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Critic Reviews
"The movie snaps together like a jigsaw puzzle, a series of concluding beats that seem inevitable and perfect, and designed to please all parties, so long as you don’t dwell on the logic too much."
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"The Rise of Skywalker rates right up there with the 1977 original, “A New Hope,” and 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.”"
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"As usual, Ridley is immensely appealing as a born warrior with an indestructible sense of right and wrong. Her expressive face lends the fantastical goings-on an emotional resonance."
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"However preposterous, The Rise of Skywalker is socked over with such energy, such euphoric certainty. And it’s such fun: full of the rackety exuberance of the now forgotten Saturday morning movie serials that were an influence on George Lucas."
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"The Rise of Skywalker is, to me, the most elegant, emotionally rounded, and gratifying “Star Wars” adventure since the glory days of “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” (I mean that, but given the last eight films, the bar isn’t that high"
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"The Rise of Skywalker completes a saga no one sane screenwriter would have dreamt up from scratch, but does so with such pluck and showmanship that the result feels strangely precious: a busked epic whose every individual move comes straight from the heart."
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"Tries to fit in so much it threatens to tear apart at the seams, but ultimately rises to the impossible occasion."
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"To quote Bill Murray’s song again, “Star Wars/ those near and far wars” checks the boxes of a lot of the audience’s base, while seeming unburdened by real gravity."
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"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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"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does the job. It wraps up the trio of trilogies begun in 1977 in a confident, soothingly predictable way, doing all that cinematically possible to avoid poking the bear otherwise known as tradition-minded quadrants of the “Star Wars” fan base. "
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"The Rise of Skywalker rarely comes close to touching greatness, but it’s a solid, visually dazzling and warmhearted victory for the Force of quality filmmaking."
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"Although director J.J. Abrams tries his darndest to finish the job, conjuring up nostalgia like a TV medium, “Rise” doesn’t feel like the last chapter of the biggest American movie franchise. It’s just another well-made “Star Wars” flick."
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"The result is often chaos, but it’s also a euphoric blast of pulse-quickening adventure, laced with humor and heart."
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"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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"For as much love, passion, and nostalgia is evident in this movie, it’s also a film very palpably made from a place driven by fear of disappointing the audience, and that anxiety fuels a lot of the story’s curious creative choices and unwieldy execution."
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"The film shouldn’t be snidely dismissed, despite its faults. With Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars limps to a close, but there’s still good in it."
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"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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"It's impressively ambitious, though great new personalities and fresh storytelling suffer for the sake of fan service."
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"The result is a handsome if creaky and oddly inconsequential final film that lurches around the galaxy at light speed without actually getting anywhere, as it steers a course between the inventive and the inevitable."
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"It’s impossible to imagine that “The Rise of Skywalker” won’t do huge business, even though it’s merely good, not great, and though there’s a growing sense around the galaxy that Star Wars fatigue has set in. "
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"The main feeling it instils in the viewer is a renewed respect for the imagination of Lucas. The Rise of Skywalker has been lovingly crafted by a host of talented people, and yet the best they can do is pay tribute to everything he did several decades ago."
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"It looks gorgeous and offers strong performances from Driver and Ridley in particular, but ultimately the saga ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but something inbetween."
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"It feels like a massive retrenchment—privately, a rebellion seems to have been fought and lost—and only the most loyal fans will be happy about it."
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"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gets bogged down in exposition and course-correcting The Last Jedi, but does have some fun moments and fan service."
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"If you’re going to do a send-off this huge, there are a lot of goodbyes to say, and a lot of loose ends to tie up. The fact that The Rise of Skywalker manages most of them and within a vaguely coherent story is something of an achievement in itself."
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"This is a space opera animated not by joy but insecurity—the anxiety, evident in almost every moment, that if it’s not very careful, someone might feel letdown."
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"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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"It’s just determined to deliver as many answers and as much plot momentum as possible, even when slowing down or holding back would give its revelations far more weight."
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"Abrams certainly knows how to manipulate, but when he does it, you can see the strings. How much or little you enjoy The Rise of Skywalker will rely almost entirely on whether or not you mind that every laugh and tear and jolt feels like it’s coming right off a spreadsheet."
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"The film feels clumsy, hurried, and above all, like an admission of creative defeat."
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"So much of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is pulled from what has come before, and so much of it carries the wear and tear of repetition."
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"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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"Arriving with a blockbuster sound and fury that has been dialed up to 11, the movie is a dismayingly safe act of franchise closure. In terms of pure narrative, it’s satisfying. What it very rarely is is inspired."
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"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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"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does the most important thing, the one thing it absolutely had to do. It ends well."
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"Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker suffers the misfortune of having a director who cares more about digging up a franchise's past than moving forward with an original story."
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"For a movie predicated on satisfying fans, The Rise of Skywalker is a distinctly unsatisfying conclusion to what had been an imperfect but mostly good few films."
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"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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"The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting epitaph for the thrills and limits of repetition; may it be the last episode of a saga that should’ve ended long ago."
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"The Rise of Skywalker — Episode IX, in case you’ve lost count — is one of the best. Also one of the worst. Perfectly middling. It all amounts to the same thing."
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"It’s frenzied, briefly infuriating, and eventually, grudgingly, satisfying, but it’s like being force-fed fandom: Your belly is filled, but there’s no pleasure in the meal. "
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"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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"The massive jumble of standoffs, near-misses, tense confrontations, narrow escapes and slick victories, while momentarily exciting, can lack plausible motivation and credibility. More often than not, one wonders not so much what just happened but why, and what was at stake."
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"There were times it felt like The Rise of Skywalker was put together by reading angry reddit boards, just throwing in anything a fan might possibly want to see. It really is baffling."
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"The burden of wrapping up a 40-year franchise weighs heavily on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, an overstuffed chase film that barely lets up from its connect-the-dots MacGuffin-heavy plot for even a second or two."
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"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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"We need a new franchise designation for this stumbling, bloodless conglomeration of What Once Was. Rise of the Skywalker isn’t an ending, a sequel, a reboot, or a remix. It’s a zombie."
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"By lacking a sense of vision in embracing what came before and ignoring the recently laid path for where this story could go, The Rise of Skywalker is not only a disappointing end to this saga–it’s also an ill-fated harbinger for Disney’s future in storytelling."
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"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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"The script never knows whether it wants to be reverential or referential, and ends up being a hodgepodge of cameos and flashbacks. "
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"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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"Under J.J. Abrams, The Rise of Skywalker hits its marks and bashes ahead, so speedy that no emotion sinks in too deeply."
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"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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"Unlike The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, which were energised by the prospect of returning to Lucas’ galaxy, Rise feels obligatory and uninspired. Rey may learn who she really is, but this unengaging franchise finale remains disappointingly nondescript."
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"The film is merely a component part of a larger machine (the trilogy) that plugs into an even larger mechanism (the Star Wars universe). It has no more use or appeal when examined in isolation than would a sparkplug or a distributor cap."
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"Three films in, and Ridley has mastered the fierce scowl and “stick the landing” poses of a superhero movie. She has not, in any sense, created a character who moves us with her expressions of fear or grief. Every time somebody she cares about dies, it’s dry tears all around."
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"The film, hyper-aware of the shadow cast by the franchise’s history, struggles to both honor and redeem the past before everything comes to a close."
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"The hermetic logic of the plot is as impeccable as it is ridiculous. It’s a drama crafted with robotic insularity for the consumption of viewers being rendered robotic at each moment of the soullessly uniform spectacle."
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"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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"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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