“The Rise of Skywalker”: A Problematic Journey

The Hero’s Journey plot template is kind of like Starbucks coffee: ubiquitous, familiar and, depending on who you ask, overdone. Joseph Campbell created the framework, but Star Wars and George Lucas can take at least partial credit for keeping the form alive and (very) prosperous.

The last movie in the latest Star Wars trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, doesn’t deviate much from the usual plot points, though of course this time around the hero is a heroine. Fiction Unbound contributors C.S. Peterson and Corey Dahl recently got together to discuss the latest installment, the female hero’s journey, the Kylo Ren Disney+ sitcom we’re all waiting for, and more.

First Star Wars experience 

C.S. Peterson: Let me say right off—I do love Star Wars. I’ve had a lot of fun watching every problematic installment. Even my “camp” name the summer I was a camp counselor at Namanu was “Ewok,” and I literally lived in a treehouse. But that doesn’t mean I don’t reflect on those problematic aspects of the saga. My first memory of Star Wars in seventh grade was two boys telling me the movie was not for girls. Not in a mean way, they just didn’t think girls would like it. The hero’s journey as contrived by Campbell is an essentially male, specifically a privileged male, initiation adventure. This is so deeply implicit that even seventh grade boys knew, instinctively, that the original Star Wars movie was a story made for them.

Corey Dahl: I watched Star Wars for the first time when I was six, sitting on the living room floor with my dad. I don’t think I was old enough to think about it in terms of gender. (Though around that time I also told my parents I wanted to grow up to become a pizza delivery man—and I was adamant about the man part—so maybe I was just born woke?) I just remember struggling to keep up with all the facts of the story, due to being six. Of course, now I love the original trilogy. My feelings about the other films are mixed, though.

Hero(ine)’s Journey in Rise of Skywalker

(Spoiler alert! We reveal significant plot points below. Stop reading if you need to. You have been warned.) 

Everyone knows that Ewoks live just outside Portland Oregon, right?

Corey: Of course the movie starts with the Departure step—Rey is asked to leave her training to help the rebels, and she initially refuses that call. She thinks she hasn’t trained enough. 

CSP: Rey trained with Luke, now she’s training with Leah. She started with preternatural talent and has now trained and trained and trained. She is So. Much. Better. than Luke was at his best. Many movies ago Luke was chafing at the bit to leave Dagobah and get to the fighting. Yoda was shaking his head at his impatient student. With Rey, everyone’s telling her she’s ready and she’s all “um, that last jump over the gorge didn’t land quite the way I wanted.”

Corey: I think, for me, that moment is the most true to the female experience in this movie. Most of the rest just feels like they slotted a woman into a male hero’s journey and kept everything else the same. We see her struggling with confidence in her skills, holding back when Luke—in a similar situation—just jumped (kind of stupidly) right in. 

We get some pre-death Carrie Fisher footage cut in too. I thought it worked for the most part. There are a lot of scenes where you only see the back of her head or her silhouette behind a too-conveniently placed curtain, though. 

CSP: Oh, my heart did ache a little missing Carrie Fisher. It was a bit like Hollywood magic had made her Force ghost appear on the screen. Another way she’s like Yoda in this film. 

Corey: They head to Pasaana, and there’s this festival that looks a little like Holi/Burning Man. Colorful and fun—maybe a good place to do some recreational drugs. Who knows? I’m guessing BB8 might. 

This leaves out a lot of the steps Campbell created, but you get the idea.

CSP: They embark on the Trials part of the journey. Rey’s gifts with the Force show up here, both good and not so. She heals a monster instead of killing it, definitely a swing to the classic nurturing female hero path, diminishing her life force to save another, Beauty sacrificing for the misunderstood Beast. But then she gets angry, and her competitive Force lightning destroys the ship she believes holds Chewbacca—definitely two sides to her power. Her competition with Kylo is shown as a negative. Competition and pride often come before a fall in the all male hero’s journey. But her being so in touch with the snake (can I point out that it was a very phallic beast?) and then being too distracted to realize she’s about to kill Chewbacca made my head snap.

Corey: We get a lot of Kylo Ren tracking Rey down with their mind meld thing. I kind of loved that there’s this reversed-role Woman as Temptress part because Kylo Ren as a mouth-breathing, sulky temptress is just super funny to me. The attraction between the two doesn’t feel that natural. Did we need it? I got the impression that some influential studio exec was like, “Hey but what about ROMANCE you guys?” And they had to wedge these parts in.

