I doubt it. The droids? Maybe, I suppose, though Daniels must surely be getting on by now, and the reduced - almost non-existent - role for his little barrel friend in this movie sort of indicates there won’t be any more input from him. Even the emperor is gone, as is Darth Vader, so it will be a whole new crew that takes on the next adventures in a galaxy far, far away.
For me, our next course takes us into the world of television, where the first live-action series were about to hit the small screen, and bring the world of Star Wars right into our living rooms.
Before that though, why not rank the movies? Well, I will anyway. It stands to reason that the first two or three are always going to be top of anyone’s list, at least anyone of my generation, but where do the “newer” ones fit in? And what about the standalones?
Going in reverse order then, for my money the poorest of them has to be the one that was hyped up so much and failed (in my opinion) to live up to its promise. The idea of taking the story back in time and removing our beloved Luke, Han and Leia from the story did not work for me, and while I can see why they needed to do it for the story, it just didn’t grab me the same way the original trilogy had, and I found it hard to care for just about anyone in the movie. So, at number 11 in our top 11, we have The Phantom Menace, with perhaps one of the silliest and most inappropriate titles of any Star Wars movie.
Probably no huge surprise to anyone, then, that the one to follow it up is, well, the one that followed it up. Despite some decent comic relief mostly provided by those robot soldiers, there was the rather confusing Count Dooku and, to me, the whole idea of the clones was hard to get my head around, as I mentioned. Good multi-Jedi fight, certainly, and Anakin being a grown man here and heading unstoppably for the Dark Side also helped, so I would say it was a marginal improvement on its predecessor. But not that much. Definitely, of all the nine movies in the three trilogies, only fails to be weakest by virtue (!) of The Phantom Menace sucking so much. But it does suck itself, if not as hard, and therefore deserves, I believe, its position at number 10.
In a similar vein, the next movie attains its place not because its predecessor is better than it, but mostly because it (the previous movie) kicked off the third trilogy, and so by rights has to be awarded more points, so to speak. The low ratings on both of the first two movies in the final trilogy show this, though the first does have the death of Han Solo, so earns points for that too. As not quite a damp squib, but not a firecracker by any means then, The Last Jedi earns itself ninth place.
And right behind it is the one that kicked off the new trilogy. While I gave it some - deserved - praise above, it still struggles to really reignite the whole love I felt for the original trilogy, and while yes, having Ireland feature in it is tres cool, not to mention the return of a much older Luke, it still suffers badly from I guess trying to live up to, pay homage to the originals and still try to be its own movie, in the latter of which it fails I believe. The ending is clever, and there’s a lot to like about it, nevertheless I can only award The Force Awakens eightth place.
Perhaps it’s sacrilege to put the final movie of the entire saga so low, but that’s not really because it’s a bad movie, or even ends the story badly. It doesn’t. But there are just better movies ahead of it, and I can’t in all honesty let the fact that this is the one that wraps everything up allow it to leapfrog ones in the series which I believe deserve a higher placing. So the final movie, episode nine, The Rise of Skywalker, only gets in at seventh. Sorry, guys, I know you tried.
Nobody is going to be in the least surprised which movie comes out on top, but what about the others? Well, I’m tempted to push it higher, because I thought it really was quite excellent, but I think I can only let the first standalone in the chart, as it were, take the fifth slot. So Solo: A Star Wars Story ends up at number six.
Which brings us to the halfway point, or if you will, the top five. And here’s where it gets a little more difficult for me. There’s a small surprise waiting, but I have to pay my dues, so number five then sees the only one of the second trilogy I rate, and in fact it could be higher, except I can’t really displace the original trilogy, can I? So the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker and his seduction to the Dark Side, the genesis of the galaxy’s greatest villain, takes the number four spot, not quite the Revenge of the Sith the Dark Lord planned, I suppose, but at least he’s way ahead of the third trilogy in its entirety!
Number four will spark controversy (or it would, if anyone was reading this) as I’m sure you all expected you could easily guess what the top three would be. Well, you can’t, so there. It may have been, for us at the time, the culmination of the saga, the last we saw of our heroes in their youth, and in effect the very end of the whole story, as we knew it, but I have major problems with the rehashing of the storyline, especially the fucking Death Star coming back from the dead, to say nothing of the thrice-cursed Ewoks, and for me, Return of the Jedi just doesn’t do enough to earn its place in the top three. So, as the ancient Sith lords say, suck it.
