August is almost over and Star Wars is in the air. Too soon to begin celebrating something that won’t come out till late December you say? Nonsense. It’s never too early to start celebrating Star Wars.
This year, the anticipation is real for me. At first I was disappointed in myself for being excited. After such a colossal fail of a movie that the Last Jedi was, I shouldn’t be excited. I shouldn’t look forward to anymore Disney Star Wars films. But oddly enough, I am looking forward The Rise of Skywalker. I believe that this Star Wars movie has to be good, and I’ve actually come up with 7 reasons why Episode 9 has to be a great movie.
1. The fans were loud as heck
After the last film, one thing was clear: the fans weren’t happy. Not only were there what were generally agreed upon as terrible story decisions, but there was sloppy filmmaking as well. If you need proof, go look at the fight sequence when Rey and Kylo are fighting Snoke’s guards. It was overall, a bad movie with dumb choices.
The Star Wars community made their opinions known loud and clear. And people listened. Disney listened. Sure, we don’t know to what extent Disney listened or if they really tried to remedy any issues with this upcoming film. But we do know that the evidence is pointing toward that being the case.
2. Rian Johnson isn’t the director
It takes a special kind of person to try and destroy a beloved film franchise. Thankfully this time, we don’t have to deal with that kind of person. Rian is gone from the Star Wars universe for now, and hopefully forever.
3. The trailers
The trailers give me hope that this final installment of the Skywalker saga will be worth watching. The first trailer we got for episode nine began to answer the biggest question in my mind since The Force Awakens. Ever since episode seven, I’ve wondered why the heck Rey is so powerful without any training. Anakin Skywalker was immaculately conceived and was the chosen one, yet he has to undergo years of training to unlock his potential.
It would logically follow then, that very powerful Jedi or force user must undergo training to become powerful. The Force Awakens seemed to have broken this mold that I’ve just describe. Rey was painted to viewers to just be an average citizen on a junk planet (much like Anakin was). But she became more than that when she (after having a lightsaber for about an hour) bested Kylo Ren, a trained Jedi turned dark-side force user. This didn’t add up for me, and I needed more explanation.
Though I didn’t get an explanation with the episode nine trailer, an answer began to come into view through it. In the trailer, Luke says to Rey “we’ve passed on all we know, a thousand generations live in you now.”. If this is somehow even a little true, it makes perfect sense why Rey is so damn powerful without even trying.
4. Lando is back, baby
We know from the trailers and interviews that Lando Calrissian is back in the Star Wars universe. He will likely only have a minor part in this film, as Disney has chosen to ignore the older characters and focus on “developing” the new, younger characters. We’ve seen this through the sudden ends to Han and Luke and general lack of focus on the original characters.
I know what I just said makes the revival of Lando seem not as exciting, but I’m still excited. There is the possibility that Disney heard the feedback and maybe won’t kill off every character we Star Wars fans love.
5. J.J. Abrams is the director
This one goes with reason 2, in that anyone is better than Rian Johnson at directing a Star Wars film. Plus, I thought The Force Awakens wasn’t half bad. Plus, J.J. is a renowned director and doesn’t have nothing to lose like Rian did.
6. Rey has been training
In the trailer, we see Rey training with a droid like the one Luke and other Jedi trained with. This makes me happy simply because of the lack of training she’s done up until this point.
7. We’re time-jumping in this film
The other two films were back-to-back. The Last Jedi picked up where the Force Awakens had left off and left nothing to our imagination. I like the fact that we’re going to leap forward a bit with this next film. It allows for more things to happen in while still making sense.