J. J. Abrams
Star Wars: L'ascesa di Skywalker

Anything goes these days. For those who make the movies and for us who watch them. Everything is amazing, and everything sucks. But there's a precise reason why this trilogy turned out so confused and messy (from a house that made twenty Marvel films with a... snap of a finger).

That reason lies in the impossibility of controlling and mastering an imagination too suggestive. And particularly the dialectic between the light side and the dark side, between fathers and sons with laser swords, between betrayals and salvific catharsis. Even the geniuses of the consumer film industry have lost their minds. They wanted to reach the Lucasian asymptote, which, however, cannot be approached.

Not because it's particularly brilliant or refined. That's not it. A cinema that must meet expectations is not cinema, so the battle was lost from the start. Whatever you do, you're wrong. You're wrong with Episode 7 because it's too deferential, you're wrong with Episode 8 because it's too heretical. And of course, you're wrong with Episode 9 because you have to correct 8 and there's no time. Hasty, without courage.

And who cares?

Abrams' film runs fast, it doesn't give you much time to digest transitions and changes, but did we really want it slower? At the ninth film of the saga (plus two spin-offs), is there still a need to mull over plot edges?

Abrams' film runs fast, but runs quite well, without roughness, without large narrative rifts. In fact, perhaps it does too much to be clear, to never leave the viewer alone. This is because the narrative material present could have been spread out over at least two films, and so inevitably, you must keep the thread of such a dense discourse tightly held. But there are no long-winded explanations, in fact, I appreciated the succinctness in handling even some new concepts. But here, surely someone will have something to say because they don't understand this or that, it's not sensible that, it's not realistic that, it's not canonical that...

I don't care.

For me, Star Wars should be tasty entertainment with just a very light touch on the concepts of good and evil. But really light, childlike. So the film is fine as it is, without too many pretenses, an engaging amusement park, with good characters.

And let's talk about Kylo Ren. Can I say he convinced me more than Darth Vader? His struggle between good and evil unfolds over three films, it's not pinpointed, it's not explained. You can't rationally explain the choice to become a lord of evil. That's why Episode 3 sucked, because it almost wanted to justify. Instead, these are inner movements to be taken as they are, in their unreadability. It's a legacy written in the blood that makes you go mad, makes you slaughter people only to perhaps convert on your deathbed (just saying, eh). Anyway, for three films, Vader was a cold reaper, a soulless executor. Kylo Ren, on the other hand, has the merit of always being conflicted, of having always rejected the authorities imposed on him. Of always struggling between affection for his parents (and Rey) and repressed anger. It's in the Skywalker legacy, there's no need for a precise reason to be angry.

And even the developments of Rey's story seem to me to be tackled wisely by Abrams, without overdoing it. Just like Palpatine's return can be accepted with good grace; his plots are a little less clear, but that's not the decisive factor.

There are always some contradictions; everything can't fall perfectly into place in such a narrative muddle. However, what we wanted to see, I think we've seen. Epic brawls, fathers, sons, and grandsons slashing at each other with affection, adventure and strange planets, dramatic turnarounds. Even at the expense of coherence and rigor, yes.

Star Wars is nothing more, and nothing less.