Well, what did you expect?

Rating: 3/10 (31 December 2019)

If you like space mumbo jumbo and lasers and spaceships, this movie is excellent.
If you think Star Wars was a mythology of quality and a story far more than just "space magic", then this whole trilogy raises the middle finger to your face.
And seriously, this movie is fine, compared to the beginning of the senseless downfall of Star Wars, that was "The Force Awakens". I never understood the people that loved TFA and hated "The Last Jedi". TFA is a complete trash, storywise, with great visuals. NO character in that movie made any sense. And that movie was the foundation for the rest. The Last Jedi was a nice space movie, that you may think that has destroyed the character of Luke Skywalker. No, the character of Luke Skywalker was destroyed when he was lost on an island and that was mentioned on the starting titles of TFA. TLJ had to provide an explanation to this complete nonsense and it did... Everything that Star Wars was, is destroyed in TFA. If you are fine with that, then all of these three sequels are fine.
Now on point:
The return of Palpatine was known from the trailer. Unless this movie refers to 6-year old kids only, there couldn't be any good reason behind his survival. So the concept sucked anyway and you should be prepared. However, the movie manages to raise the middle finger to our face by providing no story at all behind his survival. No, there is an explanation: He used the Force. The Dark Side mainly. Suck it!
So, he survived. And then hides for 30 years on life support, in the unknown regions (that are apparently 30' drive from everywhere using hyperdrives...), where he created Snoke and he also created the final order and a whole new fleet with millions of people and millions of CGI hooligans that yelled in an arena. How? He used the Force. Why? Because he is evil. With what resources? He used the Force.
Then he sends a twit to the galaxy that he is alive. So Kylo Ren wants to kill him so that he will be the undeniable Supreme Leader (of what?) and he gets there and Palpatine tells him to kill Rey and he will give him a fleet that rises at that very moment from the ice (via the use of the Force of course).
Then the rebels or resistance or whatever find out that Palpatine is alive and they are scared (all 50 of them). Rey remembers that Luke was searching for something similar before he went on retirement, checks the notes a little bit and our heroes go for an Indiana Jones style adventure, which is not bad, but is pointless. However, it's fun and has a lot of action.
At some point Ray uses the Force casually, to stop a flying ship and Kylo Ren appears on a walking distance to Rey (after a TIE fighter crash that he survives using the Force) to stop that ship on the opposite direction, then Rey gets nervous and uses force lightning, but she uses the one that makes ships explode instantly. So the ship explodes, then Rey and the guys are in another ship in space and they are fine. At this point obviously Kylo Ren was not in the mood of using the force to stop the ship the guys where escaping with....
Then they are on another planet to continue the adventure of searching the way finder to Palpatine's secret Sith Planet. At this point Rey and Kylo have a lightsaber fight through the Force network that they share and Kylo reveals to Rey that she is the granddaughter of Palpatine. OK, this is not a bad explanation to this stupidly overpowered character that Rey is.
Then they move to the Death Star wreckages. Apparently, there is an "ancient" dagger that points to a location that occurred 30 years ago by random wreckages of the fully exploded death star... which landed intact in a nearby planet (with atmosphere obviously) with automatic doors working fine etc... And the nonsense goes on and on but, whatever, the Force was used. Rey sails, easily. through tidal waves to get to the Death Star wreckages. She is probably using the Force. I do not understand why she doesn't just fly to it... She fights with Dark Rey for 10 seconds, with no emotional impact and then she finds the way finder easily. Kylo Ren appears too and they have lightsaber fight again, where Leia intervenes Kylo gets emotional drops his lightsaber and Rey kills him in cold blood. But it's OK because she uses Force heal and Kylo is back without a scratch. And he is a good guy now. Actually, this scene is nice. The death of Leia serves her son and they handled the unfortunate death of the late Carrie Fisher well. Also Kylo Ren is the only character that makes sense and Adam Driver is a great actor. The memory appearance of Han Solo and Ford's performance works also very well. This is scene is nice from every aspect. As are other scenes as well, but they are not enough to save the general mess...
Oh yes, the new Star Destroyers have Death Star canons on them so they can now destroy planets. Because they use the Force. So, one of these Star Destroyers destroys a planet and two or three people care about it on screen for a few seconds...
