10 Simple Fixes That Would Have Saved Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker
7. ...And Luke Skywalker As A Ghost To Haunt Ben
Lucasfilm
One of the all-time great quotes from The Last Jedi comes when Luke - or at least an apparition of Luke - confronts Kylo Ren on Crait. "Strike me down in anger and I'l always be with you, just like your father."
This wasn't meant to be superfluous dialogue - it was an omen. The Rise of Skywalker expands upon this somewhat when Ben converses with a memory of Han Solo within the wreckage of the Second Death Star, but it's only one scene.
Even outside of this hypothetical Episode IX I've just concocted... would it not have made to keep that theme going in The Rise of Skywalker? All Luke does is appear on Ahch-To where Rey experiences his entire arc in the space of minutes, and then to scream internally as she buries his father and sister's lightsabers in a planet they all hated.
Having Luke stay with Ben as his internal conflict escalates would've really helped sell the momentum of his eventual redemption, whilst also providing a clever inversion of the typical Force Ghost dynamic audiences have grown accustomed to over the previous entries.
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.
