![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/ros-15-1024x576.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWe’re thrown halfway into a scene between returning champion Han Solo and his wayward son. All we get are the words “Dad?” and “I know.” Kylo Ren looks down at his laser sword, suddenly rendered a cheap toy with a battery line running down the side of it. He throws it into the sea. Solo is gone. Kylo looks downward. Wipe cut. This is so good that I cannot imagine it’ll be improved by whatever the first half of this scene is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adam Driver is making Kylo Ren work as a character in this film by force of will alone, it seems, and his enthusiasm is contagious – Harrison Ford is not shy of half-assing an appearance in a legacy sequel by any means, but he’s good here. The urge to make Ford into a force ghost has been resisted with a level of aesthetic judgement not exercised anywhere else in the film. The setting is dramatic but understated, there’s water dripping off everything (except the ghost) and Kylo Ren looks distraught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn’t a writer’s film, surely due to the condensed production chaos resulting in a script that veers off in a new direction every five minutes. The big writing moments are perfunctory monologues delivered to paper over late transitions between scenes that no longer connect. Obviously this is a total mess. But it can throw up moments like this, where the inability of the characters to have meaningful lines becomes the inability of the characters to speak. It’s not very Star Wars<\/em> – you couldn’t get this out of Mark Hamill in a month of Sundays, for one. But it’s really good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course though it’s superglued to a bunch of old tat. God knows where the story was meant to go from here originally but all we get are some flash cards: Sheev is on the phone to Richard E. Grant, he says “you come here, btw blow up whichever set we aren’t going back to”, we get the completed VFX work for the destruction of Planet Holiday Special and then we get Poe and the gang hearing about it on the radio. Surprise! Leia’s dead. Double surprise! Lando’s here to deliver her lines instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lando count: 5<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Part 15 of 43 Individual Scenes from \u2018Rise of Skywalker\u2019 I made the randomiser using a list of scene timings extracted from the Blu-ray edition of The Rise of Skywalker, but I don’t know how accurate they are or if I’m matching them to the video file correctly. It’s been a long time since I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"45-skywalker","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,96],"tags":[262,45,19,260,49],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-media-criticism","tag-43ros","tag-media-criticism","tag-movies","tag-rise-of-skywalker","tag-star-wars"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/ros-15.1-1024x576.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/EmojiBlitzLandoCalrissian-Happy.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nNext: A close-up of computer-generated monkey teeth.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"