Category: Movies

The ninth Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, premieres. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran, and Benicio Del Toro make their first appearances as new characters. An unusual amount of controversy emerges around the movie’s defiance of fan expectations involving the storyline and use of characters from the original Star Wars films, which will also follow the next two films in the franchise. This is the last Star Wars film to feature new scenes with the late Carrie Fisher as Leia.

The eleventh Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, premieres, starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, Ian McDiarmid, and Harrison Ford (Carrie Fisher appears pothumously in scenes originally filmed for, but cut from, The Force Awakens in 2015). Perhaps inevitably, given the late 2010s’ tendency to politicize popular culture and its followers, and with the weight of fan expectations of a satisfying conclusion to the saga on it, the film proves somewhat controversial. Shortly after its release, work on future Star Wars feature films at Disney-owned Lucasfilm comes to a halt, and the franchise becomes a mainstay of Disney’s streaming video service.