The Rise of Skywalker is, for want of a better word, completely manic: It leaps from plot point to plot point, from location to location, with little regard for logic or mood.

Read: The nostalgia debate around ‘The Force Awakens’

Abrams has always excelled at origin stories, so while he was an ideal choice to launch the narratives of the new heroes Rey (played by Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac), and the antagonist Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), he does a much sloppier job of finishing their arcs. His first Star Wars film, 2015’s The Force Awakens, was a splendid piece of mythmaking, a rewriting of the original film that washed away the sour taste left by Lucas’s bizarre (if memorable) prequel trilogy. The gang’s all here-every new and old favorite character one could imagine-for an experience so convoluted and overstuffed that I wondered whether the whole cast would board a flying kitchen sink for the final battle.Ībrams has long been a connoisseur of nostalgia, a director who blends viewers’ childhood pop-culture obsessions with just enough contemporary flavor to appeal to multigenerational audiences. Abrams’s new film, the ninth and supposedly conclusive entry in the newly dubbed “Skywalker Saga” that George Lucas began with the first Star Wars in 1977. That kind of naked nostalgia is on display for every frantic minute of J.

“I’m just taking one last look at my friends,” he says. In one of the very few moments in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker where the action slows down for a second, the beloved droid C-3PO pauses to appreciate the heroic ensemble.

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