CSP:  Yeah, they totally flipped Campbell’s “Meeting with the Goddess/Temptress” step. The whole “Dark Prince” thing felt over-played. There were squirm-inducing echoes of Sarah and the Goblin King/ Dracula and Mina/ Death and the Maiden blended with a weird S&M vibe. Maybe it was all the leather Kylo was wearing.

Corey: So after Pasaana, they bounce around a bunch of planets trying to find a Sith wayfinder that will lead them to Emperor Palpatine. Chewy is captured and shackled, yet they don’t force him into a gold bikini. C-3PO loses his memory, only to have it restored by R2-D2, further cementing their status as intergalactic Bert & Ernie, and I’m a fan. 

CSP: I loved the fight on the wreck of the second Death Star in the midst of the waves. It was full-out and fierce. And the setting was a fantastic, visceral experience of emotions of the moment. Rey’s healing Kylo—that’s Beauty and the Beast again, and a little on the nose. He is reborn and redeemed. She’s given up a little more life force to a wounded monster. I did appreciate the resolution of Kylo and his dad though. It was a lovely, tender moment. Two booyah men weeping, engaging in emotions without a woman around to process the feeling for them. Disney’s on the right track with that. 

Corey: All of this builds to the Abyss/Face-Off with the Father (or grandfather in this case) phase of our journey. Palpatine tries to tempt Rey with the throne, but she and Kylo—now Ben—join forces against him and prevail. We get some Rescue from Without from Lando and Jedi Force ghosts, and Ben gives the life Rey gave him earlier back to her. It’s like a higher stakes Gift of the Magi. 

CSP: Haters are going to hate, but I liked the symmetry of the daughter of the bad gone good allied with the son of the good gone bad then redeemed, facing off with the author of all the Sith evil throughout all nine movies. It felt final. Then they had to ruin the moment with a weird and awkward kiss. That kiss felt like another Disney exec mandate to me.

Corey: The Resistance destroys Palpatine’s armada and the people of the galaxy (who didn’t answer the call in The Last Jedi) finally rise up. The First Order falls. It’s all pretty standard Hero’s Journey: The Ultimate Boon has been given, and all have the Freedom to Live.

CSP: That three-way hug when Rey, Po, and Finn are back together—I kind of loved that. It seemed more intimate that we couldn’t see their faces. It wasn’t a party, people died, they could have lost each other. It had huge feeling. And then the last step—Rey is literally reborn when she takes the name of Skywalker.

Some Problems with the Hero’s Journey and Women (and Any Marginalized Group, Really)

Corey: I like that Star Wars is trying to be more representative, but it feels a little like tokenism. Just making the same movie but putting a woman in the man’s role shouldn’t cut it as progressive behavior in 2020, and yet. Women have been stuck in Marriage Plot templates for centuries now, but it’s not liberating or fresh to just put a woman in the traditionally male template instead. Is there no in-between? I think the Avengers movies did a better job of hewing to the template while also subverting it and filling it with nuanced characters of all backgrounds. 

CSP: I went into this movie prepared not to like it and to be disappointed. It still has flaws. But I really enjoyed it. And I shed a few tears during that fight on the wreck in the waves, because I was so happy to see what I’d longed to see when I was in seventh grade. The power of Rey, with her absolute determination and agency, met a need that was almost physical for me. That kind of representation can carry a person a long way.

What’s Next?

Corey: The big question to me is how long Disney can keep churning out Star Wars stories all modeled on the same basic template before anyone notices. I’m guessing a while. Personally, I’d be really interested in watching a Disney+ series about Ben’s junior high years. Especially the episode where he buys a cape at Hot Topic and gets bullied by the jocks for wearing it to homeroom. 

CSP: Whatever the flaws of the hero’s journey story pattern, Star Wars and subsequent pop culture have made their own version of Campbell’s flawed idea and turned it into an established American Mythos. The danger is that other forms are now held up by Hollywood, and Hollywood’s audiences, and found wanting. This is worrisome to me, that there is only this one expectation that will satisfy. Disney and Disney’s audiences imply that financial success = correct and that one, essentially American male experience, must be the universal experience.

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