Starring: Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Disney, out now

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The last remnants of the Resistance continue the fight against the First Order under Kylo Ren as Rey seeks to complete her Jedi training. But the emergence of a familiar evil threatens to tip the balance in the galactic conflict, leading to a race against time to stop it before it can ascend and dominate all.

The Rise of Skywalker has a problem. Actually, it has quite a few, but most can be traced back to one core factor – director Abrams has an issue with confusing reference to the previous entries in the saga with depth. There’s plenty of the former, and precious little of the latter here.

I’ll admit I went in with low expectations. I liked The Last Jedi, even though I acknowledge it’s an imperfect film, because it tried something different. It had big ideas and it shot for the stars, though it admittedly missed more than once. From the earliest teaser trailers for this new entry, it was quite clear that Rise of Skywalker had no interest in continuing the unconventional path started by its predecessor. Put simply, if The Last Jedi asked the question ‘What could a Star Wars movie be?’, The Rise of Skywalker’s answer seems to be ‘It should be like every other Star Wars film.’ This one has ‘Course Correction’ stamped through it like a stick of rock, and whereas it doesn’t discard all of the things set up by the previous film, it consciously avoids being in any way as challenging, bold or inventive.

None of this is to say that The Rise of Skywalker is bad. In actual fact, as a nice bit of popcorn fluff it does the job well, introducing some fun new characters, pumping the nostalgia ducts for all they’re worth and possessed of some nice visuals. But it’s an ephemeral rush – one that quickly fades as you leave the cinema and start to think in any way on what you’ve just watched. The plot falls apart under even the most cursory scrutiny, and if you’re anything like me you’ll struggle to think of any one scene that really stands out in your mind as something special. The Falcon flying through a derelict star destroyer in The Force Awakens? The skimmers carving crimson paths through the salt flats towards the First Order in The Last Jedi? Nothing here competes on any level. It’s all very nicely rendered in the most workmanlike way, but there’s no single visual that really leaps from the screen to sock you in the eye.

The plot is much the same – it wants you to be really shocked at certain parts, throwing revelations at the viewer as if they are the secret to life itself, but none of them really land, mainly because they’re mired in too much nostalgia as Abrams points you forcibly at another visual cue from the original trilogy, almost yelling through the camera ‘SEE? REMEMBER THIS PLACE/THING? FEEL THE WAY YOU DID ABOUT THAT FOR THIS!’.

It also doesn’t help that the majority of the thing is consequence-free for most of its cast. There are at least two major characters who seem to be about to suffer permanent (and in one case terminal) consequences for the sake of the plot, but then they just… don’t. It robs the thing of any sense of stakes, which then badly undermines the third act, in which endless waves of faceless characters are dying on both sides but it feels difficult to care because by this point the film has taught you that nobody you are supposed to be invested in will come to any lasting harm so it’s all ok.

It’s never offensively bad (or at least wasn’t to me). There are certain issues in terms of previously-introduced characters feeling wasted while brand new characters get introduced but end up with very little time to be developed. The movie doesn’t seem to know what to do in terms of resolving many of the tensions between various members of the cast so it just doesn’t bother. There’s one particularly annoying example of this where a character almost says something to another at a moment of peril, is cut short, and then this gets brought up a couple more times over the course of the movie but is never actually resolved and finally gets forgotten entirely in the third act.

It has other issues as well. It does a great many things with the Force that have never been previously hinted at, and whereas I get that the Force is basically Star Wars’ version of magic, there to get the narrative out of tricky corners, it does start to feel like this gets stretched a little too far in the name of narrative convenience.

On the plus side, it has plenty of those nice nostalgia moments that will make you smile, even if you can’t quite recall why afterward. The use of Carrie Fisher isn’t too awkward, given that they were working from already shot unused footage from the previous movies, but it definitely is noticeable that they’ve tried to stretch scenes around them rather than them having been written naturally.

It’s also pacey, zipping through its 142 minutes with no real drag or slack anywhere. It’s fun and entertaining enough while it’s happening at you, but like a fairground ride the moment it’s over and the visceral thrill of it is gone, all you’re left with is a hollow memory that fades quickly.

Verdict: Brings balance to the franchise by being neither Clone Wars movie bad nor The Empire Strikes Back good. A trivial, mindless popcorn flick of an entry in the saga which will start to fade from your mind even as the credits roll. 6/10

Greg D.Smith

There’s an awful lot to spoil about this final entry in the nine-film Skywalker Saga, which would be a real shame if it meant you weren’t to experience it fresh and first-hand. As such, this review will deliberately avoid referencing key plot points and character appearances beyond what you’ll gather from posters and trailers. The good news is that it’s not the mess some critics would have you believe that it is. And it’s by no means perfect either.

As Supreme Leader of the First Order Kylo Ren scours the galaxy for a blast from the past, General Leia Organa sends her rebel soldiers on a final mission.

Best enjoyed as a fun ride across multiple planets and locales, there will inevitably be moments afterwards when you say ‘But hang on, why didn’t they do that instead?’ It exists best in the moment as a rush of cinematic entertainment, and J.J. Abrams certainly knows how to mount a production of this scale. Does it feel like he went in with a shopping list of Star Wars tropes and then reverse engineered the story to fit them in? At times, yes. Clearly Lucasfilm was still smarting from the criticism levelled at Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi and have opted for something a lot less stretching or potentially controversial.

It’s not such an obvious remake of a previous movie that The Force Awakens was, though there’s enough fan service to fire up the nostalgia glow circuits. Some of the new characters get very little to do in what’s already a full cast, often serving no more than as a catalyst for a clunky plot point. What does work well is the posthumous inclusion of Carrie Fisher’s Leia, her scenes longer and more central than at first believed.

On the plus side, John Williams’ score is as good as you’d hope, bringing in motifs and themes from across the saga, and beefing up some of his more recent character compositions as individuals complete character arcs. The visual effects are of course excellent, and I’m always a sucker for a new variant on a Star Destroyer or TIE Fighter.

The niggles cannot be ignored, but in the right circumstances might just be lost in the noise and spectacle unfolding before you. Abrams feels like he’s making his mark again on the saga, at times rewriting what happened in The Last Jedi, as is his prerogative, but that does make for a schizophrenic ‘we made it up as we went along’ feeling.

Verdict: The Abrams course correction concludes the core Star Wars series with a solid if predictable conclusion. There’s plenty of treats and surprises along the way and you’d do best to watch it before they leak. Sitting mid-table in the Star Wars league, it’s still a glorious diversion and miles away from the prequel trilogy. Last Order at the bar please. 7/10

Nick Joy