Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker - 26 WTF Moments
The weirdest, messiest Star Wars movie ever.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally been released, and while many fans were expecting a divisive response following the fanbase-splitting The Last Jedi, few could've expected just how mixed both critics and audiences are on it.
The film is certainly a visual stunner and boasts rock solid performances throughout, but it's also full of head-scratching storytelling choices that, for many, will derail the nostalgia-fuelled ride.
Whether you enjoyed the film or not, it's arguably the strangest of the nine Star Wars movies from a narrative perspective, most likely a result of the sequel trilogy having no clear vision plotted out in advance.
Instead, co-writer-director J.J. Abrams effectively designed it as a hasty course-correction of The Last Jedi.
Almost every scene in the movie has at least one bizarre plot point, sliver of dialogue, or visual sure to leave fans raising their eyebrows. In the very least, these moments are weird, and at their worst, they're really quite terrible.
Rather than clapping enthusiastically when it all ended, many were simply left stunned at the overabundance of WTF moments they'd just sat through...
26. Palpatine's Return Is (Mostly) Unexplained
Back at the Star Wars Celebration this past April, it was revealed that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) would be appearing in The Rise of Skywalker, yet most of the film's marketing played coy with revealing the finer details of his revival.
But in yet another case of J.J. Abrams' "mystery box" failing to deliver, Palpatine's ultimate role in the sequel is shockingly vague and ambiguous.
For starters, he's randomly introduced in the film's opening crawl, which refers to a mysterious broadcast Palpatine recently made on Fortnite of all things.
And though Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) naturally asks Palpatine about the nature of his resurrection, the Emperor speaks only vaguely about the Dark Side making it possible for him to return.
We do see that he's attached to a mechanical arm of some kind which, horrifyingly, appears to be keeping him alive as some sort of a zombie-like phantom, but for the majority of the movie Palpatine is just there, being evil regardless of whether or not his revival makes any sense at all.
That's to say nothing of the dubious plausibility of Palpatine ass-pulling an entire army out of nowhere on a remote planet with inhospitable conditions for constructing pretty much anything.
25. All The Boring Fetch Quests
While the Star Wars movies have always been driven more by their compelling characters than their complex narratives, The Rise of Skywalker's spine of a plot feels especially unimaginative.
The first act of the movie alone forces the heroes and villains alike into a series of dull fetch quests, trapping both the characters and the audience in a loop of repetitive, uninteresting collectathons.
While you can get away with that in a Fast and the Furious movie where the story exists solely to service and justify the action, in a franchise where people actually care deeply about the lore and world, it's a weirdly slack approach.
24. Snoke Was A Clone
The world was shocked when Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) was unceremoniously offed mid-way through The Last Jedi, and despite frustration from many, there was hope that more context about the villain's backstory would be filled-in during The Rise of Skywalker.
And while Snoke is more-or-less a non-entity in the movie, Palpatine's introductory scene does nevertheless offer up a few morsels about the character's origins.
Palpatine reveals that he was behind Snoke's creation all along, solidified by a few glimpses of tanks containing seemingly discarded or dormant Snoke clones.
Granted, this really just raises more questions about the character than it answers, but it's at least clear he was lab-grown by Palpatine to act as a shadow-ruler of the galaxy, while Palpatine himself would pull the strings from the shadows.
23. The Knights Of Meh
The Knights of Ren were easily one of the most tantalising aspects of the original marketing push for The Force Awakens, so disappointing it was when they featured in the final film for all of a few scant moments.
They then sat out The Last Jedi entirely, though the marketing for The Rise of Skywalker promised that Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) mysterious acolytes would be returning to the fold.
And while the Knights do appear in a few scenes, their presence is almost completely muted throughout.
Even ignoring the fact that they're easily bested by Kylo Ren near the end of the movie, we learn nothing new about the Knights' history, particularly the possibility that they were Jedi students training alongside Ben with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).
