A Boat Without a Rudder

Rating: 3/10 (30 December 2019)

Before I say anything, I would just like to point out to those people saying that those who rate this movie low went into the movie with their minds already made up - I hadn't read a single review of this movie before I saw it. I had zero preconceived notions. It was just a bad movie.
The one saving grace this film has is its excellent visuals. It seems like the choreographers, set designers, and visual effects teams were the only people working on this movie who had any idea what they were trying to do.
Interspersed between the many scenes that had me rolling my eyes, groaning internally, or just outright laughing at their absurdity, there were actually quite a few scenes that, at least visually, were extremely well done. What stood out to me the most was the scene when Rey was meeting Palpatine for the first time, and his half living corpse descended to meet her on its giant spider-like, robotic life support system. It was a moment of spookiness that went far beyond anything we've seen from star wars before.
However, visuals aside, The Rise of Skywalker was, on the whole, a huge let down. Between simply rehashing the same old story, to literally just reusing the age old villain, this movie felt like they just plugged their new characters into the old Star Wars Formula and then sent it off without looking at it. The plot is muddled and uninspired, the writing is often more cringey than anything, and the amount of deus ex machina that happens is outstanding.
It's very clear that they didn't really know what direction that wanted to go in by the fact that we're thrown into this new palatine plot right at the start of the movie completely out of nowhere. There was not even a single hint in the prior films that there was some big, unknown baddy pulling the strings behind the scenes, and then all of the sudden, Palpatine! It felt like we missed an entire movie between The Last Jedi and the opening crawl of Rise of Skywalker. And yet, somehow, by the end of the movie, it was dragging so much I couldn't wait for it to finally end.
All of the little things aside, though, the final nail in the coffin for me was in the last 30 minutes. You can maybe guess what I'm talking about - the kiss between Rey and Keylo. Apart from their entire connection making absolutely ZERO sense, this terrible choice was the ONE THING I was hoping against hope, ever since the first movie, that they wouldn't do. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, there is absolutely no reason that there would be any romantic, or even platonic bond between these two characters, and yet they decided to canonize it anyway. Absolutely atrocious story telling, does major damage to Rey's character as a whole, and, not to mention, flies directly in the face of abuse survivors. I personally know several people who were deeply upset by this decision, and were brought to tears by it. Deeply disgraceful choice to make in 2019.
It truly amazes me that they can't seem to get star wars movies right. It's such a vast and interesting universe, with such a huge catalogue of potential Extended Universe stories they could explore. And yet, they just keep beating this old, dead horse to pieces over and over and over.