As you’re composing yourself after the brassy blast of John Williams’ theme song with its 42 years of weight behind it, here comes the first words in the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker title crawl: “The dead speak!”

And that’s the problem right there.

An enervating part of the Star Wars religion is the way the dead keep coming back as blue-tinted ghosts—as when old Obi Wan joined in on the teddy-bear picnic of Ewoks from the next world in Return of the Jedi. While the filmmakers mean for us to feel sorry about an already-demised actor who died on-screen, it’s like that glitch in Facebook’s algorithms that reprints a dead person’s obituary on the anniversary of their death—it’s sad, and it’s news to some, but it lacks surprise.

Moreover, Rise of Skywalker violates the law that says you don’t show the monster until the end of the movie. From the title crawl, we know that Emperor Palpatine (quavery old Ian McDiarmid) has come back to life.

He’s resurrected and needs to be snuffinged, and so we know where this movie will end. He and the Final Order hide on a grim, bad planet full of blue lightning. It’s a Sith stronghold that can only be found with a triangular widget, which in turn can only be found with the help of an inscription on a blade in the dread language of Mordor (actually Sithese) which C-3P0 is forbidden to utter. And we know that the last of the Jedi, Rey (Daisy Ridley—sometimes beautifully fierce, sometimes blandly intrepid) must be the spearhead.

Rise of Skywalker has the disadvantage of following The Last Jedi, maybe the best in the series; during lag times in this J.J. Abrams film, you recall the energy Rian Johnson brought to the lightsaber fight in Snoke’s crimson throne room, and the groans of the grizzled Chewbacca, and the closeups of Adam Driver’s vaguely teenage face swollen with emotion.

Driver’s Kylo Ren helps this film, and Rise of Skywalker’s most attractive side is the relationship between him and Rey, the woman he loves and hates and can’t stop pulling a lightsaber on. The two are so bonded that they’re in each other’s heads. They share the same space from separate locations at the same time—in one fight, she’s on a spaceship and he’s in a marketplace; he swings his saber and bursts open a bag of beans, and the beans roll at her feet, many miles away.

Their more-or-less climactic duel takes place atop the rusting ruins of the Death Star, surrounded by a turbulent sea. But there’s plenty of rudderless action as the rest of the characters make a crowded-yet-uneventful chase from one planet to another.

There’s constant eye candy: a Kumba Mehla–style festival in the desert called “the Festival of the Ancestors” (which the movie certainly is), a six-eyed sandworm attack and various growling muppets. And yet nothing connects. This was once a series that did things no other movies did; now every movie does them, and that’s the best thing to be said about it now that it’s wrapped up.

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ is playing in wide release.

As you’re composing yourself after the brassy blast of John Williams’ theme song with its 42 years of weight behind it, here comes the first words in the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker title crawl: “The dead speak!”
And that’s the problem right there.
An enervating part of the Star Wars religion is the way the dead keep coming back as blue-tinted ghosts—as when old Obi Wan joined in on the teddy-bear picnic of Ewoks from the next world in Return of the Jedi. While the filmmakers mean for us to feel sorry about an already-demised actor who died on-screen, it’s like that glitch in Facebook’s algorithms that reprints a dead person’s obituary on the anniversary of their death—it’s sad, and it’s news to some, but it lacks surprise.
Moreover, Rise of Skywalker violates the law that says you don’t show the monster until the end of the movie. From the title crawl, we know that Emperor Palpatine (quavery old Ian McDiarmid) has come back to life.
He’s resurrected and needs to be snuffinged, and so we know where this movie will end. He and the Final Order hide on a grim, bad planet full of blue lightning. It’s a Sith stronghold that can only be found with a triangular widget, which in turn can only be found with the help of an inscription on a blade in the dread language of Mordor (actually Sithese) which C-3P0 is forbidden to utter. And we know that the last of the Jedi, Rey (Daisy Ridley—sometimes beautifully fierce, sometimes blandly intrepid) must be the spearhead.
Rise of Skywalker has the disadvantage of following The Last Jedi, maybe the best in the series; during lag times in this J.J. Abrams film, you recall the energy Rian Johnson brought to the lightsaber fight in Snoke’s crimson throne room, and the groans of the grizzled Chewbacca, and the closeups of Adam Driver’s vaguely teenage face swollen with emotion.
Driver’s Kylo Ren helps this film, and Rise of Skywalker’s most attractive side is the relationship between him and Rey, the woman he loves and hates and can’t stop pulling a lightsaber on. The two are so bonded that they’re in each other’s heads. They share the same space from separate locations at the same time—in one fight, she’s on a spaceship and he’s in a marketplace; he swings his saber and bursts open a bag of beans, and the beans roll at her feet, many miles away.
Their more-or-less climactic duel takes place atop the rusting ruins of the Death Star, surrounded by a turbulent sea. But there’s plenty of rudderless action as the rest of the characters make a crowded-yet-uneventful chase from one planet to another.
There’s constant eye candy: a Kumba Mehla–style festival in the desert called “the Festival of the Ancestors” (which the movie certainly is), a six-eyed sandworm attack and various growling muppets. And yet nothing connects. This was once a series that did things no other movies did; now every movie does them, and that’s the best thing to be said about it now that it’s wrapped up.

