Honest Fan Review: Rise of Skywalker and Trilogy

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2019)

First let's give credit to J.J. Abrams. ( Next paragraph is the movie review)
Looking back on The Rise of Skywalker I believe JJ did the best he could considering what he was left with. He started with a strong start with The Force Awakens. Granted, The Force awakens was safe, floored, and was similar to A New Hope. However, it's characters were developed very well for the first movie and the enemy was revealed well. The story felt almost like Star Wars and did a good job of setting up a trilogy which had countless directions anyone could take it after the first movie. I feel JJ wanted to create a story/trilogy in which foreshadowed similarities to the originals as it still followed the Skywalkers and the constant battle with the dark side. This accompanied with Rey a new force strong Jedi to create a fresh journey. I also believe JJ always wanted to finish the Skywalker family story within this trilogy and if had done the second instalment he would have explained everything that got rushed within The Rise of Skywalker in more depth. The last Jedi back peddled a lot of the directions that The Force Awakens had opened and it has hardly any main plot other than the fact that Ray would overcome the temptations of the dark side advancements being pushed by Kylo.
The Rise of Skywalker:
There's no denying this movie is a mess. It's pacing begins way too fast, and later slows down to speed up again later. The story is a miss match of things and it starts with back pedalling a bit of what happened in The Last Jedi by not acknowledging any of the events or discontinuing stories and relationship builds. This is fine as The Last Jedi did not contribute to much of the story, it was like a side Star Wars story for the the trilogy, and you could get away with watching 7 then 9 without feeling like your missing much...I digress. TRS Was fun it concluded reasonably well, it's enjoyable and told a story about togetherness. It was very floored in lots of ways but the story was there. It's not the greatest story and it felt like it was on steroids for half the time, including the powers and attributes of the characters, but it was there and the story's within the film were fun. It cinematically looked beautiful and it didn't seem like it was overwhelmed by cgi with most alien extras wearing costumes. It's filled with cliches and is a bit over the top sometimes and I disagree with lots of parts of the film but I enjoyed it even though it wasn't hitting close to any of the original trilogy films. I'm not telling you to like this film I'm telling you that it's better than The Last Jedi in terms of the content that it adds and the story. (Sorry for all The Last Jedi hate. I don't hate the movie, it just didn't do anything for me or for the trilogy)
Conclusion:
This trilogy was never gonna be as good as the originals, and it never has felt exactly like it was Star Wars and the stories weren't deep enough. I still enjoyed many aspects but that's the truth. Maybe if JJ had done the second we could have had a deeper picture of the vision of the trilogy and have something that came close to the originals and accept that. It's also hard for the directors as there's not much time for them and the writers to produce a decent enough film and script for the demand that Disney pushes so hard to deliver on.
It didn't give me that feeling of the originals and I still hope that we will be brought something new and as refreshing as The Mandalorian or Rogue One but in a trilogy.