On Thursday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief reviews “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and talks about how the film provides a fantastic ending to a trilogy that otherwise shouldn’t have happened. Video, partial transcript, and spoilers below:
If you’ve been familiar with the show at all, you know I’ve been incredibly critical of the new trilogy. I don’t like the new trilogy; I think it was unnecessary, I think they were fools, I think they tried to split the baby. So there were two things they could’ve done originally — I have to preface my take on “Rise of Skywalker” with the other two movies because it doesn’t work as a standalone film, nor is it really meant to.
This film, “Rise of Skywalker,” was designed specifically to retcon — meaning to go back in time and change the fact that “Force Awakens” and “Last Jedi” ever happened. It basically revises the entire story in a much more satisfying way.
So here was my original take on this new trilogy: There are two ways that Disney could have gone. Disney, number one, could have recast the entire original “Return of the Jedi” — they could have recast somebody as Luke, recast somebody as Leia, recast somebody as Han — which by the way, they did, they recast somebody as Han [when they] did Solo —they could have recast the entire cast and then they could’ve just picked up where “Return of the Jedi” left off with the Admiral Thrawn series. If you’ve read any of the Star Wars books — as I have — that’s actually a really good storyline. It could’ve just picked up where they left off and moved on into the future that way and would’ve gotten all of their new adventures.
Alternatively, they could have landed the Star Wars universe in like a different place, and they’re actually doing this on Disney Plus with the Mandalorian, which is kind of great — Mandalorian is really fun, Jon Favreau director. They could have gone back and they could have used some of these characters and put them somewhere else in the Star Wars universe. So Disney actually has done this with a couple of their other series, right? “Star Wars: Clone Wars,” they did this with, also “Star Wars: Rebels,” and some of the stuff is really pretty fantastic. They could’ve done any of those things.
Instead, what they chose to do was split the baby. “We’ll introduce new characters, but we’ll live off the nostalgia for the first films.” You can’t do that, and the reason you can’t do that is because if you’re nostalgic for the first films, you don’t want to see bad things happen to your favorite childhood characters. No one wants — spoiler alert — no one wants to see Han Solo die at the hands of his son like a loser divorced dad after leaving Leia alone for 20 years and flying around the galaxy smoking pot with Chewie in the Millennium Falcon. No one wants to see that, and that’s what happens in “Force Awakens.” No one wants to see Luke, who is this hero who goes from being a whiny teenager to being this mature Jedi who is able to control himself to save his father, nobody wants to see Luke become a misanthrope who milks aliens on a foreign planet while whining about his life and disparaging the Jedi tradition. No one wants to see that.
So the new series basically took all of your favorite characters, your favorite old characters, and proceeded to ruin them, except for Leia, because Kathleen Kennedy has this feminist streak where the only characters were allowed to be competent or good are apparently the female characters. So that was the critique of this trilogy — it basically took all of my favorite characters from my childhood and they wrecked them so they could promote a bunch of characters who sucked.
Rey was a terrible character because you didn’t know — not only you didn’t know where she came from, but she was amazing at everything right off the bat. This was the biggest critique of the first part of this trilogy. The biggest critique was that Rey, who had not trained in the force for half a second, was suddenly unbelievably good at it, and Ben Solo —Kylo Ren, who is Leia’s kid with Han [and has] been training with the Force since childhood, can be overtaken in a lightsaber battle by somebody who picked up a lightsaber half a second ago. That’s not a thing. It’s stupid, and everybody who watched the series knew it was stupid.
Meanwhile, you had Poe, who was utterly incompetent, they tried to create kind of a new Han Solo character. The difference is that Han Solo in “Empire Strikes Back” — the entire story of “Empire Strikes Back” is Han Solo demonstrating that he is wildly competent at a lot of things. The entire Poe Dameron story is [that] the dude is wildly incompetent until he’s suddenly promoted to the head of the Rebel Alliance. Finn has no story arc at all. His entire story arc is that he was a stormtrooper, end of story arc, nothing happens to him for the next three movies.
So all of the new characters are completely boring, random, they should have killed Finn in “Last Jedi” when he makes that heroic run. They should’ve killed him off. They probably should’ve killed Poe in “Last Jedi,” they should have had him pull the Admiral Holdo maneuver. Instead, they bring in Laura Dern to wear weird hair and do a lightspeed trick that, by the way, if anybody could have figured that one out, they could’ve blown up the Death Star that way, like in “Star Wars: New Hope,” as well as “Return of the Jedi.” So all of this is preface to say I hated “Force Awakens,” and I hated “Last Jedi.”
“Rise of Skywalker” is an attempt to buy all of that back, and understanding that this trilogy never should have happened and understanding all the flaws of “Force Awakens” and “Last Jedi” — now you understand why I liked “Rise of Skywalker” — because they attempt to correct as many of these problems as they can while apologizing for the series, which is basically what this was. All of the stuff with Finn and Poe, no one cares about. All that stuff was dumb. No one cares about [it], it’s a waste of time. You have to do it, it’s like the worst of J.J. Abrams, it’s not a spoiler to say the film opens with the Millennium Falcon lightspeed jumping, which just turns it into like a silly prop. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.
