Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 3D

Mostly, it wraps things up quite neatly while rewarding your affection for the series, especially in a final shot that brings us back to where it all started quite beautifully.

...while it has some fun moments, solid performances and striking imagery, it’s simply too procedural and soulless to be anything more than adequate.

It's the first half of the film which suffers the most from the breakneck speed of the overstuffed narrative, the many strands unravelling too quickly to fully connect with some big ticket reveals and moments. The second half is far more cohesive and for many fans the emotional pay-off delivered will be just what they needed.

All up, it's a rousing, if frenetic and occasionally confused, finish to a series that has kept two generations of moviegoers company throughout their childhood and adolescence.

So goodbye Star Wars. You have been rubbish. You have been exactly the glossy, noisy, good-natured and always lovingly assembled pile of rubbish I needed, sometimes, to shield me from the indignities of life. And I'm going to miss you like hell.

The Rise of Skywalker is not perfect, and we may never truly recapture that original Star Wars' magic, but in this reviewer's eyes, balance has been restored to the Force.

The Rise of Skywalker is another of those zillion-dollar franchise films where I felt embarrassed for the actors but pleased for them, too, because the money is no doubt amazing and will presumably free them to do things they care about.

"The Rise of Skywalker" isn't a great "Star Wars" movie, but that may be because there is no such thing. That seems to be the way we like it.

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.

Tries to fit in so much it threatens to tear apart at the seams, but ultimately rises to the impossible occasion.

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.

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.

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.

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.)