I’ve concluded that Disney’s latest Star Wars sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, is a poor COPY & PASTE of 1981’s masterpiece, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Let me explain. I wanted to watch a GOOD and HAPPY movie for the holidays, to cleanse my eyes and mind off of the GIGANTIC PLOT HOLE MESS that The Rise of Skywalker is, so I selected Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie began, everything was going fine, my mind was being cleansed by a cohesive adventure story, with great acting and incredible action.

Until the leading lady, Marion (played by Karen Allen) supposedly died when the truck blew up.

Suddenly, my 30 plus years of “Script Doctoring” caused bells to go off in my mind like a fire alarm. My mind quickly scanned back through all the major beat points that I could remember from The Rise of Skywalker and began to compare them to Raiders of the Lost Ark. A few seconds later, I was awestruck with a WHOLEY SMOKES moment! I jumped on Google to verify my recollection and gather my reference materials in order to confirm my thinking. I was right.

Now, I am assuming you have seen both The Rise of Skywalker and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but just to be clear, beyond this point will be SPOILERS.

—-SPOILERS—–

1.       Both movies begin by being set in a jungle.
2. • Indy has a MAP / Kylo has a (Sith) MAP
   • Indy enters a temple / Kylo enters a (Sith) Temple
3. • Indy has to step over floor panels to get to the prize
   • Chewie, Poe & Finn are playing a game that has panels.
4. • Indy swaps out the idol / R2D2 (who is shaped like the idol) gets a large data dump.
   • Indy has to make a run for it / Tie-Fighters attack and the Millennium Falcon has to make a run for it.
   • Indy gets past a large door lowering / The Falcon gets past a large metal scaffold falling.
   • Indy escapes the giant boulder / Falcon escapes the chasing Tie-Fighters.
5. • Indy runs through the jungle / Rey runs through the jungle.
   • Indy escapes the hordes of bad guys / Rey defeats a training robot.
6. • Indy is back at the school / Rey is back at the home base.
   • Indy talks about an item/jewel and references a book / Rey references a book and sees a jeweled item.
7. • Indy talks with Marcus about going somewhere / Rey talks to the Poe & Finn about going somewhere.
8. • Indy gets into a plane to travel to some place called Nepal / Rey and company get into the Falcon to travel to some place… called whatever… I don’t remember.
9. • In Nepal we open up with a crowd of people / Rey and company come across a crowd of aliens.
10. • Indy needs the thing to find another thing / Rey needs the thing to find another thing.
11. • Nazi’s attack Indy & Marion / Storm-Troopers attack Rey & Co.
12. • Indy gets caught in a big shoot out / Rey & Co. get caught in a big shoot out.
13. • Marion shows Indy the thing (a pendent) that will help them find the something else / Rey finds the thing (a dagger ) that will help them find the something else.
14. • In Cairo (mostly desert land), Indy & Marion get attacked / In the desert, Rey & Co. get attacked.
15. • Indy shoots a really big bad guy (an attacker with a sword ) / Rey slices a really big bad guy ( Kylo in his Tie-Fighter ).
16. • Marion dies /Chewie dies.
17. • Indy is sad / Rey is sad.
18. • Indy is saved by a group of kids then takes off / Rey & Co. take off.
19. • Indy meets Sallah / Rey meets lite-version of a Power Ranger.
20. • Indy gets into a tomb to find a way to find the THING / C3PO is brought into a place to find the THING by wiping his memory.
21. • Indy finds out where the THING is / C3PO tells Rey where to find where the THING is.
22. • Indy finds out Marion is alive / Rey finds out Chewie is alive.
23. • ONE HOUR MARK: Indy finds the THING… The Ark of the Covenant / Rey finds the THING… the Death Star and whatever is in it.
24. • Indy has to escape through a series of passages / Rey has to escape through a series of passages.
25. • Indy has to fight Nazi’s at a parking lot for a plane / Rey has to fight Kylo in the Throne Room.
26. • The Nazi is distracted and he dies / Kylo is distracted and he dies.
27.        REY HEALS KYLO / yeah, no similarities here…
28. • Indy has a moment to rest on a boat / Rey has a moment to rest on Luke’s Jedi island.
29. • Indy sneaks into a Nazi base / Rey sneaks into the Sith base ( or whatever it’s actually called )
30. • Indy confronts the bad guy(s) and an incredibly powerful act of God ends everything / Rey confronts the Emperor and in an act of INCREDIBLE POWER (Deus ex machina) ends everything.
    • Both villains melt / disintegrate.
31. • The ARK is hidden and buried away / Rey buries the old light sabers.
32.       THE END.

There you go. Sure, I know it isn’t a perfect, exact copy, obviously. But this hit me like a 3 alarm fire and while I can tell The Rise of Skywalker was written by committee, it wouldn’t surprise me if many of the story beats were COPY & PASTED, or lifted directly from the far superior Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark, coincidentally made by George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, a director that Abrams has repeatedly tried to ape. 

You can watch Raiders on Netflix now and I encourage you to do so. If you could watch them both simultaneously, you might even be shocked at how concurrent many of these plot beats occur. Almost within a minute or so of each other.

Coincidence?

Good job J.J. Abrams. Good job Kathleen Kennedy. Good job Disney.

Forty years of emotional and financial investment has been utterly destroyed with this clownshow hack job of a movie that caps off the “Skywalker Saga”. What a saga, huh? Palpatine’s bloodline prevails and lives on while the Skywalker bloodline died for nothing…

I now agree with Alec.

Star Wars is DEAD to me. 

Happy New Year everyone. Let’s hope 2020 is better.

NEWS FLASH… You heard it here first.

RISE of SKYWALKER is a COPY and PASTE of

RAIDERS of the LOST ARK !!!

All the BEATS of RAIDERS are in SKYWALKER…
and in order of appearance !!!

JJA is a total hack, got paid a lot of money to COPY and PASTE a story… TWICE !!!

🙁

— George Peter Gatsis (@tbdeinc) December 30, 2019