Complete, Utter Nonsense

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2020)

Watching this movie was like reading a 10 year old's narrative fiction project. I at first believed this to be due to incompetence, after all, Hanlon's Razor says 'Do not attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity'.
At the very least, one thing you expect from a movie, no matter how poor, is to use any one of the common narrative structures ; such as stories having a beginning, middle and an end. Another device: Characters will have arcs and overcome obstacles in logical ways, leading them to being capable of defeating the "Big Bad", in a logical way.
This is, instead, a movie where all of this is removed in favour of "things" happening. Someone turns around after a "thing" and says "what's this thing", only for someone else to reply "well, it's this, this and this thing", but there's no tangible reference or link to anything like those things in this movie, or in its two preceding films. Then they move on to the next "thing" which is as abstractly plucked from nothing as the "thing" the movie wasted your time with 10 minutes ago.
You may be thinking "what a pretentious review for a dumb Sci-Fi film", and fair enough, but please bear this in mind: the man who formulated most of the accepted theories on story/character as a whole was an American professor in the 50s called Joseph Campbell. He was a personal friend of George Lucas, and by Lucas's own admission, his theories drove the narratives of Ep. I - VI. Luke Skywalker's story is a textbook execution of a well established theory from Campbell called "The Hero's Journey". 'The Last Jedi' and its ending of Luke Skywalker's character arc, despised as it was, is a perfect inversion of "The Hero's Journey".
Considering this is of the same franchise, and considering how widely used it is by ALL fiction writers, it's surely likely that Campbell's theory is going to have come up in at least some of the script treatments and consultations with Lucas. If not, surely Kathleen Kennedy having worked on some of the most well-regarded blockbuster films of the 80s onwards, including multiple films with Lucas AND Spielberg; surely she has some ability to recognise these things as fundamental to a storytelling process. But they're not there.
Maybe she wanted to break the mold and experiment, but, when you experiment, don't you tend to switch one thing for another (as per 'The Last Jedi')? Rather than to remove it completely, especially if that thing is related to structure, the very glue which holds the narrative together.
Star Wars 9 fans will tell you, presumably through piles of Marshmallow Fluff that they're scooping into their mouths with their bare hands whilst sitting on the floor amongst their crayons, "You just don't get it man, you have to read the novelisation. You have to have played Fortnight so you can see the clip they released there about how the Emperor actually came back (this is real, by the way). You have to read the Art-book. (Also real)"
I've seen this before in another industry and, more than likely if you're a Star Wars fan, so have you. Where else have we been sold a product that should be full and complete, only for the complete experience to be split into mandatory "optional" extras? Video Games. This is the first film to rely on DLC to complete its plot, and for me as a fan of cinema, whether that is accidental or intentional, this is abhorrent.
This cynically capitalist approach to the ancient art of story-telling, mankind's next great achievement after creating language itself, your birthright as a human being, has to end before it becomes profitable, and the norm. Sequels aside, Cinema should not tell stories that cannot stand on their own two feet and I absolutely condemn J.J. Abrams and Disney, with prejudice, for turning the final episode of Star Wars into a 2 hour trailer for DLC content (Novels and Art Books), and sponsorship deals (Fortnight). Again, I stress, these are not peripheral details , these are key plot points that, in their absence, renders the "things" that make up this film completely intangible, bizarre nonsense.
Martin Scorcese pointed out that the Marvel Films are less of a medium for telling human stories and more of a theme park attraction. Those movies offer much more than 'Rise of Skywalker', and if that statement is to be taken as fact, then this film, judged as a single entity, is nothing more than a series of flashing lights and a collage of famous faces.