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

7. The Superfluous Characters

Considering the fact that there is very much an agenda to speed through A LOT of plot (more of which soon) it's odd that Abrams and his writing team chose to bring in so many new characters. The result is that some of them are no more than glorified cameos who exist seemingly to point at an expanded universe where their relevance might actually be worth something.

Dominic Monaghan's role was presented as a closely guarded secret, but it turns out we didn't know who he was because there's just nothing to know and there are others - including very famous returning figures and people who deserved way more story - who are simply overlooked. They're trooped in to add detail to scenes or to hint at the pasts of other more important characters and then they drop out again, before popping back up. That's not how you establish empathy with new characters.

There could have been way more restraint in who was introduced, fundamentally and what jobs they were given to do in the script and it's hard not to think that entire characters could just have been left out entirely.