Early reviews for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker indicate critics are split on the finale to the Skywalker Saga, which arrives Friday in theaters nationwide. Although this figure is sure to fluctuate with the release of more reviews, the film now has a Tomatometer score of 62 percent, well below the 91 percent enjoyed by its predecessor, 2017's The Last Jedi. While it's already clear that critics can't agree whether The Rise of Skywalker is a good movie, they seem united in the opinion that it tries hard to make everyone happy - and that could be its fatal flaw.
Pleasing an audience as vast and all-encompassing as Star Wars fandom has proved difficult in the years since the 2015 release of The Force Awakens. That doesn’t mean, however, that returning director/co-writer J.J. Abrams wasn’t prepared to give it a shot. In fact, the majority of reviews focus on that.
“The movie snaps together like a jigsaw puzzle," Jordan Hoffman writes in his review for The Guardian, "a series of concluding beats that seem inevitable and perfect, and designed to please all parties …”
In the Chicago Tribune, critic Michael Phillips wrote The Rise of Skywalker, “wraps up the trio of trilogies begun in 1977 in a confident, soothingly predictable way, doing all that’s cinematically possible to avoid poking the bear otherwise known as tradition-minded quadrants of the Star Wars fan base.”
While they both viewed the film’s crowd-pleasing sensibilities as a positive, others found them a bit too safe. “In its anxiety not to offend, it comes off more like fanfiction than the creation of actual professional filmmakers," Stephanie Zacharek wrote for Time. "A bot would be able to pull off a more surprising movie.”
Perhaps the most scathing indictment of the film’s eagerness to have something for everyone comes from Slate's Sam Adams: “Rather than making a movie some people might love, Abrams tried to make a movie no one would hate, and as a result, you don't feel much of anything at all.”
Star Wars is an undeniable behemoth of pop culture. Since first exploding onto screens in summer 1977, each subsequent decade has seen the release of a new chapter. The fandom spans generations, across the globe, each with its own interpretation of what makes a good Star Wars movie. For some, all that matters is the original trilogy; others live for the prequels. Then there are the diehards who consume every piece of Star Wars media, from video games and comics to novels and television, and see it all as crucial elements of that galaxy far, far away that must be respected.
Looking back at the Tomatometers for the previous two installments of the Skywalker Saga, we see that critics and audiences liked The Force Awakens. Maybe it was a little too heavily mired in nostalgia for some, and stuck too close to the structure of A New Hope, but it earned a critics rating of 93 percent and an audience score of 86 percent. Compare that to The Last Jedi, which challenged and subverted expectations, and you’ll find a massive divide: the critic score is 91 percent, while the audience rating languishes at 43 percent (of course, that film was infamously targeted for review-bombing).
Judging by the early review, how one feels about The Rise of Skywalker depends on whether the viewer can appreciate the film’s ambitions. For some, watching the movie try to connect back to all previous eight installments of the Skywalker Saga is a valiant effort. To others, it was an unnecessary exercise in fan service that resulted in a dull experience.
Still, the bread and butter of this franchise has always been, and always will be, its fans. Over the next few days, we will see the general audience reactions come pouring in. It will be interesting to see if there is a Last Jedi-style chasm separating critics and fans, only reversed, or if Abrams succeeded in bringing audience and critics back together by ultimately disappointing half of them.
Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant. The film opens Friday nationwide.