Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner Thought Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Was Emotionless

The reviews for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker have been, to put it mildly, mixed. The ninth and final installment in the “Skywalker Saga” brought in $177 million in its opening weekend at the box office and is already up to $774 million worldwide, but its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 54% (“Rotten”) and it saw a 59% drop at the box office in its second weekend. Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner gave his two cents on the film via Twitter on Tuesday, calling the movie “somewhat emotionless” before praising Jon Faverau’s work on the hit Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian.

Eisner then gave his thoughts specifically on Daisy Ridley’s performance as Rey.

“Daisy Ridley played Rey throughout the film with one expression: awe/fear until the very end of the film when she reveals her name,” Eisner wrote. “That’s what I meant by a film that somewhat lacked emotion.

“In my previous comment I didn’t mean to suggest that #DaisyRidley acted poorly,” he added. “On the contrary, she was excellent. The choice of attitude for Rey was intended and seems to fall on the philosophy of the character.”

Eisner began his role as CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 1984 and held the position until he voluntarily resigned in 2005. Bob Iger took over the position after Eisner’s departure, and during his tenure Disney purchased Lucasfilm for a whopping $4 billion. Since then Disney has produced five Star Wars films to varying degrees of financial and critical success.

One of the more contentious aspects of the film was the decision to bring back Emperor Palpatine as the main villain. According to co-writer Chris Terrio, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was responsible for that idea.

“Kathy Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan had a clear plan for where they wanted things to end,” Terrio said in a recent interview with AwardsDaily. “They had clear plans about certain narrative marks they wanted us to hit. They also gave us a lot of freedom within that. We knew that Rey and Ren were utterly key to this trilogy, but we also felt that there was no way that we were going to not find a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia. We felt that right from the beginning, when [director/co-writer] J.J. [Abrams] established Kylo Ren in Episode VII, there was a war going on inside him and that he had been corrupted by something bigger than himself and had made bad choices along the way. J.J. and I felt we needed to find a way in which he could be redeemed, and that gets tricky at the end of Episode VIII because Snoke is gone.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.