Into the top three we go. When I first heard of this movie, I rolled my eyes. Once I had watched it, I had to replace those eyes in my head and completely reevaluate my opinion of the first standalone Star Wars movie, and I now think it is, without question, the unsung hero, the oft-ignored jewel in the crown of the franchise. The absolutely perfect segue at the end into the first movie just blew my mind, to say nothing of its realism in being the first to actually kill off its main characters (I mean really kill off, not just make Force Ghosts of them). And then there’s the frenzied massacre by Darth Vader, whom we’ve never seen in action before really. All in all, a top film and I think Rogue One thoroughly deserves its place at number three.
That’s it though. That’s the end of the surprises. With a massive, galaxy-shaking, cinema-audience-collective-intake-of-breath twist like that, the rebels on the run and Luke losing a hand in the process, a perfect cliffhanger ending and also being the first movie to end like that and follow on to the next, there’s no way The Empire Strikes Back could be in anything other than second place. Unless, of course, it was first place. But we all know what will, has to, occupy that slot.
As the movie that kicked everything off, hitting us unsuspecting movie-goers who thought oh, a neat science fiction movie, and turning our world upside down, there’s no other place the first movie could be. For introducing us to words like the Force, lightsabers, droids, Death Star and names like Vader, Skywalker and Kenobi, for opening up science fiction movies to a general audience and laying the groundwork for what would come, and still is coming, decades later, and for making a shy, bearded and bespectacled nerd a galactic god, the only movie that can possibly take first place is the one which was first, even if it was episode IV. A New Hope is what it’s known as now, but we will always and forever remember it by the name it hit cinemas with in 1977: Star Wars.
Postscript: Originally we thought three Star Wars movies was all we were going to get. Truth to tell, when the first movie was released, we weren’t even certain there’d be a sequel to that: like I pointed out, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope can be viewed easily as a one-shot, standalone movie, a completely self-contained story, so there might not have been a need for further instalments. Of course there were, but then how could we dream the thing would be expanded into NINE movies? Again, it was, but if we think that’s where it ends, as they say
Not only is another movie planned, not even another trilogy, but, well, another three trilogies. At least. Wiki tells me that the only movie actually hammered down, as it were, The Mandalorian & Grogu (huh?) is due for release in 2026, while there are the following projects being considered. Whether any of them see the light of day, your guess is as good as mine, and possibly better, but for the sake of completeness, let’s quickly buzz through them.
The first movies greenlit, it would seem, are: one centring on the New Jedi Order (hold on: didn’t the Resistance/Rebels/Alliance/Insert Opposing Force Here just kick the s**t out of the First, and then Final Order? Now there’s a New Jedi Order? Look, anything with New Order (other than “Blue Monday”) always screams NAZI to me, but what do I know? There’s also one focussing on the Dawn of the Jedi, but the most enticing seems to be one which will link the Mandalorian series (no, I don’t know what it is either, but I’m a-gonna find out) and the climax of the various series going on, or finished. It’s to be directed by Dave Filoni, whose work I was so impressed with on both Clone Wars animated series and Rebels.
They seem to be the ones closest to “confirmed”, though I don’t think you could take that as meaning they’ll definitely happen, but they might definitely happen. Possibly. As far as other projects are concerned, things are a little shakier. Rian Johnson, who wrote The Last Jedi, wants to do her own trilogy (what is it with everyone wanting to do trilogies these days? One movie not enough, guys?) though it’s reported as being “low priority”, while the men who brought Game of Thrones to the small screen (okay, A Song of Ice and Fire, but you know what I mean), David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, were also supposedly working on their own trilogy, but have slouched off in other directions, so who knows? Their trilogy was going to be set before the prequels, so even further back, but I think they’ve lost interest in the idea.
Taika Waititi, more known, from what I read, for his comedy movies than science fiction ones, is also working on a script, no details, while Rogue Squadron is meant to be the third standalone movie, following on from the superlative Rogue One. There are whispers it may end up making the transition to a TV series, though this has not been confirmed. Then there’s Star Wars: A Droid Story, which is to be the first Star Wars animated full feature, and will be greedily held onto by Disney, who will allow it only to be streamed on their channel, while in complete reverse to that, Lando, which was to have been a TV series, is now intended to be released as a movie. In addition to these, there are two or three other “possible movies/projects” but they have zero details, so I’m not bothering to write about them; they may happen, they may not. Even if they do not, that’s still potentially thirteen new movies intended for release in the future. It remains to be seen how many, if any, make it to completion, but given the power both of Star Wars and of Disney, I imagine we won’t be short for new movies over the next ten years or so.