22. Lando Outta Nowhere
As crowd-pleasing as it was to see Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) back in a Star Wars movie for the first time in over three decades, there's no denying the ridiculously perfunctory nature of his inclusion in the film.
The first time Lando shows up, it's quite literally out of nowhere on Pasana, and his later appearances similarly feel more like shoehorned fan service than remotely plausible storytelling.
Billy Dee Williams certainly seems like he's having a lot of fun, but the manner of his appearance is almost as low-effort as the entire movie gets. Almost.
21. Finn Loves Rey (But Never Tells Her)
Though early scenes in The Force Awakens actually hinted at some sexual chemistry between Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega), this setup was dropped entirely in The Last Jedi, with Finn ultimately being paired off with Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) instead.
Yet the first act of The Rise of Skywalker almost seems to pick this thread up again, as when the heroes are pulled into the quicksand on Pasana, Finn tries to confess something to Rey.
Though Poe repeatedly prods Finn throughout the movie to find out what this confession is, Finn awkwardly brushes it off and never gets the opportunity to tell Rey.
While it's possible Finn could've had something to tell Rey about her family or his own burgeoning force-sensitivity (but more on that later), the implication of his bashful demeanour is that he was actually going to confess his love to her.
It's doubly weird because it's a strangely vague subplot that's never played out to completion, and yet, committing to it would've immediately discarded Finn and Rose's romance from the previous film.
In the very least, a Finn/Rey romance would've been decidedly more believable than...Reylo (but again, more on that later).
20. The Totally Unconvincing Chewie Death Fakeout
At the end of the Pasana chase sequence, it turns out that Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) has been captured by the First Order.
In an attempt to save him, Rey wrestles what she believes to be the captive vehicle out of the sky, only for it to explode during a Force-tussle with Kylo Ren.
Except nobody in the audience over the age of five likely believed that Chewie had really died for good, and so, you have to wonder what the point of the deception was at all?
Chewie's confirmed to be alive and well mere minutes later, and Rey's reaction to Chewie's "death" doesn't seem remotely traumatised enough to be convincing. Pointless.
19. Rey's Parents Aren't Trash After All
Of The Last Jedi's many subversive plot twists, perhaps the best was the revelation that Rey's parents weren't special but simply "nobody" junkers who sold her for drinking money.
But following the divisive response to the movie, it was widely expected that people-pleaser J.J. Abrams would give this aspect of Rey's past a soft retcon of sorts.
And so, Kylo Ren eventually reveals that her parents weren't strung-out gutter trash after all, but sent Rey away and were killed for refusing to divulge her location.
They're still nobodies enough - apart from Rey's dad being Palpatine's son, which is weirdly brushed under the carpet - but changing their disposition from deadbeat parents to loving, caring ones is one of the film's most cynical and cowardly moves. Terrible.
18. Rose & Maz Kanata Get Totally Wasted
It's plainly clear from the movie's frantic, rushed pacing that it struggled to do justice to its massive canvas of characters, and there are a few blatant cases where pivotal characters had their presence majorly de-emphasised.
Though Rose's relationship with Finn divided fans, her role in The Rise of Skywalker is depressingly scant, relegated to hanging out in the Resistance base and, well, basically doing nothing else. For someone who played a major part in The Last Jedi and should've done so here, that's incredibly disheartening.
And the other major neglected character is Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o). Though Maz had a terrific introduction in The Force Awakens, she showed up in The Last Jedi for all of a forgettable holographic cameo.
And while she does show up for a few scenes in this movie, she doesn't really do much notable at all, beyond handing Leia's (Carrie Fisher) medal to Chewie, that is.
Given that we know a scene was originally shot for The Force Awakens which saw Maz revealing her Force abilities by collapsing a roof on some Stormtroopers, it's extremely disappointing that the character doesn't get involved in the action this time.
What a waste of Lupita Nyong'o this was.
