J.J. fails to rise to the occasion.

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2019)

After the debacle that was The Last Jedi, I (and many other lifelong Star Wars fans) had hoped that lessons would have been learned at the House of Mouse, and that the final film in Lucas's proposed nine-movie saga would end the franchise on a high. Sadly, this is not the case.
J.J. Abrams, who also directed the fair-to-middling Episode VI: The Force Awakens, gives us another visually impressive movie full of breathtaking worlds and amazing creatures, but his film suffers from a mediocre plot full of elements that make very little sense and which will annoy the hell out of Star Wars purists.
The basic storyline sees Rey (Daisy Ridley) and her rebel pals trying to find where the evil First Order are gathering their forces, so they can launch a final assault and end the tyranny of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) once and for all. Along the way, Chewie (now played by Joonas Suotamo) is taken hostage, C3-PO (Anthony Daniels) gets his memory wiped, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) realises that, hey, perhaps being bad isn't for him after all.
The whole thing rushes clumsily from one scenario to another with little care for logic, the makers clearly hoping that the dazzling on-screen spectacle will distract the viewer from the fact that nothing here is all that original, and that the narrative is choppy and often confusing, with many contrived moments that are there purely to further the plot, or to retroactively explain away mistakes in the previous movies.
My biggest gripe is the scene in which Rey crosses a stormy sea (very impressive digital effects) to the wreckage of the death star. That's right... either the same death star that was blown into a gazillion atoms by Luke Skwalker in A New Hope (or perhaps the second one in ROTJ, also obliterated). Somehow, this massive chunk of debris crashed onto a planet and just happens to hold the artefact required to guide the rebels to the enemy. Talk about convenient. The most pointless scene is an Androcles-inspired encounter with a subterranean serpent. And the most blatant act of back-pedalling comes in a short scene that shows Leia training as a Jedi, so as to excuse her sudden 'space flying' ability in The Last Jedi.
Of the bits that actually work, a chase scene involving our heroes on speeders and stormtroopers on caterpillar-tread bikes is exhilarating, a Pasaana festival (celebrated every 42 years! Geddit?) features some wonderful dancing Cthulu-like aliens, there's a cute Anzellan droidsmith called Babu Frik who guarantees a few giggles, Richard E. Grant makes for a nice new villain, and the physical psychic connection between Ren and Rey adds a new twist to the power of the force.
Unfortunately, as someone who has been there from the start (I was 9 when Star Wars came out in '77), I cannot help but find Episode IX a disappointment. It's not quite as bad as The Last Jedi or Attack of the Clones (both 3/10 from me), but it's not the rousing finale that we have all been waiting for. Average just isn't good enough.