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ is playing in wide release.

Q: My friend recently bought a $3,000 labradoodle but refuses to pay to get it trained. The dog is badly behaved. Whenever I bring up the need for training, my friend gets very defensive and lashes out at me. Last time I visited her, the dog got into my bag and chewed through some expensive skin care products. She acted like it wasn’t an issue and even said it was my fault for leaving my bag on the floor! We’ve been friends for nearly 20 years, so it’s a little complicated, but how can I let her know her actions feel inconsiderate and get her to take proper responsibility for her dog?—Beware Of Owner

A: Most dogs enjoy chewing on a nice raw bone to pass the time; hers likes to mix things up with the occasional $200 tube of eye cream.

Your friend’s response to her delinquent ‘doodle destroying your stuff suggests she comes up short in a personality trait called “conscientiousness.” Conscientiousness is one of the five core personality dimensions that shape how we typically behave (the other four being openness, extroversion, agreeableness and emotional stability). Each of these dimensions reflects a spectrum—for example, extroversion includes everything from extreme extroversion to extreme introversion.

Research by psychologists Joshua Jackson and Brent Roberts finds that people with high conscientiousness are responsible, hardworking, orderly and able to control their impulses. (Their work was focused on the behaviors of the conscientious, as opposed to thoughts and feelings.) Not surprisingly, other research—a cross-cultural study by psychologist Martin C. Melchers—finds that people with higher levels of conscientiousness tend to be more empathetic (making them less likely to react to their animal turning a friend’s possessions into chew toys by being all, “Dogs will be dogs!”).

Personality traits are, to a great extent, genetic, and tend to be pretty stable over time and across situations. However, psychologists Nathan Hudson and R. Chris Fraley find that a person may be able to change their personality traits, including their level of conscientiousness. Their research suggests that a person can become more conscientious by continually setting very specific weekly goals—for example, tasks to follow through on that they’d normally let slide.

The problem is this friend of yours might need some wakeup call to be motivated to change. People who get away with living sloppy typically see no reason to live otherwise. Consider the difference in how driven someone would be to clean up their act in the wake of “hitting bottom” versus, say, “hitting middle.”

Another demotivating factor might be your friend’s WTR—“welfare trade-off ratio.” As evolutionary psychologists David Buss and Lars Penke explain, a person’s welfare tradeoff ratio refers to how much weight they place on their own interests relative to those of another person. In other words, “welfare” really means “well-being”—as in, “How willing am I to sacrifice what’s best for me so you can have what’s good for you?”

Buss and Penke add that people who are narcissistic—self-centered, exploitative, with a strong sense of entitlement and lacking in empathy—“habitually place a higher weight on their own welfare relative to the welfare of others.” Now, maybe you don’t see this sort of selfish, cavalier attitude coming out habitually in your friend, but maybe that’s because friendship is fun-centered and thus doesn’t have the sort of strains put on it that a business partnership or relationship does.

Where does this leave you? Unfortunately, without a lot of attractive options. Though it’s reasonable to prefer that she change her philosophy on dog training, expecting her to do so is basically the love child of toxic hope and irrational expectations. Tempting as it must be to simply demand she train her dog, as you’ve already seen, telling people what to do tends to backfire.

What you can do is choose: Consider whether the benefits of having her in your life are worth the cost. If you decide to keep her around, be realistic: Leave any pricey rejuveceuticals and anything else of value locked in a kennel when visiting her and Cujodoodle. It might also help to look on the positive side: It’s only her dog running wild; she isn’t hollering out the back door, “Kids, if you rob the liquor store, don’t forget Mommy’s merlot!”