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

4. It Looks & Sounds Incredibly Beautiful

Much like the art design, the technicals here are phenomenal. The effects work is mostly very, very good, the cinematography is gorgeous and everything looks as awe-inspiring and beautiful as you'd want from a Star Wars film (even with a whole new level of threat and dread attached to the story).

The Rise Of Skywalker is an astonishing thing to look at and thankfully, Abrams steered away from too much visual silliness (barring a couple of instances, there's not a lot of lens flare, for instance) and the approach to shot choice has been informed by letting the design speak for itself rather than stamping too many unnecessary stylistic flourishes all over it.

The sound too is brilliant, both in terms of the sound design (you can practically tick boxes of all of the favourite Star Wars sound effects), but also, even more notably, the score. By this point, John Williams is a god and what he's done here is beautifully evocative with some new details that only add to what is already beloved music.