The entire “Empire Strikes Back,” which is the best Star Wars film unquestionably — this is fact, this is known. “The Empire Strikes Back” is all about basically three, maybe four topics. One is the Millennium Falcon, it’s the entire thing in Empire Strikes Back is that the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive is broken. That is the central plot device. In this movie, in the new movie, in “Rise of Skywalker,” the Millennium Falcon is fully on fire and they fix it inside of 5 seconds flat. All of it. Also, “Empire Strikes Back” is about Luke growing and realizing that he is insufficient, so that’s the other topic, and also it’s about Han Solo being wildly competent. Poe and Finn, they’re wildly incompetent, the Millennium Falcon is made into a prop, like all that stuff is sort of the worst of J.J. Abrams.
The stuff that’s really good [in this movie is] actually quite good. The stuff that’s good is that they buy back Han Solo’s death, they give him sort of a new exit scene where he’s not being killed by a son where they cheat, he can’t be a Force ghost because he didn’t have the Force, but he basically is a Force ghost, he comes back. All these are spoilers. You’ve been warned one thousand times. You don’t want to hear about it, you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t listen.
So Han Solo comes back and he talks with Kylo and he basically woos Kylo back to the light side of the Force. You find out that Leia, who uses the Force in new and bizarre ways in “Last Jedi” that are never explained — like she literally pulls herself back into a ship after being blasted out into space and you’re like where the hell did that come from Luke hasn’t even done that — you’re told in this movie that Leia was trained as a Jedi by Luke, which makes sense, right? In the book, she actually is, in the book she actually is trained as a Jedi by Luke, and [in the movie] she decided not to become a Jedi at the last minute because she foresaw, using the Force, that if she became a Jedi then her lightsaber would be used to kill Ben.
That all makes sense, so they retcon that. Then, the biggest retcon of all, the one that actually matters and that answers why Rey is cool. Answers the biggest question, why is Rey even a thing? And the answer is because she’s Palpatine granddaughter, which is fantastic. That’s a great reveal, that’s great because the most underrated Force ability person in the Star Wars series — because everyone’s focused on Anakin Skywalker, on Vader and Luke, on Leia, on Yoda, on Obi Wan — nobody’s focused on the fact that Palpatine is an unbelievable badass with the Force. Palpatine is so strong in the Force that he basically defeats Yoda, he is able to conceal his identity as the emperor for three movies, he’s able to turn Anakin to the dark side. Palpatine is an utter badass, and so they bring Palpatine back from the dead, which they sort of had to do — Palpatine is a great character — they bring in all the old musical cues, they bring in all of the old stuff, which is the stuff that I like.
So if you’re a nostalgia person, if you’re pissed at the series because you feel like it ruined your childhood, then this movie was an attempt to restore that, it was an attempt to make Han cool again — fairly successful. There’s an attempt to make Leia cool again — successful. There’s an attempt to make Luke cool, there’s a great scene where Luke does, even though he’s dead, Luke does this thing that Yoda does while he’s alive in Empire. Remember in Empire, there’s this call, there’s this scene where Yoda raises the X-Wing from the swamp because Luke fails to do so. Here, Luke is able to do that as a force ghost to hand over the X-Wing to Rey. That’s great.
The callback scene where they find the old Death Star from “Return of the Jedi,” and Rey has to confront herself, which is another callback to Empire, and then when they’re playing the old musical cues and all that stuff is great. What they do with Kylo Ren, bringing him back to the light side is pretty great.
J.J. Abrams does a great job in setting up a good reveal. So for several movies, you’ve been seeing basically Kylo and Rey Force-Skyping one another, they can talk over long distances in this movie, they can actually sword fight sort of telepathically, but it has real world ramifications. One is in one place, one is in the other place, and they’re having these lightsaber battles, but it actually has physical ramifications in the places where they’re having the lightsaber battles, and so that ends with a really fantastic reveal. All that stuff is great. Everything with Kylo, everything with Rey, everything with Palpatine is great, everything with Leia and Han is really good, like all that stuff is good. Finn and Poe continue to be disposable, all the other fringe characters end up being disposable.
There is this lesbian moment that’s been much talked about because at the very end of the movie they show a lesbian couple kissing, and it’s obviously Disney trying to shoehorn in the “Okay GLAAD, we know you’re there.” It’s very silly, and it’s sort of like that moment at the end of the “Avengers: Infinity War” where all the females land in one part of the battlefield and you’re like, “Okay, really? Was that like, c’mon.” That’s it, that’s sort of the same thing here. None of the couples are kissing except this one lesbian couple. All right, I get it, Disney, you’ve fulfilled your PC quota for the day. Whatever, man. But it’s pretty shoehorned in, it’s not a big deal, it’s just silly.
But overall, the critics are savaging this film. All it tells you about critics, all you need to know is they gave the “Last Jedi” like 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and they gave this one like 53%. They didn’t understand Star Wars, didn’t understand that this movie understands better how the Force works, this movie understands better how the weapons work, this movie understands better the dynamics between the light and the dark side; it understands Palpatine.
I’ve heard a lot of objections that this film basically makes the Skywalker-Vader interaction completely irrelevant. But that’s true the minute that Palpatine lives, and by the way, that’s true the minute that the Rebel Alliance fails. Once the Republic falls again to the First Order, then that whole thing became irrelevant. The new trilogy made that irrelevant, which is why they should’ve fast forwarded and taken it to some other part of the universe. But once you’re in the trilogy, this was the best way to end it.
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