Resonance and Messages in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The Star Wars franchise has one of the largest fan bases out of any other movie franchise. Star Wars fans are very loyal, but they also have very high expectations when it comes to new content being released. That being said, the most recent trilogy that has been released with Disney at the helm has received mixed reviews. The most recent movie to come out was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. This was a very ambitious movie because not only did it wrap up the sequel trilogy, but it also ended the story of the Skywalker family, which the movies had been centered around since the very first one was released in 1977.  All of this being said, the filmmakers were tasked with coming up with a satisfying ending to the saga, and in order to do this they would have to communicate their message well utilizing nostalgia to tap into the audience’s emotions.

This brings us to the communication itself. Communication can be broadly defined as, “the relational process process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response” (6).  Communication has many features that can be used to aid in understanding how it happens. The main feature of communication is the understanding that messages are sent and received. These messages can take many forms, such as, “talking and listening, reading and writing, performing and witnessing, or, more generally, doing anything that involves ‘messages’ in any medium or situation” (6). Within communication, there are many different principles that can be studied as well. The resonance principle of communication, which applies to this particular movie, says that, “successful persuasive messages evoke past experiences that create resonance between the message content and a person’s thoughts or feelings” (14).

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had a lot of messages that covered many different aspects of communication. One message that was not able to be received by the heroes happens early on in the movie. The protagonists find this dagger that has writing on the side that tells them where they need to go to continue their quest. However, their translating droid, C-3PO, is unable to receive the message because it is written in a language that his coding forbids from translating. So, in order to get the message from the dagger, they wipe his memory so that he can translate it. He then successfully delivers the message to the heroes and they continue on with their quest. Another group of messages that occurs during the climax of the movie changes the entire mood of the movie. The main character, Rey, is knocked down by the main villain and all seems lost. However, while she lays in defeat, voices start speaking to her. If a person went into the theater and had never seen a Star Wars movie before this one in particular, they would have been very confused during this scene. The filmmakers were tapping into the nostalgia that fans feel whenever watching Star Wars, and it was a pivotal moment in the movie. The voices were characters from not only previous movies but even TV shows. Fans that had seen all of these other movies and TV shows were on the edges of their seat, and they felt excitement because all of their favorite characters were telling Rey to get up and to fight. This directly correlates with the resonance principle of communication, because as soon as these voices started speaking, every seasoned Star Wars fan instantly recognized them. This aided in filmmakers persuading the audience that it was, in fact, the climax of the movie, and an emotional one at that. Another instance where the resonance principle of communication was utilized was when Chewbacca, a beloved character from the original trilogy, was perceived to be dead. He is kidnapped by the antagonist in the movie, Kylo Ren, and his soldiers, The First Order. Whenever they fly away, the audience believes that Chewbacca is in the ship, and Kylo Ren and Rey have a tug-of-war with the force. This is a suspenseful moment in the movie, but Rey accidentally uses too much of her powers and blows up the ship. This, again, creates resonance within the audiences between the message content and their emotions. The emotions are short lived because two minutes later in the movie Chewbacca is revealed to be alive because he was on an entirely different ship. This movie used communication in various different ways, and many different messages are demonstrated throughout the film. The resonance that was employed heavily throughout the film was not a message that was received well with all audiences, but it did make for a nostalgic movie that wrapped up the Skywalker saga all while attempting to please the Star Wars fanbase.