17. Rey Is Palpatine's Granddaughter
All those "crackpot" fan theories posted to YouTube after The Force Awakens were finally vindicated with the totally ridiculous mid-film reveal that Rey is in fact the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine.
Kylo Ren drops this expository nugget of game-changing information during a Force-bond between the two, explaining rather awkwardly that she's the daughter of Palpatine's totally normal-looking son, and that Palpatine wanted her dead because of the threat she presented to him.
This is pretty much the moment at which the film teeters from merely underwhelming into eyebrow-raisingly WTF.
On one hand it's hysterical fan fic writing legitimised, but on the other, wasn't the idea of Rey being an outsider, totally unrelated to all the central characters, pretty damn appealing? Instead, the series' fascination with contrived familial links continues.
16. General Hux's Random Face Turn
After the heroes sneak aboard Kylo Ren's Star Destroyer in order to liberate Chewie, they're held at gunpoint by two Stormtroopers.
All of a sudden, the Stormtroopers are gunned down...by none other than General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), who announces himself to be a First Order spy.
Granted, Hux quickly follows up by assuring the Resistance that he doesn't care about their cause and just wants to ensure that Kylo Ren doesn't win, but it still feels like a jarring, unearned character shift.
And to compound the disappointment, Hux gets a total nothing death moments later when he's executed by General Pryde (Richard E. Grant).
The character was one of the trilogy's campy low-key highlights, so it's a shame his persona was so drastically altered here.
15. Rey Vs. Dark Rey
When Rey heads to the ocean moon Kef Bir and enters the remnants of the Death Star, she activates the Wayfinder and ends up facing off against a Dark Side vision, in what's basically a mediocre reprise of The Empire Strikes Back's brilliant Dark Side cave scene.
As most fans expected, the visage of Rey dressed in Sith garb and wielding a double-bladed red lightsaber was nothing more than a vision, but one which nevertheless ends up doing brief battle with the actual Rey.
Dark Rey tries to tempt Rey to join the Dark Side and unlock the full extent of her powers, easily dominating Rey in a short lightsaber fight before Kylo Ren interrupts.
This rushed, peculiar scene lacked the menace and atmosphere of the Empire equivalent, sadly.
14. Luke & Leia Always Knew Rey Was A Palpatine
After her encounter with Kylo Ren and witnessing her own Dark Side potential, Rey exiles herself to Ahch-To with the intention of pulling a Luke and cutting herself off from the Force.
But of course, moments later she's met by the Force ghost of Luke, who gives her a soulful heart-to-heart, encouraging her to leave the island in his old X-Wing.
But before that, Luke casually reveals to Rey that both he and Leia were entirely aware that Rey was Palpatine's granddaughter the whole time, but he still decided to train her anyway.
While you can argue that this is some sort of cathartic redemption for Luke after failing to keep Ben Solo from succumbing to the Dark Side, it's still a pretty out-there revelation that's questionable in the very least.
If nothing else, it'll make rewatching The Last Jedi a little more interesting.
13. The Terrible Young Leia CGI
During Rey's chat with Luke on Ahch-To, he briefly discusses his and Leia's past, leading to a flashback of Leia's final training session where she witnesses a vision of Ben's turn to the Dark Side and eventual demise.
It's a stirring scene, at least until the two remove their face masks. The digitally de-aged Mark Hamill looks passable, but Leia?
Leia resembles a crude video game asset from a PS2 video game cutscene that somehow tripped and fell into a $250+ million blockbuster.
Given that audiences were surely prepared for a slightly rough integration of Leia into the movie given Carrie Fisher's passing long before it even started shooting, it's truly bizarre that this sequence is really the only particularly awkward one.
12. Phasma Pulls A No-Show
As with the Knights of Ren, the marketing for The Force Awakens heavily played-up the presence of Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), a ferocious First Order commander who has a particular bone to pick with Finn.
