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Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker and the Brutal Circularity of History
It was probably inevitable that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was going to be divisive. It is, after all, the culmination of a decades-long saga and the conclusion to one of the most enduring and influential fantastic narratives of the 20th and 21st Centuries. What’s more, it is also the end product of an at-times contentious creative process, made all the more so by the changes that marked this particular entry, from the departure of Colin Trevorrow to the switching of directors from Rian Johnson to JJ Abrams between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. The result was a perfect storm for the sort of critical divide that characterizes so many aspects of our culture.
And so it has proved to be. At the time of this writing, the film has attained a bare 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest of any film in the main saga other than Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. In particular, several critics have taken issue with the return of Emperor Palpatine, suggesting that his return undoes, or at the very least subverts, the meaningfulness of Palpatine’s destruction in Return of the Jedi, particularly as this bears upon Anakin’s destiny as the chosen one who brings balance to the Force. Writing in The Ringer, Ben Lindbergh suggests that The Rise of Skywalker, even if unintentionally, “lessens the significance of the first…