Title: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
Year: 2019
Format: Movie
Broadcast chronology: After Solo: A Star Wars Story
Universe Chronology: Following directly on from The Last Jedi
Basic premise: The origin story of Han Solo
Starring: Mark Hammill as Luke Skywalker; Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa; Anthony Daniels as C3PO; Adam Driver as Kylo Ren; Daisy Ridley as Rey; Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca; John Boyega as Finn; Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron; Naomi Ackie as Jannah; Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux; Richard E. Grant as Allegiant General Pryde; Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata; Keri Russell as Zorii Bliss; Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico; Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine; Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
General reaction: Positive
Personal reaction: Positive
Rating: 8/10
Given who’s in it, character-wise, I have to assume this is somehow a prequel, as it were, to a prequel? I mean, Luke died at the end of The Last Jedi as did Han, whom I see reprises his role here (though it might be in a flashback, as Harrison Ford is not shown as one of the main cast) plus Rose Tico, who was killed too, is here. Well, we’ll see I guess. Again, not reading ahead before I watch the movie. One way or another, despite a promise from Disney of a new film every two to five years, this is intended to wrap up what has become known as the Skywalker Saga, which takes in all nine of what will, I guess, in time become known as the original movies as others are made, but essentially the first three trilogies, or nine movies, of which this is to be the last. After this, I imagine future films will focus on other characters and move outside of the main arc covered in episodes I-IX, so all loose ends (and there are a few) need to be tied up here. This is the last chance to place the final seal on a saga that has now run for most of my life, almost fifty years at this point, so they had better not f**k it up.
So, for the last time ever then, it’s that famous quote, the theme and the scene would not be complete without that downward camera angle, this time to a pretty hellish-looking planet, though at least for once the only ships to pass by are small TIE fighters, even if they are en route to a star destroyer in orbit. Seems Kylo Ren is the man in power now, with the emperor dead (though the scroll speaks of his voice having been heard from beyond the grave, threatening revenge) and the First Order (better than Last Orders anyway - oh wait; I’ve made that joke haven’t I? What do you mean, you’re not sure? You just skim the text of what? Well of all the nerve!) are on the rampage again. Kind of reminiscent of one of the opening scenes from Game of Thrones as he stands in the snow with a sword - okay, lightsaber, but his looks more like a sword than any of the others - in his hand and dead bodies of his enemies littering the ground. Looks like he’s found what he was looking for anyway, a nice tasteful green crystal to hang in his bathroom. Or it could be a tracker. Either are good.
Okay it was a tracker, and it seems to have led him to the emperor, who is far less dead than might have been reported. Oh please, for the love of all that is good, let there just this one not be a Death Star in this movie! Three is more than enough. We do not need a fourth. Please. I’m begging - no, I’m threatening you. Try to crowbar in yet another Death Star and I’m knocking a full point off the rating for this, no matter how I may like it. Or not. Okay let’s see: if Poe, Finn and Chewie are all playing the three-dimensional game thing, who’s flying the Falcon? Guess it’s on autopilot in orbit? Doesn’t Rey look like she’s auditioning for a new brand of shampoo in the zen garden thing? Plenty of action from the start anyway, in what we’ve come to expect from this trilogy ot trilogies. Still, you’d have to say that when Rey goes on her training obstacle course, it’s almost literally like she’s a character in a platform computer video game, jumping, crossing bridges, twirling and Lara Croft-ing her way through the forest. Ah, Disney! Never miss a chance to monetise eh?
