David Bernstein

I've seen all 9 movies as it's come out and was very satisfied with how Rise of Skywalker closed out the themes of this latest trilogy and tied in many visual references from New Hope and Return of the Jedi. It mostly avoided problems of previous stories -- long bouts of individual soul-searching, tedious interaction between characters with latent romantic feelings, drawn-out we-should-attack vs we-must-run arguments. This installment may've had the highest percentage of screen action the entire series. It's well over 2 hours and I was never bored. I regularly watch movies in IMAX but I was amazed at the technical clarity of seeing each strand of Chewbaca's fur. Yes, humanizing the droids even more was overkill (R2D2, you're my best friend -- ugh) and Donald Glover would've been much better than Billy Dee Williams. But John Boyega played his role straight without the melodrama. And Adam Driver was solid. Best of all there was only 1 climatic ending and a nice epilogue afterward.