And though Phasma's presence is ultimately disappointingly slight in The Force Awakens, fans hoped that The Last Jedi would remedy this...only for Phasma to kinda-maybe die during her fiery fight with Finn.
Most nevertheless expected to see Phasma return in The Rise of Skywalker for a final rematch with Finn, but disappointingly, the character is nowhere to be seen.
While this doesn't confirm that Phasma is indeed dead, it does confirm that this trilogy cast the brilliant Gwendoline Christie as a badass Stormtrooper and did very little cool or interesting with her.
11. Palpatine Goes Full Ham On The Resistance
Though the film's treatment of Emperor Palpatine is more peculiar than satisfying, Ian McDiarmid's delightfully over-the-top performance at least produces some amusingly ridiculous moments.
Case in point, the climactic sequence where Palpatine unleashes a hellish lightning storm like we've never seen before upon the assembled Resistance fleet.
Palpatine cackles as he shoots lightning into the sky, causing ships to lose power and quite literally fall out of the sky.
It's one of the film's most insane - and most visually stunning - moments, and McDiarmid is clearly relishing every second of it.
10. The Sith Troopers Disappoint
Over the summer, The Rise of Skywalker's new brand of Stormtroopers were revealed - a red-clad iteration of the classic design dubbed "Sith Troopers."
And while the implication was that these soldiers would have a Sith-infused edge over the traditional Stormtroopers and actually do something of note in the film, this is yet another majorly missed opportunity.
The Sith Troopers only show up for a few moments in the third act of the movie, sadly, firing upon the Resistance and...that's about it. There's virtually nothing to distinguish them from garden variety Stormtroopers aside from their colour.
9. Finn Is Force Sensitive
In addition to implying that Finn still carries a torch for Rey, there's another bizarre, incomplete subplot which the poor guy is forced to suffer through.
It's implied several times throughout the film that Finn is indeed Force-sensitive, as he explains to new recruit Jannah (Naomi Ackie) that his "feelings" have been guiding him on his adventures since abandoning the First Order.
Though the film stops short of having Finn perform any significant Force maneuvers, the implication is clear.
Except, after having Finn get trounced while wielding a lightsaber in The Force Awakens and doing nothing even vaguely Force-related in The Last Jedi, it does feel rather shoehorned.
More to the point, this is another aspect of the movie where Abrams clearly lacked the courage of his convictions.
Either make Finn a Force user in a major way and finally do proper justice to him, or don't even hint at it. This wishy-washy half-measure was just frustrating and a real head-scratcher from a creative perspective.
8. Anakin Returns! (Kinda)
Many fans were hoping that this saga-capping "finale" would end with a cameo from Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) as a Force ghost, and while that much-requested piece of fan service sadly didn't come to pass, Anakin did end up having a small role in the film.
Anakin's voice can be heard among the many other legendary Jedi, including the prequel's Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), who encourage Rey to defeat Palpatine.
Christensen's voice isn't as distinctive as most of the other characters featured in the short sequence, but he can be heard saying, "Bring back the balance, Rey, as I did."
It's a neat moment, for sure, but also an unavoidably weird one, if only because of how divisive the prequels remain among fans.
7. Palpatine's Totally Underwhelming Death
A villain of Palpatine's stature obviously deserves an epic and unforgettable death, so disappointing it was that he was struck down by Rey with such apparent ease.
By using the two Skywalker lightsabers, she's able to deflect Palpatine's lightning attack without too much hassle, and because it's a movie, Palpatine doesn't stop his attack immediately.
As cool as it was to see Palpatine melt away to nothing, this wasn't much of a final battle, and it really just made him look like an incompetent goof rather than the most evil, Machiavellian schemer in the entire galaxy.
6. Genocidal Space Nazi Kylo Ren Is "Redeemed"
Though Kylo Ren's possible redemption has been hinted at as early as The Force Awakens, many fans were hoping that his arc would ultimately be a little more imaginative than that.