Rey is disappointed and she would like to retire just like her former master Luke, who appears as a force ghost gives her a small pep talk and the lightsaber of Leia (for some reason...) and then he lifts his X-Wing from the sea, where it was sunk for several years. Of course the ship is working just fine because it uses the Force...
And then the chaos starts... the rebels fly to the Secret Sith planet (Rey shares the location). Lando and Chewie take the Falcon and fly through other systems to gather more people for help. These guys are good, because in 30 minutes they fly through several planets and they appear at the last moment with thousands of ships out of nowhere. And here is one of the moments Disney or JJ or whoever made this decision should be ashamed of. They ripped off the ending of the most successful movie of the same year!!!! e.g. Avengers: Endgame. As Captain America looses hope and Falcon speaks on the Radio and everybody appears through Dr. Strange's magic bubbles, Poe Dameron looses hope and Lando speaks on the Radio and thousands of ships appear to save the day (no magic bubbles in that case).....
At parallel Rey gets to Palpatine. Palpatine says that he wants her to kill him so that his soul will be transferred to her or something... Kylo appears as well, he kills the Knights of Ren (yeah they are in this movie doing nothing again...) and they are both in front of Palpatine, who decides to suck their life and kill them both instead. It seems that he was planning everything very carefully for the last 30 years..... While sucking their life he understands that they are a force dyad, which is a good thing for some reason.... So he continues sucking their lifes, but with more confidence this time and he gets younger and healthy and with a new outfit???? And he is now good old Emperor who enjoys dropping Lightning and punchlines. Kylo is almost alive so he drops him violently through a random hole that is there, which of course is not a problem if you use the Force. Then he shoots lightning for some minutes to every ship of the rebellion. This time the lightning doesn't destroy the ships, it just affects the electronics a little bit.... Then Rey wakes up, he shoots lightning at her, stops it with a lightsaber, but wait... she has two lightsabers. So blocking lightning with two lightsabers is much better because the Emperor dies in a few seconds and he does not possess the body of Rey because the CGI crowd of the arena didn't say the magic words apparently??? Here is also the second and even most shameful moment of "I am all the Sith" as we say "I am inevitable" and "and I am all the Jedi" as we say "and I am IronMan" and with the same spelling....
In short Palpatine is a mummy for 30 years so that he can be revived and die again in a period of 5 minutes.
Then Rey is exhausted and dies, Kylo Ren comes out of the pit (of course) uses force heal to heal her, they make out and he dies. Ok that's normal. And this is probably what the title Rise of Skywalker refers to, because you cannot find any meaning to it anywhere else in the movie.
Then Rey goes to Luke's house at Tatooine, buries the lightsabers of Luke and Leia, like there is any meaning to it and then ignites her own lightsaber, so that we can see it...... Then an old lady drops by and she asks her who she is and she answers Rey Skywalker and for some reason this is OK.
I understand this text was too long. I find it hard to read myself. I'm sorry about that but it is my first review. In conclusion:

There is almost no meaning to these characters, their actions and everything that is taking place in these movies
Everything Star Wars was about is cancelled by the "events" of these movies
The glorious feeling of the Force is reduced to magic tricks that anyone can perform with no effort.
Science fiction is just fiction in space. Don't get me wrong in that, of course you will see unrealistic stuff in a sci-fi movie. However, the things that we already know from science cannot be altered for the sake of sci-fi. So a planet cannot suck nearby sons and move in space, without gravity and natural phenomena on the planet alternating crazily killing all life on it. Unless, you provide a reasonable explanation for that. A guy that exploded inside a reactor after falling for 100eds of meters and then the whole station that contained this reactor exploded as well cannot survive.

If you are fine with the arguments above then this movie is fine. All of these three movies are fine. You could not get anything better on the foundations set by TFA. The action is good, the visual effects, CGI or not are awesome, space magic and laser swords and huge spaceships are there. So everything is perfect.
But if you belong to the people inspired by the Star Wars mythos you can disregard the new trilogy completely. It offers nothing than insult to the characters created by George Lucas and new characters that do not make sense at all.