They did the best they could with what they had to work with.

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2019)

First let me say that, like all Star Wars movies, I enjoyed this movie while watching it and was on my Star Wars high immediately after seeing it. "Star Wars High" is that great feeling you get after watching a Star Wars movie that allows you to ignore all the "fridge logic" that will make you question whether the movie was actually good or not after seeing it. If you don't know what "fridge logic" is, just google the term, you'll laugh. Star Wars movies have always had a lot of fridge logic, but episodes 8 and 9 were particularly bad when it came to plot holes, unanswered questions and things that just didn't make sense.
This trilogy had the same problem Lost did. JJ Abrams wrote the beginning and the end but let other writers take over for the middle and the ending didn't fit anymore, but it was still awkwardly tacked on. The biggest problem this film had was that it had to continue the story where episode 8 left off. Rian Johnson didn't leave JJ Abrams with much to work with. Episode 8 ended on a dead end, not a cliff hanger. Johnson had written the trilogy into a corner and Abrams had the unenviable task of undoing a lot of what Johnson had written so that he could conclude the story in a satisfying way. He wasn't entirely successful unfortunately, and as a result it seemed more like two movies crammed into one. It was so fast paced that it was hard to follow the plot, and what I was able to follow just seemed like a retelling of "Return of the Jedi" with different characters. But this was the problem I had with all the movies in this trilogy. Ep7 was basically an inferior remake of Ep4, Ep8 an inferior remake of Ep 5 and this one an inferior remake of Ep6. Could they have made something more original and satisfying? Let's examine how this trilogy could have been improved.
There was that great moment in Ep8 where Rey was about to join with Kylo. This was the best moment of that film, and I think if they had the balls to have her join with him it would have saved that movie. It would have truly been "subverting expectations". Rey could have become a powerful villain who continued being tempted by the dark side and then in this film they could have had Kylo save her from the Dark Side. This would have made these movies a lot better ... but I'm not sure it's enough to make it a great trilogy.
The root of the problem goes back to Ep7. The worst part of Ep7 wasn't so much that it was a total rehash of Ep4, it was the fact that everything the good guys accomplished in the original trilogy had been undone by the start of Ep7. The Empire had risen again as The First Order and had more powerful weapons than before. The "New Republic" was in ashes and was reduced to an even weaker resistance than the earlier rebellion. As much as it tried to honor the OT, it took a dump on it.
The Empire was basically the Third Reich in space. Like the nazis, they lost the big war and were forever seen as a force of pure evil. Neo-nazis are a joke today and anyone who tries to revive their hateful ideology is pretty much universally shunned. The idea that Neo-Nazis could rise again to the same level the actual Nazis had, a la The First Order, just isn't realistic. BUT, it is a lot more likely that a different group could unknowingly become just as fascist even while claiming that they are fighting fascism.
Perhaps what they should have done is, instead of a First Order that tries to continue where the Empire left off, there should have been a separatist faction that split off because they felt the New Republic was becoming just as totalitarian as the Empire. Meanwhile, the New Republic sees the separatists as fascist and under control of a Palpatine like figure that is misleading them. Both sides see each other as evil and under control of the dark side, and perhaps it turns out both are correct (Palpatine is leading both sides to war with each other behind the scenes, like he did in the prequels).
It would have been more similar to the prequels in this regard, yes, but the one good thing about the prequels was that the overall story and themes were very good, original, and an excellent allegory to what is going on today even if the execution was poor. They would have retold a story that needed to be retold in an improved way, not one that was already done to near perfection.
Perhaps I am wrong and these changes would have made things worse. After all, I did enjoy these films while watching them. But in order for new Star Wars movies to have a lasting impact in the same way the original trilogy did, they need to have a strong story in addition to great execution. This trilogy delivered, for the most part, on the latter, but not so much on the former ... sort of the opposite of the prequel trilogy that had a great overall story, but missed the mark in many regards on the execution.