Many fans were left frustrated by the lack of explanation for several creative decisions in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, with director J.J. Abrams expecting viewers to simply go along with whatever he decided should happen with little in the way of justification. While celebrities often keep their thoughts to themselves regarding their opinions of major releases, Elijah Wood has commented in a way that casts no illusions about how he felt about the saga culmination.
Star Wars Holocron, a Twitter account dedicated to sharing random trivia, screenshots, fan art and boosting minor characters, posted about the origin of the Final Order fleet that rose dramatically from nowhere for the movie’s climax. And Wood’s response to it concisely highlights a significant issue with the film’s development.
no. how could we have known?
— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) February 18, 2020
While a narrative is better structured if its backstory is implied in organic moments rather than spelled out in jarring expository infodumps, it’s just as dissatisfying, if not more so, to go too far and explain absolutely nothing, requiring audiences to rely on outside sources and supplementary material to make sense of a director’s intent.
The sudden appearance of a fleet of Star Destroyers outfitted with planet-killing superweapons for some reason flying in two-dimensional formation was an impressive visual spectacle, but the lack of justification for it was just another problematic detail in a film riddled with them, such as Palpatine being an immortal lich or how the Sith dagger plot device lifted straight from The Goonies makes no sense if thought about for more than three seconds.
Going by the replies to Wood’s tweet, and similar responses made by others to the original post, many are with the actor in his frustration with the film’s storytelling faults caused by J.J. Abrams and his “mystery box” style of unexplained plot development. Perhaps if the director had spent less time petulantly retconning the decisions of The Last Jedi, he might have had more time to make Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker a complete experience in and of itself, instead of leaving it feeling like two hours of glorified fan fiction.
