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

1. The Main Performances

It's difficult at this point to say that absolutely every performance in The Rise Of Skywalker is completely brilliant and flawless, because they simply aren't, but focusing on the key performances - and the ones we are SUPPOSED to care about most, clearly - there's a lot to praise.

Adam Driver is obviously great, because he's usually great. But not to be wholly reductive, he's managed to craft a truly intriguing villain with complexities and depth that Star Wars fans always love. This film gives him even more of an opportunity to explore that - in fact, probably more explicitly than The Last Jedi did. He's eminently watchable and it's almost a shame we didn't get a Ren film on its own.

Daisy Ridley does her best work of the trilogy here too. She's got a lot to play with and has an added level of complexity too thanks to the way the story unfolds that really makes her performance more interesting and more impressive. She sells everything that she's given to do to the level that she's ALLOWED to by the pacing.

Behind them, Oscar Isaac and John Boyega offer strong support, even when they're given a lot of shtick to balance the darkness and it's great to spend more time in their company thanks to the charm they've built into the performances. Anthony Daniels is his usual delightful self and Ian McDiarmid is glorious, as ever too. So all good on those fronts.

And now to the bad bits...