Things To Be Thankful For in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker as the Skywalker Saga Ends

Star Wars marks its ninth episode with the most recent installment, Rise of the Skywaker, that is slated to be a huge movie event but ironically received a lukewarm reception. Promotional materials prior to the film showing suggested the end of the Skywalker saga, and it does. This should’ve been the biggest movie for 2019 but it failed to impress several hardcore Star Wars fans due to some perceivable flaws on its entirety.

Luckily, the movie offers a proper send off for the beloved characters who anchored our sentiments for the Star Wars universe. Aside from this, and despite the massive complaints of Star Wars fans to this installment, there are good points that made the movie still worth-watching and made me thankful for J.J. Abrams’ latest, and most probably, last take with the franchise.

One is that they made an effort to give us key scenes of Princess Leia, a flashback even, despite Carrie Fisher’s passing, that doesn’t feel forced and proven crucial to the story. Call it digital effects or whatever, I don’t care as I only lauded their effort to make it possible for the audience to see Princess Leia for the last time, preserving her grace and beauty, and her relevance to Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) journey.

Another is C-3PO’s pivotal role that parallels to his previous Ewoks exploit on Return of the Jedi involving a language translation. Thanks to C-3PO and R2-D2’s presence, it somehow brought a familiar feeling (a feeling that only occurs upon watching the first Star Wars episodes) despite Rise of Skywalker’s attempt to change its “skin” and introduce a new saga.

It’s also refreshing to see the dynamic of Finn-Rey-Poe trio that is similar, yet different, to Luke-Leia-Han friendship. It made me curious what will happen to their dynamic after winning the biggest galactic battle that engineered by “not-yet-dead” Palpatine as the movie ends right after the epilogue with a solo Rey visiting Luke’s deserted home on Tattoine with a setting of two suns. No mid and end credit scenes. It truly is goodbye.

How they ended the Skywalker lineage is expected but the effort to keep it a secret for a few minutes is effective to make it compelling and dramatic. I was even thinking for a brief moment that a wedding between a Skywalker and a Palpatine is endgame when they started to kiss. And then he turned into dust, blown by the wind to be one of the Force, and that’s just sad.

A handful of scenes of Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill) Force spirit, and a cameo of Han Solo (Harisson Ford) as Kylo’s interactive(?) memory is also something to be grateful for. Seriously, the audience needed that to feel they are, indeed, watching a Star Wars movie.

Lastly, Rey’s values is something to appreciate. By choice and adoption, Rey continues the Skywalker legacy despite being a Palpatine. I am not sure how others see it, but it is an obvious representation of an admirable trait of humanity — that most of us choose to do the right thing despite our freedom to do otherwise, even if doing good may cost us our own convenience just as Rey had experienced.

Disney and Lucas Film will probably launch a new saga within the Star Wars universe. It might be exciting and will probably be successful as well, but without any legacy from the Skywalker era, it will be entirely different and nothing will be the same anymore.