Whole Third Trilogy is Recycled Dud

Rating: 5/10 (6 January 2020)

As soon as it was revealed that Rey is the granddaughter of Palpatine, and that Palpatine somehow still lives(!!???), I was officially done with this trilogy.
Come on, how much can one story possible recycle from another? J.J. Abrams couldn't come up with anything as good as George Lucas's original story and characters, so he just borrows and mixes enough to try to fool us into thinking we're getting sequels rather than reboots, but he fails. Rian Johnson tried to take the story in some new and potentially interesting directions (though "The Last Jedi" had plenty of flaws in its own right), but all of them are thrown out the window in "Rise of Skywalker." It's like the second installment never even happened. The only moments that roused me from my theater seat were those that referenced the original trilogy.
Worst of all, "The Rise of Skywalker" undermines even the modest joys to be had from "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi," because now we see the story in its entirety and are aware of how flimsy it all is. It's painfully obvious that this trilogy's story was made up as it went along and not conceived as a cohesive whole. That's what made the first trilogy so good, and even the second trilogy, dorky as it is, has a fantastic and well mapped story to tell. This is just Disney throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks and hoping that "Star Wars" fans are so loyal to the franchise that they'll throw their money at any garbage as long as the "Star Wars" logo is attached to it.
Grade: C