AGED nine, I became a willing disciple of George Lucas’s epic, sprawling and occasionally frustrating sci-fi saga.

I sat between my parents in our local Odeon, a Kia-Ora fruit drink in one hand and a mint Matchmaker melting in the other in lieu of a lightsaber, nervously awaiting Sunday service at the church of the moving image. The afternoon’s sermon: Return Of The Jedi.

Thanks to VHS, I’d obsessively studied Lucas’s old testament - A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back - and still felt ripples of shell shock from the disclosure of Luke Skywalker’s parentage.

Lights dimmed and a familiar opening scrawl transported me to a galaxy far, far away ... accompanied by a sonic blast of John Williams’s thrilling score. For two hours, reality vanished and the pure, primal pleasure of crowd-pleasing cinema coursed through my veins.

The same electrical thrum of euphoric shared experience crackles during key scenes of the ninth and concluding chapter, The Rise Of Skywalker, which promises a fitting resolution to 42 years of fantastic beasties and breathless dog fights on the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

Director JJ Abrams preached to the converted in 2015 with The Force Awakens, and here he provides generations of expectant Padawans and Sith apprentices with the nostalgia-saturated swansong they crave.

The opening 20 minutes are clunky, plot gears grinding furiously with a dewy-eyed denouement in mind. However, when planets align, Abrams delivers rousing action sequences, including one of the series’ most visually stunning lightsaber duels, and he engineers a fitting farewell to the late Carrie Fisher using unreleased footage.

Following the death of mentor Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Rey (Daisy Ridley) is on a parallel journey of self-discovery to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who has assumed the position of Supreme Leader of the First Order after the demise of Snoke.

Finn (John Boyega), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) accompany Rey on her daredevil mission, while General Leia Organa (Fisher) presides over the entrenched Resistance.

Meanwhile, a shift in the Force propagates rumours about the return of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). When Rey’s faith wavers, Leia repairs frayed nerves.

This film shoehorns every conceivable reason for audiences to whoop, cheer and surrender to steady tears.

Loose plot threads are tied neatly and heartstrings plucked as friendships and simmering romances threaten to become collateral damage of a bloodthirsty war against the First Order.

Some plotting is convoluted and a long-awaited battle royale follows the Avengers: Endgame template for an adrenaline-pumping crescendo but Abrams presides over a happy union of old and new with reverence and affection.

It’s a final hurrah made by a fan for the fans.

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