This Mandalorian Actor Just Slammed The Rise Of Skywalker

Don't hurt 'em, Jake.

In a jaw-dropping series of Instagram posts, actor Jake Cannavale — who recently guest-starred on the excellent fifth episode of The Mandalorian, the Disney+ series set in the Star Wars universe — absolutely excoriated Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth and final film in the Skywalker Saga. 

Cannavale (the son of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle actor Bobby Cannavale, and the grandson of the great film director Sidney Lumet) portrayed Toro Calican, a would-be bounty hunter whose duplicitous ways led to his death at the hands of Mando in the episode's final moments. It may very well be because his character was a one-shot that Cannavale felt safe speaking out, because if Calican hadn't already been killed, he probably would have ended up suffering an unfortunate "accident" off-camera in a future episode.

The actor's assessment of the film was — this really can't be stated too strongly — absolutely blistering, not to mention profane and extremely wordy. He opened his missive with this: "I'm in the Star Wars universe now!!! So surely I can't speak ill of Episode IX right???... WRONG." He then proceeded to take a baseball bat to Rise of Skywalker with a statement that even the flick's harshest critics might find shocking.

"Rise of Skywalker was hands down the worst Star Wars movie. An absolute f**king failure," he wrote, presumably with smoke wafting gently from his nostrils. "Went to see it last night and I woke up still mad. Like... it rendered the entire new trilogy completely useless. 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."

Just... holy crap. Those are strong words for anyone, let alone someone who just enjoyed a major role in a high-profile Star Wars-related project, but it soon got even worse. In response to a fan's query as to whether he would have been as mad if he had actually been in Rise of Skywalker, Cannavale didn't hold back — although he stopped just short of calling for the public flogging of the movie's cast.

"Honestly, I think I'd be more mad," he said. "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."

Cannavale then went on to shed a little light on just why Rise of Skywalker seemingly felt like a personal affront to him. "Personally, I've been a huge Star Wars fan since I was a kid," he explained. "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."

When it comes to fielding harsh takes on Rise of Skywalker, Cannavale is far from alone. Critics have generally been underwhelmed with the film, saddling it with a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 56%. One could make the case that critical reception doesn't always mean a whole heck of a lot when it comes to tentpole genre films, but one could also make the case that it's rather unthinkable that only one Star Wars feature — the widely maligned first entry in the prequel trilogy, 1999's Star Wars: The Phantom Menace — has scored lower.

Fans' response has been divided; the flick currently sports an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but only a B+ CinemaScore, a franchise worst. (via The Wrap) In addition, the movie's stateside opening weekend box office take fell well short of the other two films in the sequel trilogy; it garnered $175 million dollars, nothing to sneeze at, but still far below the totals of The Force Awakens ($248 million dollars) and The Last Jedi ($220 million dollars).

All of these things considered, it's probably for the best that Disney will be hitting the pause button on the franchise for just a bit. The next Star Wars movie isn't due to hit screens for three years, during 2022's holiday season; it's unknown at this time whether that film will be the first entry in Last Jedi director Rian Johnson's planned trilogy (which may or may not even be happening), or perhaps the flick that Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige has been tapped to produce.

At any rate, it's safe to say that Rise of Skywalker is not shaping up to be the universally beloved, pop culture-dominating event that the House of Mouse was hoping for. As Cannavale well knows, though, there's a silver lining for the galaxy far, far away: everybody sure loves The Mandalorian, and in terms of dominating pop culture, ol' Mando and his adorable little sidekick Baby Yoda are certainly picking up some of that slack.