Good, if creepy to the max, to see that Kylo Ren has kept the head (or helmet, not sure which) of his granddaddy, and that the Vader theme plays when he goes to, um, worship it. Rey emulates Luke on Dagobah when he blew off his training to go try to rescue his chums, now she’s cutting her programme short to go seek the emperor and presumably ask him nicely not to use his Final Order (what a pity he didn’t call it… yes, yes okay), the largest fleet in the galaxy. It says here. Almost a retread of that scene from A New Hope where Vader first demonstrated his powers, and uttered the classic line “I find your lack of faith in the Force disturbing”, as Kylo Ren takes a board meeting and everyone around the table looks like they wish with all their black hearts they could be somewhere, anywhere else. Just to underline his nastiness, his own personal guards now wear black armour (with a little red flash; the Nazis are never far from the mind when it comes to fascist dictatorships) - oh and there it is! Another flunky who falls foul of the new Vader’s temper and ends up clutching at his throat, though this time the Dark Lord doesn’t trouble himself to lift his victim off the floor, he lets the Force do it.
Oh dear. Little Vader mentioned the Starkiller Base. Please please please, for the love of all… I know I’ve said it before, but it never hurts to appeal to the galactic gods as many times as you can. Please, for the… Good to see the original Lando, after having spent quality time with his younger, more cocky self. There’s the usual quote: “I got a bad feeling about this.” I think that covers all nine movies now. Nice. Another desert world, evoking the wastes of Tatooine, where it all began, forty-seven years ago as I write. It’s a bit late for Threepio to be reading out the old terms and conditions, isn’t it? Can’t translate Sith runes? What’s it gonna do: void his warranty? Oh dear again. We’re getting a little too PC with the nasty underground monster being just a big doggy in pain, aren’t we? I mean, I’m all for teaching the kids good lessons about treating all species well and not taking things at face value, but is this pushing it a little? Well, a ship must be a real pile of junk if, rather than fly it, the guys are saying “Let’s get back to the Falcon!” Remember Luke’s initial impression of Solo’s pride and joy?
Hey, is Chewbacca selling his friends out? Surely not. Rey’s acrobatic jump and slicing off of Ren’s engines, leaving his craft just a bouncing, burning sphere is hilarious, and reminiscent of his grandfather’s plight at the end of the first movie, but come on! Even Ben Kenobi had to shut off the Death Star’s force field the old-fashioned way, and he was a Jedi master! Now Rey can hold a damn space ship in place, prevent it leaving orbit with her hand? And shoot bolts of energy from it that destroy it? Uh, destroy it? Wasn’t the Wookie on board, and didn’t she know that? Oops! Even Ren looks aghast. Hey, I was just going to let the ship leave, dude! You gone and blew it up! That’s not cool. He was your friend. Maybe you won’t need so much turning to the Dark Side after all.
Ah, so Chewie isn’t dead. How exactly do they think they’re going to interrogate a Wookie? You have to say though, poor C3PO looks lost without his buddy doesn’t he? Nobody to boss around, nobody to deride, nobody to complain to: he’s like the straight man without his comedian. And he’s trying so desperately hard to fit in, but nobody seems interested. It’s almost as if he’s part of the “old guard” and the new young guns don’t really want anything to do with him, kind of like the old racist uncle insisting on coming on the kids’ road trip, or something. Can’t ride with him, can’t leave him by the side of the road. More scenery straight out of George R.R. Martin, and also reminds me of Corellia when they arrive in Kajimi. What the hell is the Flash doing here though, and why does she suddenly change from wanting to betray them to teaming up with them? Suppose a lightsaber pointed at your head might do that.
I must say, it’s touching when Threepio offers to sacrifice himself, and then says “I’m taking one last look at my friends.” Hopefully they’re not all thinking, we’re not your friends, dude. You’re just an annoyingly fussy droid who happens to tag along with us. Good reference back to the last movie, when none of the Alliance’s so-called allies would come to their aid. Oh god! I hope they said a moon in the Andor system and not in the Endor system! Please god I don’t believe in, no! Not the fucking Ewoks. Okay who would bet that, despite what he said about him, R2D2 will have a backup of C3PO’s memory at the end? I would say though there’s a lot of, not copying of the original movies but it’s quite similar - the battle on the ship, the capture, the meeting of Rey and Ren (sounds like something out of South Park, doesn’t it?), some of the dialogue - “Search your memory” etc. Perhaps a little disappointing, perhaps inevitable as the curtain begins to fall and to some extent it all goes back to where it began. Now if someone loses an arm…
Hmm. Back in the first movie (of these three) I postulated that Rey was Luke’s daughter. Now Ren tells her she’s the emperor’s granddaughter? Was I wrong? Is he lying to confuse her? The setting for the battle between the two of them is interesting, almost a parallel to Anakin Skywalker’s final battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi, with raging torrents of water and huge breakers replacing molten rivers of lava and mountains of fire. Yeah but I still have an issue with Jedis being able to all but fly: neither Kenobi nor Vader could do that in the original trilogy. It’s a bit too superhero-like for my money. In the end, the death of Kylo Ren is the death of his mother, as the final character from the main movies (other than Chewie and the droids) gives up their life for something greater than themselves. Eh, hold on: after fighting him literally to the death, Rey heals the bastard? Chewie’s grief at the death of Leia is odd: never thought they were that close. Of course, I suppose being Han’s wife she was the last link to his past, maybe. Nice that when she died they gave her the title we first knew her by, princess.
