Pop Culture Thoughts

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2018)

The latest of Disney's new "Star Wars" fleet is an exciting, entertaining and old-fashioned blockbuster. It manages to approximate the tone of the original George Lucas trilogy while adding its own fingerprints to the universe, resulting in a mixture of modernized entertainment and nostalgia. It's great to see the returning cast, in particular the late Carrie Fisher, whose final appearance as General Leia is both steely and warm, while Adam Driver continues an intense arc as Kylo Ren. I'd venture to suggest that the two-and-a-half -hour running time is a tad overlong, but the finished product is a crowd-pleasing winner.