Desperate, rushed, pathetic

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2019)

The Rise of Skywalker is a rushed, heartless, and desperate attempt to conclude the Skywalker saga in a fashion that will annoy the least fans possible. Say what you want about the Last Jedi, but still least it was a cohesive storyline with fleshed out characters who had clear personalities, and a sense of escalation which resulted in an unforgettable finale, love it or hate it. Episode 9's story is just watching a bloated load of dispensable characters run around the galaxy doing busy work - no sense of tension, no escalation, and a critical lack of character drama.
Pretty much every character in episode 9 could be plucked out of the story and their lack of involvement wouldn't affect the plot at all - whether that's the conflicted and cared Fin, who should have died in order to complete his arc in the Last Jedi as the writers clearly have no idea what to do with him now, or the charismatic, heroic Po, who's character sees a complete 180 this time round - gone are the days of the Force Awakens where Po was the most likeable character to grace the franchise since the originals, and in his place is a moody, argumentative control freak. As a result, seeing the main trio finally together onscreen is massively underwhelming - there's no sense of friendship or bond, just three people obligated to work with one another, with no time to grow as the plot is moving at such a breakneck pace that it has to time to flesh out any of its cast other than Rey and Kylo, who continue to be the trilogy's most intriguing relationship, with Adam Driver definitely being the most charismatic actor throughout the trilogy.
The pace is easily the films biggest flaw - too quickly characters are introduced, brought back, killed off (especially Leia, whos death scene is hugely rushed and out of nowhere), so none of it has any time to sit, make an impact, or feel important - no one was mourning when C3PO lost his memory, because the characters didn't care, and the storyline was completed too quickly to be impactful.
Not to mention the desperate attempts to fix the story changes that Last Jedi made. The decisions made by Johnson were undoubtedly controversial, but JJ Abrams appears doubly as cynical in his intentions as he claws at any opportunity to bring the trilogy back in line with the expectations of the fans, completely ignoring the revelations of episode 8 by rewriting Rey's past in a predictable and pandering twist which does nothing but take away any respect left for this trilogy - if the people behind the scenes can't be confident in the stories they are putting out, how can the fans be?