But this is J.J. Abrams we're dealing with, so naturally his treatment in The Rise of Skywalker echoes that of his grandfather Darth Vader to an infuriatingly lazy, unimaginative degree.
Kylo Ren - or Ben Solo, if you like - ultimately sacrifices himself for Rey, using his Force powers to revive her at the cost of his own existence.
Except, that does nothing to negate the fact he killed his father, almost had his mother killed, massacred likely tens of billions of people when he blew up the Hosnian system, and has basically been an all-around Space Hitler.
As such him turning back to the Light Side at the end of the movie wasn't just painfully predictable - it didn't even make basic thematic or character sense. And it also led to surely the most cringe-worthy moment in the entire film.
5. The "Reylo" Kiss
No single scene in The Rise of Skywalker feels more like dodgy fan fiction than the awkward kiss between Kylo Ren and Rey mere seconds before he dies.
For starters, it doesn't feel remotely earned, because even if you accept that Rey is willing to forgot Kylo's past atrocities, the attempts to establish palpable sexual tension between the two have been half-baked at best.
Having Rey hook up with him makes decidedly less sense than her getting with Finn, who she has demonstrated an easy rapport with since the beginning of the trilogy.
Of all the pandering concessions Abrams made to the fanbase's worst instincts, this was absolutely the most laughable and embarrassing.
4. Disney's Cowardly "Gay Moment"
Before the film's release, much had been whispered about its supposed "gay moment," leaving fans hopeful that the series might finally commit to the long-requested romance between Finn and Poe.
Sadly this wasn't the case, and while there is a gay kiss in the movie, it's ultimately a two-second smooch between Commander D'Acy (Amanda Lawrence) and a fellow soldier as the Resistance celebrates its victory over the Final Order.
Rather than actually commit to some quality LGBT representation, Disney simply opted for a fleeting shot which is both easily missed and can be quickly cut out of the film for release in less-progressive markets such as China.
Representation matters, yet as much as the sequel trilogy wants to bang the drum for diversity, between the brevity of this moment and the franchise's treatment of characters like Finn and Rose, it doesn't really feel inclusive at all.
3. Lando Creeps On Jannah
Jannah is another of the movie's frustratingly underdeveloped characters, and it's been speculated that much of her original subplot was cut from the film during post-production.
That would certainly explain her bizarre final scene, where she explains to Lando that she doesn't know where she comes from, only for Lando to gleefully retort, "Let's find out."
Though this is presumably supposed to hint at Lando being Jannah's father, it ultimately comes off unintentionally creepy, as though Lando's instead trying to unleash his legendary charms on the poor woman.
If scenes that fleshed out their relationship were in fact cleaved from the final cut, it would certainly explain why this moment feels so out of place.
2. "Rey Skywalker"
The Rise of Skywalker's barrage of fan service culminates in a head-smackingly on-the-nose moment in the final scene of the film, where Rey visits Tatooine to bury Luke and Leia's lightsabers.
She crosses paths with an old woman who asks her name, and after Rey sees the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia in distance, she replies, "Skywalker."
It's a nice idea albeit another over-sentimental moment which just doesn't feel remotely justified by the movie or Rey's arc across the trilogy. She trained with Luke for, what, a matter of days? And how many times have we even seen her hang out with Leia?
While it's totally understandable that Rey would want to ditch the "Palpatine" name, picking Skywalker as a replacement is both predictable and unearned on a storytelling level.
1. Rey Keeps BB-8
The final shot of the movie sees Rey and BB-8 staring out at Tatooine's twin suns, seeming to confirm that Rey has now taken ownership of the adorable droid forever more.
Except, BB-8 was originally Poe's droid, of course, and it's shown throughout the trilogy that he has a strong emotional attachment to it, so why on Earth would Poe give BB-8 to Rey?
It makes for a nice final image, but it's tough to believe that Poe would just...give BB-8 away like this.