A trilogy in name only, nothing more

Rating: 6/10 (9 February 2020)

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker caps off the final instalment in the new trilogy and also marketed as capping off the Skywalker nine-film saga. The last point is left to be seen. Director J. J. Abrams had an enormous task at hand, which proved too formidable for him to handle. The final product was an incoherent mess that tried to do too many things with limited time and at the same time.
The destruction and bad will created by director Rian Johnson's Episode VIII - The Last Jedi was too much for the franchise to recover from. There were only so many directions that Director J. J. Abrams could have taken Episode IX from where the story was left off in Episode VIII. So it's not all his fault.
There are so many things wrong with this film, and I don't know where to begin. So I'll start with what was good. The score, visual effects, and most of the actor's performances didn't disappoint.
So what was or what I think was god awful is a lot - basically all the essential stuff. What's makes a movie a movie. The main story and all of the subplots were atrocious. It shows where stories were changed during production and also in reshoots. Its two movies, mashed together. The pace was quick, all through the film, jumping from one plot point to another. There was no breathing room between significant events. This movie was trying to do too many things with no clear story from start to finish. It's a movie that was trying to please everyone. Movies are not made like this. Why they took this direction is beyond me.
The villain was a big let-down. The return of which was announced via a broadcast around the galaxy. How do we know this, well it was in the opening crawl? Yes, no build-up, no intrigue, he's back people. That set the tone in the entire movie, without caring and storytelling. Just a lot of plot points and action set pieces mashed together.
A trilogy in name only, nothing more. Each instalment is supposed to have stories that are started in the first, then progresses through the second and culminates in the third. Episode IX has proven that each instalment was a standalone movie that cared little about intertwining the story. Episode VIII and Episode IX kept on changing the direction of the trilogy, which now messes up the entire trilogy.
This is an unfortunate ending for Star Wars Saga as a whole.