Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Five ways to win back the haters

1. Embrace Diversity

Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back about how inclusive and diverse it is, but their actions are little more than lip service. The Force Awakens did its best to highlight its POC and female cast, but its successor appeared to want nothing to do with it.

All the POC characters were sidelined, irrespective of how much screen time they were given. They weren’t heroes in their own stories. The fact that the creators decided that a former child soldier who had risked his life to escape the First Order and then made it his mission to fulfill his friend’s task had to be taught a lesson on the sufferings of the galaxy, remains baffling. Finn is protective of Rey and Poe, the only friends he has – that doesn’t make him a coward.

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Poe dissenting against his female superiors was too reflective of the racist “angry Latino” trope and made many fans of colour unhappy and feeling othered. It also felt completely out of character for someone who was nothing short of a hero in The Force Awakens.

Sidelining Rey was probably the biggest misstep Johnson and his team made. She was supposed to be the hero who faced-off against Kylo Ren, not Luke. He had three films and decades of stories to develop his character; this was Rey’s moment to shine and The Last Jedi swung the spotlight away from her. If Abrams has learned anything from the backlash, it should be that Rey needs more screen time and has to be respected in the same way that all the male heroes in the franchise have been so far.

Without a doubt, The Last Jedi had its pros but, for many, the cons outweighed those. At times, it felt like the entire intent of the film was to send up fan theories rather than to create a film that built on the first one and led to the finale. There was too much navel-gazing and very little originality. Spectacular visuals aside, the film was more regressive and betrayed the phenomenal steps taken by The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Can The Rise of Skywalker finally bring the Force back to the franchise?