Love the cameo with Harrison Ford, perfectly handled, very moving, especially when Ren calls him dad and Solo says, without his son saying the words, I know. Ren’s casting away of his lightsaber is symbolic, I guess, of his changing sides, coming, finally, from the Dark Side back to the one of light, in a total reversal of his grandfather’s journey. And speaking of journeys, what could make this more complete than one final appearance by the kid who started the whole thing, as the literal ghost of Luke Skywalker appears to give Rey some last advice from beyond the grave? Oh well, Luke’s X-Wing! What a cheer that must have elicited in the cinemas! And I was right about R2 having the backup, which is great, as really, Threepio didn’t deserve to forget all they’ve been through. So now it’s time for the final, final, final - no, we really mean it this time, honest! - final confrontation, and I like Poe’s speech “We won’t let what our mothers and fathers fought for die”, which is clearly a nod back to those of my generation, acknowledging our being there at the start. Nice.
Great to see the X-Wings in action again, thankfully not attacking another bloody Death Star. And now Rey is off to kill the emperor, and we all know where that leads don’t we? Strike me down and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete, let the hate flow through you etc etc. I wonder if that scene when she enters the, well, I guess you;d call it his throne room, though he might want to have a word with the maid, I wonder if it’s a sort of nod to Planet of the Apes as she looks up at the spiky shadow hovering over her? Maybe not, but it’s a point. I think it’s bloody impressive that the same actor has played the original emperor, the young senator who became emperor, and now the resurrected emperor too. Quite a feat. Another retread of the emperor’s taunt against Luke near the end of The Empire Strikes Back as the rebel fleet was being wiped out. Full circle indeed. Going to make a prediction here: Kylo Ren (now Ben Solo) is going to arrive, kill the emperor - possibly dying himself - and allowing Rey to save her friends. I think it has to happen.
Ah, and here he comes! And now the two are fighting together against the emperor, who, as usual when he doesn’t get his way, shoots blue electrical bolts at his enemy. Now it seems he’s leeching the energy from the two of them to revitalise himself. That’s not good. Better news is that the Alliance’s friends have finally turned up, and they outnumber the largest collection of star destroyers we’ve ever seen. Old Palaptine is certainly having fun with his new powers isn’t he? Thank you for installing Sith Lord v2.0; please use your power responsibly. Nah, we’re just kidding: kill everyone and everything that gets in your way! So finally it’s all the Sith against all the Jedi and the latter wins as the emperor finally burns, as does his throne and, just for good measure, all his little Sith acolytes. That’ll teach them! Looks like Ben Solo is gone though.
I would say the rescue of Finn and his new girlfriend is a little cloying; I mean, they’ve allowed major characters to die before. Why not let them make the ultimate sacrifice? Suppose they didn’t want it ending too dark. Still, bit of a cop-out I feel. Richard E. Grant looks suitably aghast when his shiny new command ship explodes from under him. Ah, even more improbably, Ben Solo is not dead, and returns to help heal Rey, then cashes out and for some reason vanishes, as does his mother. Oh f**k it was Endor, and they had to get those poxy Ewoks in, didn’t they? Well, at least it’s only two seconds, even if that’s two seconds too long. And now it appears we are literally back where it all began, at Luke’s home on Tatooine. Hey hold on: didn’t Vader’s stormtroopers burn that place to the ground? I will say, the way Rey comes to the top of the ridge and looks down is a wonderful call-back to one of the first scenes in the original movie, the first time we saw a young, idealistic farmboy who dreamed of adventures in the galaxy, taking on the empire and becoming a hero. Bravo.
