Rise of Skywalker Has Some Magic but a bit of the Lustre has Worn Off

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2019)

The Rise of Skywalker is essentially about the re-emergence of an old foe and their collective efforts to stop him. They've already spoiled who it is but I'll dance around it just in case. I originally thought that bringing this character back was a lazy choice, there are so many great unused characters in the Star Wars universe, why bring this character back? But they brought enough new angles with his return that I was willing to go along with it. The plot is hit or miss period, there were scenes that really grabbed me (I liked the land speeder chase on the desert planet, it had some nice moments) but there were others that fell really flat. But I had heard some pretty terrible things from critics going in and it still kept me interested for the most part.
The cast of these movies usually doesn't get the attention with all the nitpicking of the writing and the minute details of the franchise canon. Daisy Ridley has always been underrated, she's not Scarlett Johannson but she was a good choice as an unknown for Rey. There's a lot of emotion in her acting, she knows when to turn it on and when to tone it down. I hope she has a bright future ahead of her, this franchise tends to make or break careers. I would say John Boyega has been a victim of his character, I really liked him in the Force Awakens and I kept hoping that Finn was going to grow more and but they gave him very little new or exciting to do in this. The more established people in the cast (Mark Hamill, Ian McDiarmid, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams) all slip into their roles like fitting into an old pair of slippers. It was good that Oscar Isaac got more to do and I was happy Kylo Ren as a character seemed to grow into Adam Driver's strengths. It made his casting better. Driver was improved in this movie and he's a rising star for a reason.
One of the more intriguing aspects for me as this new trilogy has developed was the evolving relationship between Rey and Kylo. One of the more inventive parts of the story is how they choose to move forward with not only the changing of Rey's past (which is presented in a clunky was but I went along with it) but how their respective moral compasses' is still being shaped and changing with each passing event. The changing of Rey's lineage was a genuine surprise for me and I liked how they continued to intertwine Rey and Kylo despite them being on opposite sides of the chess board. This really becomes THEIR story, the rest of the characters take a back seat (we get a little more time with Po but Finn's job in this is to trade witty one liners with Po and Jannah and scream when Rey is in trouble) but it works for the movie and while not every choice is perfect, they did a good job continuing the development of these characters.
I largely enjoyed this movie but I do have some problems worth mentioning. The largest is the amount of exposition and sleight of hand they have to do when reconciling the separate continuity that Abrams and Johnson had planned. It was embarrassing in some scenes. There are huge exposition dumps. One of my friends was making excuses for there being too much material to fit into one movie so they needed to use that to catch the audience up. I still thought it was distracting and sloppy. They also bring up so many minor issues that feel like they're going to play a part in the story later but they just snap their fingers and they've been handled. Some of them are also just dropped, why bring them up if that's the case? I also thought the comedy was very hit or miss. Some of it worked but other parts seemed recycled (I'm not going to blame Anthony Daniels but giving so much to C-3PO might have been a mistake, its just the same kind of joke over and over). That's not unusual for this genre thought so its not a huge problem.
Rise of Skywalker features some good action, some interesting choices with the Star Wars mythology and gets the job done developing Rey, Kylo and the main cast. But after all the drama around The Last Jedi (which I really enjoyed but it has admittedly aged poorly), I can't watch these movies anymore without over-analyzing it. There's way too much expository dialogue, the continuity from the previous entries is just tossed aside and the comedic bits are hit and miss at best. Its pretty obvious that the Disney executives and J.J.'s team fell all over themselves trying to pacify the fans (whether that was deserved or not) and it works sometimes and other times it doesn't. I enjoyed myself in the theatre but I'm actually glad this is wrapping up. The constant hate spewing from everyone (on both sides) ruined this property for me and while I'm happy to keep my mind open to future movies, lets all collectively move on. I'm recommending this to Star Wars fans, specifically to the Last Jedi haters because there is a major course correction. I think for the more casual fan, this will still be enjoyable. My actual rating is somewhere between an 8/10 and a 9/10.