Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Review

The opening crawl announces that the Emperor is back and the film never explains it beyond a muttered line about unnatural abilities, which tells you exactly what kind of storytelling is coming. What follows is a scavenger hunt: find the dagger to find the wayfinder to find the planet, cut at a pace that never lets a scene breathe or a decision cost anything. Abrams is a gifted craftsman and the picture does move. Dan Mindel shoots the Kef Bir duel on real crashing water, and Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are compelling enough that their scenes together keep flickering into life.

But every consequential idea from the previous film is reversed by fiat, Rey is handed a bloodline because the marketing wanted one, and deaths are undone within minutes so that nothing is permitted to land. Carrie Fisher's unused footage is stitched in with visible strain and the film is not honest about the seams. The final fleet arrival should be overwhelming and instead reads as a checklist item. It closes forty two years of storytelling by asking the audience to be reassured rather than moved.