10 Simple Fixes That Would Have Saved Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker

2. Get Rid Of All The Fan-Service

Star Wars Rise of Skywalker Y-Wing Star Destroyer
Lucasfilm

Bar the Death Star rehash at the end, The Force Awakens was a love-filled trip back to the Star Wars fans new and loved. It was new and familiar at the same time, and it worked well as an introduction to the new series, never straying too far into eye-roll territory with overwrought call-backs to the original films.

The Rise of Skywalker, on the other hand, well and truly goes off the deep end. The Emperor's back, and he has a super-secret fleet that has mini Death Star canons attached to their under-bellies! Rey's a Palpatine! Look, here's a flashback to Luke training Leia! We're back on Tatooine! Here's a new lightsaber that appears for two seconds... for story! Want to see Luke lift an X-Wing? Well boy, are you in for a treat!

It's actually groan inducing at times, and while homage is part and parcel of pretty much every Star Wars film, none have offered such a banal retread of the series' past tropes or such a capitulation to online speculation, to the point where fans have joked that TROS was "written and directed by Reddit."

Fan service can be fun in small doses, but it shouldn't govern an entire story. Something that Episode IX falls victim to repeatedly.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.