Fixing Star Wars.

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2020)

Pretty much perfect escapism film making and fixing what gone before. The Rise of Skywalker helps you forget the dumpster fire of The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi was 10% Star Wars, 40% poor action scenes, 50% nonsense that did nothing for the story. JJ Abrams took that 10% and built upon it forgetting the Rian Johnson nonsense and showing how action scenes should be done. JJ Abram is more of an action director than epic story teller so the bias is more towards that than plot of the Lucas films.
The cast deserve special mention for the current three films. Especially Daisy Ridley who held up all three films on her shoulders. An impressive feet for any actor. Adam Driver too as both excelled in this film. And of course the returning actors from the previous films. One in particular, and no spoilers, ramped up his performance like no other giving you the feeling of the power of the Force. Certainly, none of the cast deserve the abuse they've received for any of the films; they're just the performers trying to do the very best with the material they're given.
With so much damage done in The Last Jedi to Star Wars is was always going to be difficult to recover from that film. What JJ Abrams did wasn't just a correction but a revolution of how the Force is perceived and how powerful it is. He ignored the many useless and pointless sub-plots created by Rian Johnston and concentrated on the core themes within all generations of the Star Wars films. We don't know what Lucas would have done, and I'm sure he would have a laid out plan for the three films and followed that, but Rian Johnson had other ideas. Therefore, this isn't "the best JJ could do" but a fitting and well deserved end to the Rey story and the whole Star Wars arc that bolts on better to The Force Awakens than The Last Jedi.
I hope some day we'll learn what Lucas would have done, and while I'm sure they'd have been superb, the end battle scenes JJ Abrams did for Rey would be hard to surpass.