Ending a Star Wars trilogy can be as tricky as destroying a Death Star, requiring a rare mix of battlefield experience and blind faith in The Force. Back in 1983, the first Star Wars trilogy ended less with a bang than a whimsy, as Return of the Jedi failed to live up to its series-best predecessor The Empire Strikes Back (it was memorably dismissed as only having “a bunch of muppets” in Kevin Smith’s Clerks). Play Video 2:23 Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker final trailer – videoBoth Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver rise to the challenge of their roles, with the former increasingly commanding the screen while the latter exhibits vulnerabilities beneath the cracked face mask. Between them, they carry the burden of the film’s emotional core as Abrams invokes the fractured-family revelations of yore that have always been a Star Wars staple. For such an essentially simple story, there’s a superfluity of plotty exposition, bogged down by an underlying risk-aversion that promptly undoes any genuinely daring developments.

Source: The Guardian December 22, 2019 07:52 UTC