My oldest son is hoping that, having finally seen Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, I will write a review of it that is similarly long and humorously criticial as my review of episode 8: The Least Jedi. (He’s had me read it to him several times now, as he enjoys my performance of it.) I’m not sure that I can, though.

The reason why is that I’m not sure that TRoS was serious. And there’s no humor in pointing out the way that a joke doesn’t work as a serious story: that’s just not getting the joke.

TRoS was in an essentially impossible position, coming, as it did, after The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi was not merely a bad movie, but it was a mean-spirited and evil movie. It tried hard to sell the viewer that nobility and virtue are bad, that nothing means anything, and that life isn’t worth living. It ended with the resistance being down to a few dozen people and it being authoritatively established that the entire galaxy is now hopeless and unwilling to fight the First Order. There’s nowhere good to go from there.

I am reminded of an episode in the TV show Sports Night where the main characters (who are sports commentators on a small sports TV show) won the right to cover a very popular and much-anticipated boxing match, and had hours of coverage blocked out. Then one fighter knocks the other out with one lucky punch seven seconds into the first round. A bit later as they’re joking about how they’re going to cover the match nanosecond by nanosecond, the director complains to the producer that they’re turning it into a joke, and he replies, “Where else are they going to go with it?”

That same question applies to TRoS, and it feels like J.J. Abrams knew it and decided to embrace it. Yes, there was no plausible way that Palpatine could have come back, but there was no plausible way that anything interesting would happen, so he didn’t bother trying to make it plausible. Was Palpatine being back good? Hell no. But J.J. established it in the first few minutes, hung a lampshade on it, and at that point, I guess you might as well go with it. Did it make sense that planet Spaceball wanted to steal Druidia’s air rather than install some air filters? No, but they established it in the first few minutes and it’s not like suspension of disbelief was ever a goal. President Skroob breathed Perry-air from a can. You knew where you stood with Space Balls. And when Palpatine uses the force to lift thousands of star destroyers with death star canons on their bellies out of the ground and into the air, you basically know where you stand, here, too. And if you didn’t, you sure do when Kylo Ren has his mask rebuilt and the actor playing the guy doing the welding is a chimpanzee.

So, yes, the plot is filled with plot holes. Nothing is ever justified (unless you want to count “Palpatine did it for his own complex and sinister reasons”). But at some point, when there are enough plot holes, it’s time to consider the thing as lace. And, as a lace doily under the lamp to keep it from scratching the table, it kind of works.

And here’s where we get to possibly the biggest reason I don’t know if I can make fun of it: its heart was mostly in the right place. Sure, the adventures made no sense, Rey got even more force powers for no reason, most of the time death is now a minor inconvenience, as are things that should cause death, and characters become loyal to our main characters just because they’re there. But all of this nonsense is in service of giving the main characters heroic adventures, personalities, and character arcs. With the exception of General Hux, all of the long-term characters are given good send-offs, including Luke. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t consider the sequel trilogy as being actually related to the original trilogy. But J.J. Abrams seems to have considered them related and he tried to do good by them. That’s not something I want to make fun of.