The careful burying of the two lightsabers - Luke’s and Leia’s - puts a final full stop at the end of the story, and Rey’s taking the name Skywalker then walking beneath that by-now familiar double sunset is a perfect ending. Even got some jawas in there. Youwould probably have to say, something really for everyone. Even Chewie gets a medal, though didn’t he get one in the original movies? I’m sure he did. Overall, I think it’s hard to find too much fault with this as it does tie the entire saga very well together and more or less answers all the questions and neatly does up the loose ends, but as I said above earlier, a lot of it really is just repeating or copying events and scenes and even dialogue from the first original trilogy, which makes it look at times a little lazy and out of ideas. The battle against the Final Order is basically a retread of the attack on the Death Star (any one, take your pick) and while the nature of the Force is explored well and the Sith are done to death finally and for good (we hope), this almost felt like a movie that never needed to be made. I mean, in the end, Rey calls herself Skywalker, but she’s not, is she? Were her parents Skywalkers? I don’t think so. In which case, the title is somewhat misleading.
I wouldn’t go down too hard on it. No matter what they did, this was going to be one horse that would be next to impossible to ride, and it would have been hard, if even possible, to satisfy everyone. But I think they did a good job, even if the ghost of the original trilogy hangs heavy over almost every scene, and it seems more an exercise in nostalgia than anything else. For the younger generation, it was probably seen as a good adventure/science fiction flick, while for people my age it was really bidding farewell to friends who have carried us through almost our entire adult lives. It’s perhaps a little like the final “original” Star Trek movie, when the cast signed off over the credits. We knew it was over, and it felt like a real ending (though Kirk would return to die in the first TNG one, but that’s another story). This felt like a thank you, a goodbye and, too, at times, almost an apology. We had waited, at this point, forty-two years for a conclusion to the story, and in the end what we got was, well, really Return of the Jedi Redux.
That is, in a nutshell, the problem. Everything I can cite about this movie that is good, I can only do so because it speaks to my nostalgia, reminding me of the original trilogy. I think that’s fine, in many ways - we want to know we haven’t been forgotten or left behind; after all, we were the original ones who made this such a worldwide phenomenon, in a time when such things really didn’t happen with movies at all - but it does make it difficult to appraise the film on its own merits. In other words, say for some reason you knew absolutely nothing about Star Wars and happened to watch this: would you enjoy it on the level that I, and every other fan, can? I very much doubt it. In fact, to a non-fan, this would be just an all right sci-fi movie. It’s the weight of its history and its past and its legacy that keeps it afloat, so to speak, and also, paradoxically, threatens to drag it under.
But then, really, thinking about it, how else could it have gone? In essence, at its heart, this is the conclusion of a nine-movie saga that tells one overarching story, the rise, struggle against, attempted return of and final defeat of a galactic empire. It’s not as if it was going to be able to go off on too many tangents; every main strand of the plot had to remain anchored, so to speak, to the main storyline, and while you could have subplots running off here and there, in the end it all had to tie up together to tell the story Lucas set out to do in 1977. So it’s not really as if they took the easy way out: there weren’t too many other avenues available to them, and in the end I think they wrapped it up well, and quite probably in the only way they could. There are some tired reused ideas, such as (chortle) Rey being the granddaughter of the emperor (“Rey! I am your grandpa! Why don’t you visit me more?”) which I thought was skating far too close to the original big reveal for comfort, and I would have thought her being the daughter of Luke would have made more sense, but I really can’t have too many complaints.
Everyone will have their own opinion, of course, but what can’t be denied is that this marks the very end of the Skywalker saga, and that the next movies, when they are made, if they are made (what do I mean, if?) will focus more on the “new” characters and new adventures for them. We’re not going to be seeing Lando any more I would think, Leia is dead, Luke is dead, Chewie might be back but I doubt it. The droids? Maybe, I suppose, though Daniels must surely be getting on by now, and the reduced - almost non-existent - role for his little barrel friend in this movie sort of indicates there won’t be any more input from him. Even the emperor is gone, as is Darth Vader, so it will be a whole new crew that takes on the next adventures in a galaxy far, far away.
For me, our next course takes us into the world of television, where the first live-action series were about to hit the small screen, and bring the world of Star Wars right into our living rooms.
