These 10 things ruined Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker for so many fans

With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker released in 2019, the sequel trilogy of Star Wars movies is completed. However, it created a lot of questions and confusion among Star Wars fans due to its underwhelming attempt at reviving the epic saga.

Directed by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker fell short on many aspects that were hard for the fans to ignore. Whether bringing back iconic characters, introducing the back story of a character, creating a villain arc, or just the pacing of the film, it had various flaws. In this article, we have listed 10 things from the film that ruined the fans' experience of watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Disclaimer: This entire article is based on the writer's opinion. Readers' discretion is advised.

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10 things ruined Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker for so many fans

10) No space battles

The lack of space battles was one of the fundamental issues of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While one of the films in the trilogy, The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, had a significant amount of space battles, the other two movies, directed by J.J. Abrams, had next to none.

Although the film had one of the final and decisive battles between the First Order and the Resistance, it happened on the planet of Exegol, avoiding space at all costs. Not being able to encounter a good space battle in Star Wars movies is one of the reasons the fans’ experience was ruined.

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9) Sidelining the character of Rose Tico

After being cast as one of the main characters in The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran had the worst time of her life due to the online harassment she suffered from a section of social media. In The Last Jedi, Rose, with Finn and BB-8, went on missions such as disabling the First Order’s tracking device, but in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Tico was treated as just a background character.

Sidelining a major character like Rose hampered the storyline, resulting in another reason Fans were upset.

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8) Force Healing

The Force being used for healing was another factor that reportedly ruined Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker for the fans. Not just healing, it can also revive the dead, as seen in the movie when Rey revives a sandworm and Ben, or at the end when Ben revives Rey, making the force-sensitive individuals almost invincible.

In the film, Rey achieves this unknown and impossible feat by transferring life energy to the wounded, resulting in their recovery or even revival if they come back from the dead.

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7) Rey adopts the Skywalker surname

In the final moments of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey visits Tatooine, the home planet of the Skywalkers, with whom they had a complex relationship, to bury Luke’s Lightsaber. When asked by a passerby for her name, she introduces herself as Rey Skywalker, after encountering the Force spirits of Luke and Leia.

Rey decided to adopt the surname to honor her masters, Luke and Leia, but fans didn’t find it convincing enough, as the decision seemed unnecessary, and the film might have been better without it. As revealed in the film, Rey was a Palpatine by blood and could have remained that without being a Sith. She didn’t necessarily need the Skywalker surname.

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6) Poe’s contradicting back story

In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Poe’s ex-girlfriend from planet Kijimi reveals that Poe used to be a spice runner before joining the Resistance, making his story similar to Han Solo.

That’s not all. In The Last Jedi and the Star Wars Canon novels, Poe is introduced as a Commander of the New Republic before being integrated into the Resistance. This resulted in the contradiction of the back story of a major character in the Star Wars movies.

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5) Ben and Rey's kiss scene

After the final battle with the resurrected Palpatine, Rey collapsed due to using the Force. Kylo Ren, who has now rejected the dark side, comes by her side and revives her using his Force, but it drains life out of him. Before vanishing into the Force, the two share a kiss, which many fans found shocking, as there was not enough evidence that the two would get romantically involved just before Ren/Ben Solo dies.

The scene didn’t make sense because their character arcs were not built around hinting at a romance between the two, and felt lacking.

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4) Finn never gets to tell his secret to Rey

What did Finn want to tell Rey? This was one of the recurring questions that fans of the franchise asked many times, and when the answer was finally revealed, it wasn’t as exciting as the question was. While they are trapped in the quicksand of Pasaana, Finn tries to tell Rey that he is force-sensitive too, but can’t as he is submerged in the sand. After being rescued, Rey asks her what he wants to tell her, but he refuses and says he will share this with her later.

The ‘later’ never arrives in the film as Rey and Finn never talk about it again, while also not using Finn’s full potential, as he was still trying to hide his force sensitivity.

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3) Undercutting emotional scenes

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had a problem with balancing emotional scenes, as sometimes they were interrupted with underwhelming humor, or at other times, it was altered by solving the issue too soon. This happened many times when we would think a character might be nearing their end but still come back.

This happened with both Rey and Ben, and also Chewbacca’s death, which was a powerful moment, but was resolved too soon, as he did not die. Another moment like this was when C-3PO almost sacrificed himself but was saved by R2-D2. These moments would have brought the emotional depth in the film, but were resolved too soon, making them insignificant.

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2) Rushed death scene of Princess Leia

Bringing back an iconic character like Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and then rushing their story was one of the major faults of the Star Wars movie. The legendary actress passed away in 2016, and they might have tried to end her character in the films by showing her death. However, how it was shown was dissatisfying.

As her story was rushed, we didn’t find out what caused Leia’s untimely death. On one hand, Luke’s death looked a lot better and more convincing as we see him using force to fight. However, in Leia’s case, she is shown as being physically weak, and using the Force kills her, and the reason behind her weakness is never addressed in the film.

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1) The return of Emperor Palpatine

The return of Palpatine happens before the movie even begins, which robbed us of seeing how the galaxy and the major characters react to his return. Moreover, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker also didn’t reveal a proper reason for how the emperor came back from the dead.

The whole movie was about how Palpatine planned to kill Rey with Kylo Ren’s help, making him the main villain, but it couldn’t answer the important questions about the main villain's return to create havoc in the galaxy.

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Also Read: 10 times Yoda stole the show– And our Jedi-loving hearts