A Great Franchise is Built on Hope

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2020)

Through and through this is more grim and dirty war story than the whimsical sci-fi adventure we were expecting, and that darker tone serves the film's thematic onslaught against everything we've come to expect from a Star Wars movie. Every character grows and changes over the course of the story, saturated in such gritty realism and told from a perspective we've never seen before, making this one of the most deeply personal experiences in the Star Wars saga; so lovingly crafted on a cinematographic level and boasting some of the greatest land and space battle sequences since the Battles of Hoth and Coruscant before it.