| Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: December 20, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
19
Mixed:
37
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
The TelegraphDec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker feels like a welcome course correction, featuring sequences and references that more cynical minds will dismiss as "fan service," but which derive emotion and power precisely from the bond and investment the audience has forged not just with this permutation on the story, but all of it going back to the original trilogy.
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Dec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
How do you end the most iconic franchise of all time? (Don’t panic, there will be more movies, just not a part of this particular universe.)
You end it by trying to please everyone. Which can make it hard to please anyone. But Abrams is a crowd-pleaser and a good one. He’s made a film that is unquestionably entertaining and wraps things up in a way that will make fans happy.
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RogerEbert.comDec 18, 2019
Whatever one thinks of “The Last Jedi,” if that film was trying to build a new house on familiar land, this one tears it down and goes back to an old blueprint. Some of the action is well-executed, there are strong performances throughout, and one almost has to admire the brazenness of the weaponized nostalgia for the original trilogy, but feelings like joy and wonder are smothered by a movie that so desperately wants to please a fractured fanbase that it doesn’t bother with an identity of its own.
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IndieWireDec 18, 2019
With emerging rebel leader Rey (Daisy Ridley) providing a sturdy emotional foundation, and billions of Disney dollars fueling an obviously stunning array of special effects, Rise of Skywalker doesn’t squander every opportunity to dial up the thrilling nature of the epic at hand, but all that razzle-dazzle can’t obscure a hollow core.
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Dec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
The movie consists of a bunch of random events and, if you pause long enough to consider things like plot and motivation (something you’re not supposed to do), it becomes evident that most of the movie doesn’t make any sense. Add to that an anti-climactic ending, scattershot editing, and too many extraneous characters and the last Star Wars movie is the most bloated and least satisfying of all the main-line adventures.
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Dec 18, 2019
Everybody wants a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean that we should always get the one we want. It’s fine, if also cliche, to be reminded that good will triumph over evil. But it would make for a deeper and more powerful lesson — one that, after nine movies, might leave a lasting dent in the heart — if the hero actually had to give up something, or someone, that didn’t feel like a tiniest bit of a cop-out.
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The PlaylistDec 18, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker; is as much metafiction as Johnson’s film was. Rather than asking questions about what we really want from a series like “Star Wars,” and whether we’re ready to allow our childhood fictions to grow with us, J.J. Abrams and crew decide to lean on the emotional warmth of reunions, friendships, redemptions, and goodbyes. There is some heartfelt value here, or at least, some of it does admittedly produce some anthemic feels, but it doesn’t hold much weight.
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Dec 18, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker nakedly offers itself up in the spirit of a “Last Jedi” corrective, a return to storytelling basics, a nearly 2 ½-hour compendium of everything that made you fall in love with “Star Wars” in the first place. The more accurate way to describe it, I think, is as an epic failure of nerve. This “Rise” feels more like a retreat, a return to a zone of emotional and thematic safety from a filmmaker with a gift for packaging nostalgia as subversion.
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Dec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
There’s so much wasted potential here. As the story draws to its big, loud climax, and one fan-service moment after another arises, you begin to get the sense that Abrams is just checking off boxes and fulfilling a quota. There’s no spark; no joy; no life. If this truly is the end of the Skywalker Saga, what an ignoble end it is.
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The Film StageDec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
Slowly, agonizingly, over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the house collapses in a stream of Star Wars free association. At best, The Rise of Skywalker solidifies Ridley and Driver as movie stars. At worst, it ends this narrative not with a bang but with a recycled image from a better movie. If that isn’t proof that Disney considers this property more product than art, nothing is.
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Dec 18, 2019
This overloaded finale, directed by J.J. Abrams, is for everybody and nobody, a movie that’s sometimes reasonably entertaining but that mostly feels reverse-engineered to ensure that the feathers of the Star Wars purists remain unruffled. In its anxiety not to offend, it comes off more like fanfiction than the creation of actual professional filmmakers. A bot would be able to pull off a more surprising movie.
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Dec 18, 2019
It’s a turgid rush toward a conclusion I don’t think anyone wanted, not the people upset about whatever they’re upset about with The Last Jedi (I feel like it has something to do with Luke being depressed, and with women having any real agency in this story) nor any of the more chill franchise devotees who just want to see something engaging.
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Movie NationDec 20, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker falls somewhere between an overstuffed fan-service finale and a yawnfest. If The Force Awakens kicked off a new cycle in the franchise and The Last Jedi set it up to push beyond its familiar patterns, The Rise of Skywalker for the most part runs screaming in the other direction.
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Dec 21, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker offers us nothing but toadying supplication to the worst aspects of fan culture. There is no story to tell here, no characters to care about, no ideas to explore. The film is pure construct, a box built for its own sake, at long last opened with excruciating listlessness, revealing nothing but its own vapid emptiness.
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