The Rise of Skywalker, Intellectual Property, and the Disney Empire
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WARNING: This piece contains spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker. If you have not yet seen the film, come back after having seen it. Or don’t. It’s bad.
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is a bad movie. It is poorly paced, and bewilderingly overstuffed with MacGuffins and narrative decisions that read like the fan fiction from an 8 year old after reading several Expanded Universe novels. The film is so utterly devoid of risk and instead dedicates itself to being a “Star Wars” film, without recognizing that by playing it so safe, it succumbs to the worst instincts of filmmaking; the market-tested, four-quadrant approach.
I’ve sat on writing this piece for two weeks, trying to decide what I wanted to say about this film that hadn’t already been said. Mainstream film discourse in the age of the internet is about instantaneous, binary reactions meant to quickly garner clicks while encouraging the echoing of surface-level sentiments. Rather than writing a review going over every plot point and character beat in Rise of Skywalker, I’ve decided I want to explore how the film is indicative of the state of modern mainstream filmmaking, and the recent corporate history of the Walt Disney empire.
To properly understand what about Rise of Skywalker frustrates me, we need to understand the elephant in the room when it comes to Star Wars as a franchise: The Last Jedi. To call this film divisive is an understatement; the movie divided audiences with its approach to legacy characters such as Luke Skywalker, new characters like Rose Tico as played by Kelly Marie Tran, and the theme of challenging nostalgia and the past. The film, and director Rian Johnson, remain controversial in the Star Wars fandom. Here’s why that’s wrong.
The Last Jedi is not a perfect film, but Johnson’s decision to tackle the intrinsic issues of where Star Wars was as a franchise were, to me, exciting as a fan of both Star Wars, and filmmaking as a whole. The film challenged the notion of nostalgia-baiting, and sought to make a film that went beyond what was expected of the franchise after 2015’s The Force Awakens, which had been critiqued as “a reskin of A New Hope”. Rian Johnson broke down the myth of Luke Skywalker and showed him as fallible, as someone who could fail and become bitter; a classic “Never meet your heroes” moment. The mystery box of Rey’s parentage was opened, and inside there was a new answer: Rey was nobody. She wasn’t a Skywalker, or a Kenobi, or even a Jinn. Like the boy with the broom, Rey was part of the Force awakening, and this decision created a unique dynamic between her and the antagonist of the trilogy, Kylo Ren. Ren’s baggage from his family history, being a Solo, Organa, and a Skywalker made him an interesting foil for our hero, who came from nothing, with no recognizable last name. In The Last Jedi, and even The Force Awakens, it’s made clear that the tragedy of Ren is that he was expected to be something because he came from families that were something. The antagonist of Johnson’s Star Wars film is legacy, and the myths we create around people, and lineage, and which families possess power.
The film set up a world in which a new story could be told, a story of new characters, and the idea that anybody, regardless of their last name, could be a hero.
Except, I guess not. Because Rey needed to be a Palpatine. Because Emperor Palpatine needed to be the ultimate antagonist in this sequel trilogy, since we all remember him. Because everybody in Star Wars needs to be related to somebody, I suppose.
Rise of Skywalker is a rejection of the belief that franchise filmmaking can be brave, and break out of the box of nostalgia that plagues modern blockbusters. It is a return to the safe and familiar. In 2019, Disney’s filmic output included three “live-action” remakes of animated films that were only created to create “woke” versions of the pre-existing media, while serving to extend the copyright of the intellectual properties, courtesy of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act that has kept the image of Mickey Mouse and other Disney figures out of the public domain. It’s okay that the characters of The Lion King aren’t public property, because Childish Gambino, Beyoncé and any other recognizable Black artists Disney could get starred in the National Geographic version of a beloved 2D animated film! (National Geographic, by the way, is also owned by Disney now).
Except for Dumbo, their microwaving of their animated intellectual properties keeps working; as of the writing of this piece, Disney distributed seven of the ten highest-grossing films of 2019, with two of them being The Lion King and Aladdin (2nd and 8th, respectively). As consumers, we are allowing Disney to get away with slowly monopolizing the industry because they’re pumping out remakes and sequels to films we remember as kids. It’s okay that they bought one of the longest-running studios, laid off thousands of workers, shuttered Fox Spotlight, and then proceeded to put a majority of Fox’s catalogue into a vault and refuse exhibition of classic films, because now we can see Wolverine and Hulk punch each other in the inevitable Disney+ series!
For all the talk of Disney’s progressive depictions of racial diversity, and the celebration of their bravery in depicting Gay characters, Rise of Skywalker shows just how vapid and empty those depictions are. When presented the opportunity to portray a meaningful, integral homosexual relationship between Finn and Poe, the “Disney Overlords” (as described by Oscar Isaac) said no. Rise of Skywalker goes out of its way to No-Homo Poe by introducing a superficial female love interest played by Keri Russell, in just one case of “Hey, it’s a friend of JJ Abrams” that plagues this film. Disney decided that, instead of doing something that was wanted by the actors, that was creative and unique to this rendition of Star Wars, and could be meaningful to fans, it couldn’t risk alienating conservative foreign and domestic audiences. It’s okay though, because a random side character kisses a nameless extra in the background of one shot. Gay Rights!! Oh, wait, never mind, it got censored in Singapore. Also, the movie didn’t do well in China, a market Disney constantly tries to appeal to. Oh well.
Now, let’s talk about Rose Tico. Kelly Marie Tran was the first non-white actress to star in a Star Wars film, and for her role she was subjected to vitriolic, racist abuse by the worst of the Star Wars fandom. It was so bad, she was chased off of social media. In Rise of Skywalker, Rose Tico is almost utterly wiped from the film’s runtime, appearing on-screen for approximately 70 seconds of the 142-minute movie. After accusations of capitulating to the worst of the Star Wars fan community, Abrams and writer Chris Terrio (famous for such wonderful films like Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) have tried to claim that they didn’t sideline Rose, that she was in scenes with Leia at the base that didn’t make it into the final cut. Except, they did, and they didn’t need to have Rose remain at the base. Her being at the base while her friends galavant around on fetch quests, in no way, fits Rose’s arc from The Last Jedi, and even if it did, why does Dominic Monaghan have more lines and screen time playing a random extra who we have never seen before? Oh, right, because JJ Abrams bet him a role over a soccer game.
Like Finn, and Poe, and Jannah (played by Naomie Ackie), Rose is just a prop in Disney’s continuing approach of creating broad “diversity” in their films to gain positive buzz. Disney is not your friend, it is not your ally, and it does not care about you. It will use identity politics to get your money, and then toss you to the side like Kelly Marie Tran.
Rise of Skywalker is a product by a predatory corporation hellbent on overtaking all intellectual property in Hollywood, while devastating film preservation in service of being the biggest factory of regurgitated imagery we remember seeing as children. It’s not interested in telling a new story, or creating a dialogue about the ways in which nostalgia is weaponized, and how myths overshadow the fragility of humanity. It’s about lightsabers, and bloodlines, and having that oh-so important “Star Wars” feel we all enjoyed as kids. It’s about throwing as much recognizable imagery at the screen to distract the audience from realizing that Disney is taking over the industry, and doing damage to copyright, and the artistry of filmmaking behind the scenes.
Anyways, here’s a fun video of the cast of Rise of Skywalker hating the movie.
