'Skywalker' closes a long 'Star Wars' series

JJ Abrams' finale is sure to inspire pros, cons and middling reactions, but it gets the job done.

JJ Abrams moves quickly through his 2 1/2 hour wrap-up of the Skywalker series, making sure the pack the movies with ingredients designed to please the fan base while arriving at an entirely expected destination. That's not a spoiler. What? You expected evil to triumph?

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker -- the ninth movie in the series -- brims with the battles, familiar characters and the sentiment that we've come to expect from the Star Wars movies. Maybe that’s enough.

I looked at the one-line description of the movie on IMDb: It reads, "The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga." Do you need to know much more?

Some fans felt Rian Johnson veered too far from the revered Star Wars formula in the previous chapter, The Last Jedi. I enjoyed that movie's approach but also believe that Abrams had no choice but to reassert the franchise's familiar themes in bringing the Skywalker saga to its conclusion.

Almost from the movie’s start, Daisy Ridley's Rey leads the charge against the aforementioned First Order, an evil group that's trying to establish a new empire of Siths. As the story unfolds, various characters will find their true selves, Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) again will rear his hideous head and a bit of nostalgic casting will make us remember when Star Wars had yet to reach industrial-strength levels.

Billy D. Williams revives Lando Calrissian; the late Carrie Fisher appears briefly as Princess Leia. (Abrams used footage shot but not used in the last episode). Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) gets a bit more screen time, as do C-3PO and R2-D2. Mark Hamill turns up.

Working from a screenplay he wrote with Chris Terrio, Abrams mixes droids, creatures and many of the characters who have taken over the series: John Boyega's Finn, Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, and Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron.

En route to its conclusion, the story makes more stops than a local subway train. The crew of Poe's ship breathlessly hurries from one place to the next, servicing the plot as they push forward.

The finale, of course, delivers the expected mix of action and emotion. For me, the emotion is more understood than felt, but fans may buy into it. In some ways, the plot of a Star Wars movie hardly matters because all of them pit the forces of hearty rebels against imperial evil, just as all build toward genealogical revelations about who's related to whom.

Of the creatures, the most amusing arrives when Maz (Lupita Nyong'o) reappears to perform a technical operation that's needed to keep the story moving.

Did I mention that Naomi Ackie plays a new character; Her Jannah rides a kind of hybrid creature that most resembles a horse that has been outfitted for Mardi Gras.

Pile on the effects, rely on Isaacs to add a bit of swashbuckling swagger, challenge Daisy's identity and throw in a surprise or two about the other characters.

The Star Wars series has given Disney the proverbial license to print money. Parts of the fan base always find something to grumble about. Others will feel that they've been amply rewarded. I can't imagine anyone would want to walk into The Rise of Skywalker if they haven't seen the previous eight movies.

Why rattle on? I'm not enough of a fanboy to get staunch about Skywalker. It's enough to say that Abrams has finished the Skywalker series in ways that mostly satisfy, providing some epic sights as he goes.

Case closed. Box office open.

Yes, the Force really awakens

J.J. Abrams gives George Lucas' franchise new life.

A mixture of new and old faces help director J.J. Abrams relaunch the Star Wars series, now part of the Disney empire. Those who feared that Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn't honor George Lucas' long-running achievement needn't fret: Abrams has created a transitional movie that contains a mostly winning mix of Star Wars nostalgia and new additions.

Truth be told, the series may be better off now that Lucas has handed the reins to someone else. Abrams, who also helped revive the Star Trek franchise, easily surpasses the last three films: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Abrams took no chances when it comes to filling the movie with actors who serve as reassurance that Disney plans to respect the Lucas legacy.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is not that Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, but that he's actually in a substantial amount of the movie -- along with his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Ford's appearance -- as well as that of Carie Fisher, C-3P0 and R2-D2 -- helps launch the cast that presumably will carry the series forward, namely Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a feisty young woman who rises from the role of space scavenger to helping to save the galaxy from the First Order.

In case you haven't been reading the advance stories, The First Order is the evil organization that has taken over where the Empire left off.

Ridley's Rey, who lives on the planet Jakku, is joined in her efforts by Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who defects from the First Order.

Finn has no interest in being an enforcer for the Dark Side, represented here by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

Driver's Ren gets the most screen time: He wears a mask and speaks in a Darth Vaderesque voice, although he's not quite as imposing as his predecessor.

Oscar Isaac turns up as another newbie; he plays Poe Dameron, a gung-ho pilot for the Resistance.

