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

Downs

8. It's Full Of Eye-Roll Moments & Contrivances

Star Wars has had its fair share of eye-rolling moments, but it mostly got around them by being great as a whole. But then again, it's the little moments - the Han shot first moments - that really stick in the memory and there are way too many of them in this film.

In the interest of fan-service, proper development is thrown out at times to add in fan-baiting moments that hit the brand brief but which skip over that wonderful, usually important thing called logic. Characters make ridiculous decisions - like a trained warrior with supernatural powers just repeatedly and wilfully defying all sense to put herself and her crew in direct danger - in order to advance the plot and there are some really silly contrivances added in the interest of doing the same thing.

Powers are forgotten, new ones are grown overnight, geographical positions seem not to matter, previous established logic is sabotaged and things literally only happen because of insane coincidences. And on top of that, some of the fan-service is so on-the-nose that it will leave yours bloodied.