It arguably was none of those things, in a way that discolored the entire nine-film episodic saga. However, Star Wars IX thus had to be A) a good movie, B) a satisfying trilogy caper and C) a winning finale to the whole Star Wars saga. In a world where Logan, The Dark Knight Rises, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II and even The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II ended their franchises on (financial) high notes, selling Rise of Skywalker as the end of all things made 104% commercial sense. That was the risk with selling The Rise of Skywalker not just as the trilogy capper to the first batch of Disney Star Wars movies but as the grand finale to the Skywalker/Solo narrative. However, the core nine-movie arc will now be hampered by a series finale that was about as well-liked as the finales of Game of Thrones and How I Met Your Mother. Tempered expectations going forward, where nobody is chasing the $2.068 billion gross of The Force Awakens, may make a world of difference. Star Wars will live beyond the middling reception of Episode IX. Would $1.069 billion have looked better as the first or second-biggest grossing movie of 2020 instead of the ninth-biggest earner of the year, behind even Warner Bros.’ R-rated Joker? Whatever value there was in making sure that Star Wars IX was included in Disney’s 2019 fire sale (arguably to get these films onto Disney+ faster, and to act as a grand finale if Bob Iger actually retired last year) came at a rather large price. Its eventual box office take wouldn’t have been compared to the deluge of $1 billion grosses in 2019. That extra time would likely have ironed out at least some of the nitpicky issues, even if the broader story beats and certain choices (like the near erasure of Rose Tico) still would have stung. At the very least, delaying the film would have likely resulted in a more coherent and disciplined narrative. I was not expecting an almost objectively bad movie, one with little purpose save for undoing the prior sequel, the retconned reveals and delivering a finale that validated the “original trilogy” Star Wars fans as the proverbial chosen ones, and lacking meat-and-potatoes entertainment value. I was expecting a well-made movie that occasionally made me roll my eyes in relation to how it walked back or retconned The Last Jedi.
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