The Rise Of Skywalker Fifth Anniversary Gives Us The Opportunity To Cut It Some Slack

I’m not going to try and make the case that The Rise of Skywalker is secretly some kind of masterpiece. Even I agree that the movie is messy as hell.

But you know what? It’s also a fast-paced roller-coaster ride of a movie that’s a whole lot of fun if you can shut your brain off.

I know, I know, shutting one’s brain off has become the rallying cry of bad movie defenders everywhere. Seriously, if you put Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on in the background and pound tequila shots while scrolling through TikTok, it’s really not such a bad movie.

“You just have to turn your brain off!” That’s obviously not what I mean about turning off your brain to watch The Rise of Skywalker.

All I’m saying is that Star Wars is a “don’t think too hard about it” franchise. If you’re bothered by explosions in space, or you can’t understand why Jedi don’t use the force to shut off their opponent’s lightsaber midbattle, maybe Star Wars isn’t for you.

That doesn’t mean that The Rise of Skywalker is above criticism or anything, but nitpicking the movie about Space Wizards to death isn’t really fair.

Take Palpatine’s return, easily the most controversial part of The Rise of Skywalker. The Emperor’s sudden return smacks of desperation and an unclear idea of how to end the Skywalker saga.

That being said, zombie Palpatine was awesome!

The Rise of Skywalker added a previously unseen horror element to Star Wars. Palpatine’s throne world, full of shadowy Sith alchemists and occult shenanigans, was one of the coolest locations in the entire sequel trilogy.

For me personally, resurrected Palps looked like a Deadite—specifically Henrietta from Evil Dead 2. Whether that was on purpose or not is debatable, but I enjoyed it regardless.

I felt the same way about the dagger that Rey uses to find the Sith Wayfinder. Was a dagger with a blade that lines up with the sunken wreckage of the second Death Star stupid AF? Duh.

But it was also The Rise of Skywalker‘s way of paying homage to Indiana Jones and a similar conceit from Raiders of the Lost Ark involving a medallion showing the location of the Ark.

The Rise of Skywalker is full of fun scenes that, when taken on their own out of context, are good enough to stand next to anything in the saga. Palpatine bringing down a fleet of ships with force lightning is badass—I don’t care if it makes sense or not.

“Why didn’t he do that in Return of the Jedi? Or Revenge of the Sith, or…” Shhhhhhh! Just enjoy the movie. The truth is, the entire Star Wars franchise is full of stuff that seems dumber the more you think about it—even the original trilogy.

In Empire Strikes Back, Luke trains with Yoda while the Millennium Falcon limps along towards Bespin. Now, without any books or other outside info, fans can either choose to believe that Luke only trained for a few days or that the Millenium Falcon took weeks—even months—to get to Cloud City.

Either way, something doesn’t add up.

But I’m willing to bet that most of you reading this never gave it much thought, nor should you. Because just like The Rise of Skywalker—and every other Star Wars movie, for that matter—The Empire Strikes Back is fun and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Look, I know that The Rise of Skywalker is a flawed movie. It’s convoluted, bloated, and incredibly dumb. But what can I say? The movie brings me joy.

If you haven’t watched it in a while, give it another watch, and this time, try not to think of things like canon or continuity when you watch it.

I guarantee that if you are willing to take most of the scenes at face value instead of constantly trying to compare them to the rest of Star Wars, you will have a good time.

And if not, at least we can all agree that Babu Frik is cool, right?