An entertaining mess

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2020)

Now that this trilogy is over I'm starting to get emotional. Not necessarily because of any emotional impact the new movies had on me but because of what could have been. Carrie Fisher is gone, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford will never touch the saga again and even the new cast seems to be sick of it by now.
Rise of Skywalker was a complete mess but it was mostly entertaining and even had some good ideas, although precious little original ones. Which by comparison with the other new movies is at least something. Had this been the starting point of the new trilogy I would be cautiously optimistic.
Even better, this could have been stretched into a full season of an entertaining TV show. The wealth of design ideas and attempts at world building are refreshing but become the movie's biggest downfall. It's rushing to the finish line. Everytime you think "oh, this place is interesting, show me more" the movie has already jumped ahead. Let your scenes breathe, please!
The added bonus of the adhd type editing is that it's hard to keep track of all the problems with the plot and the logic of the film. Once the movie is over and you start to think about it all, these things start to compound.
A couple of positives though:

I really liked the cast this time. The biggest squandered potential of the other two films was how bland and beige these people were. Now all of them get to have emotional moments, motivation. The bad guys aren't comically inept anymore and the Marvel-style quips of the good guys aren't quite as obnoxious and frequent as they were in the last Jedi. Even Rey, who was the least interesting of the main characters despite Daisey Ridley's likeable performance, is now finally relateable and I was rooting for her. While the explanation of her powers is unoriginal and silly it does make for interesting character drama. She has some really heavy stuff to chew on. Same with Adam Driver who is an incredible actor as always.

The design work was pretty great here. As an illustrator myself I was bored by the unimaginative and safe design choices of the trilogy so far. It's nothing groundbreaking now, but there's a lot of detail and thought in the many worlds we get to see. I just wish we'd see more of it.

The music was finally a bit more noticeable. Even in the prequels I can remember several iconic music pieces from each movie. Not so much in any of the Disney Star Wars movies. John Williams delivered fine work here. I probably wouldn't listen to it outside of the movie and the repetition of previously established iconic music pieces from the original trilogy got out of hand, but baby steps folks. Inching towards mediocrity is better than a grey wallpaper.

Alien languages! This is really minute for most people but I always loved the alien languages in Star Wars. Ben Burtt is a genius and inspired me to get into sound design and constructing languages myself. I don't know if he was involved here but the babylonian chatter of various tongues made it feel more like a classic Star Wars movie.

Palpy! Ian McDiarmid is always a pleasure to watch.

As for the negatives:

The story is really really dumb and derivative. It's fun in a schlocky b-movie kind of way, but all the choices made by the higher ups reek of utter desperation. At this point I'll take it. I tried to imagine I was playing a late 90s Star Wars game with lots of cheesy cutscenes and that made it work for me.

Sound design. This is a flaw of all the new movies. No matter what sum Ben Burtt demanded, you should have paid him double that. His shadow looms large.

I have mentioned the terrible pacing before. It gets better in the final third but it was head-ache inducing.

We just barely get to know the established characters and they keep introducing new ones that never get flashed out.

Lando Calrissian's appearance seems tacked on. Ticking off the list of iconic characters they haven't used yet. Ditto the 2 second cameo of Wedge Antilles.

Four years and five movies later... oh what could have been. With more care, patience and creativity they could have saved Star Wars from its slump, instead they killed all interest in it. I've been an avid fan since my earliest childhood and I'm just so over it at this point, despite being quite entertained by Episode IX and the Mandalorian. There might still be a place on the screens for this universe, but they desperately need to take a break now.