Before that though, why not rank the movies? Well, I will anyway. It stands to reason that the first two or three are always going to be top of anyone’s list, at least anyone of my generation, but where do the “newer” ones fit in? And what about the standalones?
Going in reverse order then, for my money the poorest of them has to be the one that was hyped up so much and failed (in my opinion) to live up to its promise. The idea of taking the story back in time and removing our beloved Luke, Han and Leia from the story did not work for me, and while I can see why they needed to do it for the story, it just didn’t grab me the same way the original trilogy had, and I found it hard to care for just about anyone in the movie. So, at number 11 in our top 11, we have The Phantom Menace, with perhaps one of the silliest and most inappropriate titles of any Star Wars movie.
Probably no huge surprise to anyone, then, that the one to follow it up is, well, the one that followed it up. Despite some decent comic relief mostly provided by those robot soldiers, there was the rather confusing Count Dooku and, to me, the whole idea of the clones was hard to get my head around, as I mentioned. Good multi-Jedi fight, certainly, and Anakin being a grown man here and heading unstoppably for the Dark Side also helped, so I would say it was a marginal improvement on its predecessor. But not that much. Definitely, of all the nine movies in the three trilogies, only fails to be weakest by virtue (!) of The Phantom Menace sucking so much. But it does suck itself, if not as hard, and therefore deserves, I believe, its position at number 10.
In a similar vein, the next movie attains its place not because its predecessor is better than it, but mostly because it (the previous movie) kicked off the third trilogy, and so by rights has to be awarded more points, so to speak. The low ratings on both of the first two movies in the final trilogy show this, though the first does have the death of Han Solo, so earns points for that too. As not quite a damp squib, but not a firecracker by any means then, The Last Jedi earns itself ninth place.
And right behind it is the one that kicked off the new trilogy. While I gave it some - deserved - praise above, it still struggles to really reignite the whole love I felt for the original trilogy, and while yes, having Ireland feature in it is tres cool, not to mention the return of a much older Luke, it still suffers badly from I guess trying to live up to, pay homage to the originals and still try to be its own movie, in the latter of which it fails I believe. The ending is clever, and there’s a lot to like about it, nevertheless I can only award The Force Awakens eightth place.
Perhaps it’s sacrilege to put the final movie of the entire saga so low, but that’s not really because it’s a bad movie, or even ends the story badly. It doesn’t. But there are just better movies ahead of it, and I can’t in all honesty let the fact that this is the one that wraps everything up allow it to leapfrog ones in the series which I believe deserve a higher placing. So the final movie, episode nine, The Rise of Skywalker, only gets in at seventh. Sorry, guys, I know you tried.
Nobody is going to be in the least surprised which movie comes out on top, but what about the others? Well, I’m tempted to push it higher, because I thought it really was quite excellent, but I think I can only let the first standalone in the chart, as it were, take the fifth slot. So Solo: A Star Wars Story ends up at number six.
Which brings us to the halfway point, or if you will, the top five. And here’s where it gets a little more difficult for me. There’s a small surprise waiting, but I have to pay my dues, so number five then sees the only one of the second trilogy I rate, and in fact it could be higher, except I can’t really displace the original trilogy, can I? So the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker and his seduction to the Dark Side, the genesis of the galaxy’s greatest villain, takes the number four spot, not quite the Revenge of the Sith the Dark Lord planned, I suppose, but at least he’s way ahead of the third trilogy in its entirety!
Number four will spark controversy (or it would, if anyone was reading this) as I’m sure you all expected you could easily guess what the top three would be. Well, you can’t, so there. It may have been, for us at the time, the culmination of the saga, the last we saw of our heroes in their youth, and in effect the very end of the whole story, as we knew it, but I have major problems with the rehashing of the storyline, especially the fucking Death Star coming back from the dead, to say nothing of the thrice-cursed Ewoks, and for me, Return of the Jedi just doesn’t do enough to earn its place in the top three. So, as the ancient Sith lords say, suck it.
Into the top three we go. When I first heard of this movie, I rolled my eyes. Once I had watched it, I had to replace those eyes in my head and completely reevaluate my opinion of the first standalone Star Wars movie, and I now think it is, without question, the unsung hero, the oft-ignored jewel in the crown of the franchise. The absolutely perfect segue at the end into the first movie just blew my mind, to say nothing of its realism in being the first to actually kill off its main characters (I mean really kill off, not just make Force Ghosts of them). And then there’s the frenzied massacre by Darth Vader, whom we’ve never seen in action before really. All in all, a top film and I think Rogue One thoroughly deserves its place at number three.
