An unlikely critic of the new Star Wars movie has emerged: little-known actor Jake Cannavale, who played a supporting role in Disney’s Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian.
Unlike the Star Wars movies, which have received ever-more mixed reviews as they have multiplied in number, The Mandalorian, released in November this year, is almost universally admired by Star Wars fans with an astonishing 94% rating on online ranking site Rotten Tomatoes.
The series is set five years after the events of Return of the Jedi and follows a bounty hunter from the planet Mandalore, beyond the reaches of the New Republic. The series is written and produced by a superstar team headed up by Jon Favreau and is a key plank in Disney’s attempts to break into the TV streaming market. A second series is currently in production.
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Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise from Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4bn.
Cannavale (the son of actor Bobby Cannavale) played a fighter in one of the episodes (the fighter died, which perhaps helped loosen his lips). He trashed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in an Instagram story, which has now disappeared into the digital ether, but not before his comments were noted down by scribe Kevin Burwick at movieweb.com.
Cannavale wrote that he was “still mad” after seeing the movie and went on to say, “I’m in the Star Wars universe now!!! So surely I can’t speak ill of Episode IX right???… WRONG.”
Cannavale wrote, echoing the feelings of many: “The Rise of Skywalker was hands down the worst Star Wars movie. An absolute f**king failure…There were more plot holes than there was plot. The amount of ‘by the ways’ was absolutely infuriating. Rise of Skywalker (btw dumbass title) was worse than Phantom Menace AND Last Jedi combined. Fight me.”
When challenged over whether he would have felt differently about the latest movie if he had been in it, Cannavale doubled down on his criticism, saying: “Honestly, I think I'd be more mad. Obviously I can’t speak on behalf of the cast. To some actors this is just a job and maybe they’re just happy to be working. To which I say more power to them. Also, maybe they f**king loved the new Star Wars! In which case that’s f**king dope that they got to work on something they truly got to enjoy. Personally, I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan since I was a kid and I felt pretty let down by the overall laziness of this new trilogy, and also a bit angry at the entitlement of it for pretty much seizing control of the franchise as a whole by basically [saying], ‘Nah we don’t like the ending that everybody’s been cool with for decades, let’s change it!’ I personally would feel pretty depressed if I was in the new Star Wars movie (as a main character I mean. If I was a dude wearing an alien puppet or whatever I’d be f**king stoked… but still.)”
Some fans were not impressed with his movie review.
“I can’t believe nobody else has figured out that this talentless hack obviously posted his ‘opinion’ on the movie in order to gain some publicity,” one said Sunday. “I mean, come on guys: he can’t actually be THIS stupid!”