Without making too much of a fuss about it, Abrams introduces a variety of new creatures and a new droid, a rolly-polly creation known as BB-8 that struck me as something of a lovable high-tech beach ball.

The movie's meager plot involves a search for Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Luke must be found because he's the last remaining Jedi, the only person capable of ensuring that the Force is passed to a new generation.

Did I care about the plot? Not really. And although the movie's screenwriting team (Lawrence Kasdan, Abrams and Michael Arndt) adds plenty of winking humor, it may be less about generating laughs than serving as a welcome reminder that the original movies weren't ordeals: They were fun.

There's even a scene that pays homage to Lucas' penchant for taking us to bars where aliens hang-out with Lupita Nyong'o giving voice to Maz Kanata, a space pirate whose eyes are covered with goggles and who dispenses a bit of wisdom -- or what passes for it in a Star Wars movie.

Of course, composer John Williams returns to score his seventh Star Wars film.

Despite the presence of the kind of father/son elements that informed the better Star Wars movies, we probably should consider it a positive development that a young woman has a major role here and likely will continue to have one as the series progresses.

Who knows? Given enough time, Rey may even give Katniss Everdeen a run for her money.

'Star Trek' sets its phasers on heavy fun

There's plenty of entertainment in this edition of Star Trek -- right up until a finale that features more destruction than the movie needs.

Watching the abundantly entertaining Star Trek Into Darkness, it sometimes seems as if we're seeing a spot-on replication of the original series -- only one that's been invaded by a new set of actors. Credit a cast led by Chris Pine (as Captain Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (as Spock) with working hard to keep their much-loved characters on track.

Made familiar by director J.J. Abrams as younger versions of the characters we knew from the venerated TV series, it's Kirk and Spock who keep the The Enterprise aloft -- with help, of course, from their ever reliable crew mates.

I'm not sure how fanboys will react to this mega-helping of Star Trek -- shown to many critics at 9 p.m. on the Wednesday night the movie was set to debut at a variety of midnight shows -- but it seemed to me that for most the picture, Abrams did a reasonably good job of balancing the fabled Star Trek ethos with lots of boldly conceived action.

Although everything in Into Darkness takes place in the time before the TV series began, the movie keeps the door open for as many prequels as Abrams is willing to make.

Is Into Darkness as good as 2009's Star Trek? Probably not, but Abrams & company can't be accused of hitting the sophomore skids, either. Messy plotting seldom detracts from the proceedings, although it's worth pointing out that the movie owes a major debt to the well-reviewed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, released in 1982.

As is the case with the better Star Trek episodes, this edition places an ethical issue at the story's core: Should Starfleet stick to its mission of exploring space while allowing alien civilizations to develop without interference or should it militarize and prepare for endless battles with threatening civilizations, say the ferocious Klingons?

I'm not saying Star Trek Into Darkness astonishes you with its philosophical depth and thoughtful nuance, but at least it's trying to be about something more than warp speed and explosions.

The screenplay also reprises a reliable Star Trek tension, the perpetual tug of war between emotion and logic, played out in the evolving relationship between an overly impetuous Kirk and an amusingly impassive Spock. Both characters still are feeling their way toward maturity.

Abrams' second Star Trek movie derives significant benefit from its villain, a super strongman played by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who projects (boy, does he ever) enough piercing menace to keep him from being overwhelmed by the movie's special effects. How impressive is he? Sometimes, the guy seems even smarter than Spock.

The rest of the Enterprise crew is on board and in decent form: Zoë Saldana as Uhura, John Cho as Mr. Sulu; Simon Pegg as Mr. Scott, and Anton Yelchin as Chekov. It's of some interest that Uhura and Spock are still lovers, although it takes a while for them to kiss and make-up after a spat. Karl Urban makes a fine Dr. McCoy or more familiarly "Bones," the character responsible for providing home-spun comic relief.

Most audiences probably will forgive Abrams for kicking Star Trek into the kind of action-oriented overdrive that defines summer at the movies -- especially during its finale. Me? I won't describe it here, but I could have done without a destructively indulgent climax that takes a terrorist-like wrecking ball to yet another vulnerable cityscape.

You'd think after 9/11, this kind of devastation would long have fallen into disrepute. Sadly, it hasn't.

Thankfully, though, Abrams' movie has more to offer than late-picture carnage and crumbling concrete. If you're looking for summer enjoyment, Into the Darkness provides it in ample measure through most of its 132-minute running time, and -- just as important -- it leaves you ready to sign on for the Enterprise's next voyage.