That’s it though. That’s the end of the surprises. With a massive, galaxy-shaking, cinema-audience-collective-intake-of-breath twist like that, the rebels on the run and Luke losing a hand in the process, a perfect cliffhanger ending and also being the first movie to end like that and follow on to the next, there’s no way The Empire Strikes Back could be in anything other than second place. Unless, of course, it was first place. But we all know what will, has to, occupy that slot.
As the movie that kicked everything off, hitting us unsuspecting movie-goers who thought oh, a neat science fiction movie, and turning our world upside down, there’s no other place the first movie could be. For introducing us to words like the Force, lightsabers, droids, Death Star and names like Vader, Skywalker and Kenobi, for opening up science fiction movies to a general audience and laying the groundwork for what would come, and still is coming, decades later, and for making a shy, bearded and bespectacled nerd a galactic god, the only movie that can possibly take first place is the one which was first, even if it was episode IV. A New Hope is what it’s known as now, but we will always and forever remember it by the name it hit cinemas with in 1977: Star Wars.
Postscript: Originally we thought three Star Wars movies was all we were going to get. Truth to tell, when the first movie was released, we weren’t even certain there’d be a sequel to that: like I pointed out, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope can be viewed easily as a one-shot, standalone movie, a completely self-contained story, so there might not have been a need for further instalments. Of course there were, but then how could we dream the thing would be expanded into NINE movies? Again, it was, but if we think that’s where it ends, as they say
Not only is another movie planned, not even another trilogy, but, well, another three trilogies. At least. Wiki tells me that the only movie actually hammered down, as it were, The Mandalorian & Grogu (huh?) is due for release in 2026, while there are the following projects being considered. Whether any of them see the light of day, your guess is as good as mine, and possibly better, but for the sake of completeness, let’s quickly buzz through them.
The first movies greenlit, it would seem, are: one centring on the New Jedi Order (hold on: didn’t the Resistance/Rebels/Alliance/Insert Opposing Force Here just kick the s**t out of the First, and then Final Order? Now there’s a New Jedi Order? Look, anything with New Order (other than “Blue Monday”) always screams NAZI to me, but what do I know? There’s also one focussing on the Dawn of the Jedi, but the most enticing seems to be one which will link the Mandalorian series (no, I don’t know what it is either, but I’m a-gonna find out) and the climax of the various series going on, or finished. It’s to be directed by Dave Filoni, whose work I was so impressed with on both Clone Wars animated series and Rebels.
They seem to be the ones closest to “confirmed”, though I don’t think you could take that as meaning they’ll definitely happen, but they might definitely happen. Possibly. As far as other projects are concerned, things are a little shakier. Rian Johnson, who wrote The Last Jedi, wants to do her own trilogy (what is it with everyone wanting to do trilogies these days? One movie not enough, guys?) though it’s reported as being “low priority”, while the men who brought Game of Thrones to the small screen (okay, A Song of Ice and Fire, but you know what I mean), David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, were also supposedly working on their own trilogy, but have slouched off in other directions, so who knows? Their trilogy was going to be set before the prequels, so even further back, but I think they’ve lost interest in the idea.
Taika Waititi, more known, from what I read, for his comedy movies than science fiction ones, is also working on a script, no details, while Rogue Squadron is meant to be the third standalone movie, following on from the superlative Rogue One. There are whispers it may end up making the transition to a TV series, though this has not been confirmed. Then there’s Star Wars: A Droid Story, which is to be the first Star Wars animated full feature, and will be greedily held onto by Disney, who will allow it only to be streamed on their channel, while in complete reverse to that, Lando, which was to have been a TV series, is now intended to be released as a movie. In addition to these, there are two or three other “possible movies/projects” but they have zero details, so I’m not bothering to write about them; they may happen, they may not. Even if they do not, that’s still potentially thirteen new movies intended for release in the future. It remains to be seen how many, if any, make it to completion, but given the power both of Star Wars and of Disney, I imagine we won’t be short for new movies over the next ten years or so.
