Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once again.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 7, 2025
For whatever reason, in the past couple weeks I’ve rewatched several movies that I hated after watching them the first time in theaters. (Jurassic Park 3, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and now Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker). And for each one I found myself enjoying the movie quite a bit more than my first watch.
That is the case here as well. This movie is a decent watch for what it is. The action set pieces are fun and the performances are all pretty good.
I still hate the main plot (which is why this is still only a 2.5 star review, but the journey getting there isn’t so bad.
I still don’t like how the story beats try to manipulate your emotions with fake dramatic twists—apparent twists that occur but are quickly resolved or reversed minutes later. Chewbacca is killed, j/k he was on a different ship; Kylo’s dead, j/k Rey saved him, Rey’s dead, j/k Kylo saved her; Threepio’s memory is wiped, j/k R2 restored it. Over and over the movie attempts to fake emotional stakes. On first watch, I found it really annoying. It’s possible that they didn’t bother me as much this time now that I know to expect them.
Yeah, I still don’t like this movie very much. But, it’s still watchable.