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

1. The Writing Generally

While the general story of The Rise Of Skywalker is entertaining and there are some great stand-out moments, most of the script is very bad. Character motivations and decisions are often flat-out stupid, the logic we are invited to accept as an audience are likewise beyond acceptable limits and there are plot-holes, contrivances and coincidences all over the place - sloppy, cheap tricks to hide a lack of real substance and writing integrity.

Some of the dialogue is just dumb, established rules from former movies are ignored, needless things end up retconned in service of making this film different from its predecessor (at the cost of logic) and there's a whole raft of things that just don't make sense.

Yes, you can say that the film understands sci-fi and Star Wars, but when that comes at the cost of simple sense, it's a real problem. And when key characters are written to be idiots for the advancement of the plot or to have important powers with absolutely no ramifications or backstories are teased that require HUGE suspension of disbelief or things are unforgivably swapped around to suit a mind-wipe agenda, it's even more so.

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