The story isn’t perfect, the reanimated Leia is weird and the Emperor is a pantomime villain – but who cares when you’re skipping along at lightspeed?
SPOILER ALERT: Film content revealed in this discussion, so proceed with caution
About 40 minutes into Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker there’s a little switcheroo where you think that Chewbacca has died. And I believed it. I mean, it’s the last of the sequel-trilogy, the last of this particular nine-film story arc, and important characters have died already. But Chewie? Could they really kill Chewie?
No, thank the Maker, they (by “they” we mean JJ Abrams, co-screenwriter Chris Terrio and Luscasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy) did not. In fact, it’s only one more scene (maybe two, keep in mind I was seeing white hot when I thought my Wookiee pal had bought it) until you see Chewbacca alive, and growling with such ferocity it blows the hair back on Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux.