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sunshine jen: Rise Up and Sky Walk
The dead speak!
That's the first sentence in the expositional crawl of yellow letters against a star background in the beginning of Star Wars: Episode Nine Hundred: The Rise of Skywalker.
The speaking dead are not new in Star Wars. In the original 77 Star Wars, Obi Wan gets struck down by Vader then shouts RUN LUKE RUN. He also coaches him during the Death Star battle. In Star Wars movies, the dead aren't really gone. They can always come back and give a poor Star Wars actor a few days work.
In this film, we don't just get the dead speaking and characters resurrected, we also get resurrected space ships (design hasn't really moved forward in the First Order), resurrected lines (I won't quote them and spoil your fun), resurrected sequences (and I'm still moved in this Generation X nostalgia fest), resurrected planets.
We also get some lovely scenes with the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. This is some of the most interesting stuff she's gotten to do in a Star Wars movie, and it's bitter sweet to see her. Oh well, this is Star Wars. We must move on.
Lando's back, and he's definitely not dead. He also gets to speak. He's a little older, but there's still that Lando charisma. Chewie, R2, Threepio are all back too along with the monosyllabic trio (Rey, Finn, Poe). The acting is good. Daisy Ridley's Rey no longer has a wtf look when she does something Jedi. Also, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren manages to make his bad guy interesting and not just some whiney millennial. Finn and Poe are tag teaming the guy role, and they're fun. There's a whole bunch of new characters, and that's nice. But where's Rose? I wanted more Rose.
The biggest resurrection is that of the Emperor. This is not a big spoiler. He's mentioned in paragraph one of the opening crawl. I got a perverse delight by the presence of the Emperor in Return of the Jedi especially in contrast to the sickly cuteness of the Ewoks. Yep, the mean ole bad boy is back. I won't go into any more details because they are fun to watch.
There's a lot of stuff about family, friends, destiny, courage, jedi stuff. Fortunately, that doesn't get in the way of the space battles, speeder battles, close call escapes, and light saber battles. What is it about the millennium falcon in flight that makes my heart go aflutter?
There are a lot of plotty things that get annoying at times. Why are they going there? They have to get the thing to get them to the other thing and see the dude who will get this other thing for them. But wait! This conflicting thing is happening now. Oh no!
Still, I had a hectic week, so it was nice to sit down and escape with Star Wars and a beer in my hand (movie watching has changed since 1977). I was smiling when I left the theatre. I was motivated to embrace my own Jedi spirit. I also had to pee. Gosh, that movie is a long one.
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