Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Review - 6 Ups & 8 Downs

4. The Emotional Beats Fail

This being a trilogy ender and the purported full-stop on the end of a decades-long franchise that made vast amounts of money, gave the world some of its most beloved characters and generally captured hearts and minds in an unprecedented way, there was always going to be the suggestion of huge emotional stakes here.

Unfortunately, the film almost universally fails to sell those moments. Sure, there are huge stakes and there is a smart investment in spectacle, but the pace fatally robs most of those emotional beats of the space to land. So even when we're invited to feel huge loss or great triumph, it just doesn't happen, with what should be real water cooler, devastating moments just sort of happening.

It's almost criminal how some of those moments are dealt with and the lack of due reverence and it's undoubtedly one of the film's biggest issues.