Utterly Flat

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2020)

I already know that this opinion is controversial, but I did not like "The Rise of Skywalker". Sure, it wasn't a great movie as it is, but the real insult is in the context of the grander scheme of the Star Wars universe. And I'm aware plenty of people liked it, and that's fine. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
For me, "The Rise of Skywalker" as a movie is pretty bland. Not taken in the context of Star Wars, it's just fine. There's some cool visuals. There's stakes that feel real and there's exciting and cathartic action. There's character development and there's good acting. But overall it feels incredibly crammed together and rushed. For the first half of the movie, the action progresses so quickly that it legitimately felt like I was watching the movie with a Chrome video speed editor on 1.2X speed. There are far too many characters who are given too little to do. And the plot is so stuffed with MacGuffins and conveniences that it truly feels like the plot happens for no reason at all. All the nonsense in the first act with the Sith Wayfinder and the dagger (which conveniently lines up perfectly with the destroyed Death Star?) feels entirely unlike Star Wars and more like Indiana Jones in Space--except it's not "Raiders of the Lost Ark", it's "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". Yuck.
The most painful thing about the film, though, is it's place in the larger Star Wars universe. "The Last Jedi" may have been a pretty flawed film, but at least it tried to direct this new trilogy in a more creative and original route. "Rise of Skywalker" not only lacked creativity, it seemed to actively avoid it. The plot was so full of recent Blockbuster cliches (right down to the giant blue sky beam) that it barely registered as a Star Wars movie. Countless pieces of established canon were retconned. Insteresting plot threads and themes that have been developed since the very beginning of the franchise were scrapped or simplified to a mind-numbingly stupid level. However, resurrecting Palpatine back was the biggest insult of them all. This decision not only demonstrates that the writing team a) had not one ounce of creativity, rendering them incapable of creating original, interesting villains and b) didn't care at all about the established saga-encapsulating plot arc of the Prophecy and Vader killing Palpatine. There is so much evidence in this film that not an ounce of thought was given to the integrity of the Star Wars saga; the script is so blatantly a brainless cash-grab.
Ultimately this is not the worst movie ever. But it's pointless. It's so utterly pointless that I doubt I will ever watch it again. In the future when I'm showing my kids the Star Wars saga for the first time (if I ever have kids), I will simply pretend the sequel trilogy does not exist. And all because of this terribly bland, boring, flat, unsatisfying final chapter.