Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Good or bad?

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2019)

Coming from someone who is a huge Star Wars fan and has been waiting for this film to come out for the last year now, (as many of us have) I must say, I was disappointed with this film. It wasn't fantastic nor horrible, but for being the last movie of the sequel trilogy and the end of the Skywalker Saga (apparently), it was not what it was lead up to be. The whole movie was scattered, and we basically watched the characters run around for 2 hours. The dialogue was cheesy and forced, which was sad considering Daisy, Oscar, and John are all good actors but were given a poor script. And the plot of Palpatine coming back? Did he or did he not die in Return of the Jedi more than a decade ago? It made no sense. And why, why did they have to make him the grandfather of Rey? The whole plot of Rey's character was ruined from that. She was supposed to be shown as someone who came from nothing, but still could be something, which apparently JJ wanted to take out for some apparent reason. This plot was not needed and realistically, they could've done much better, but decided to take fans' extreme theories and put them into play for 2 hours and 35 minutes. And what the heck was the deal with Hux? Played a somewhat major part in TLJ, and suddenly becomes a spy in TROS and gets killed off two seconds after we find out? What the heck! Also, what happened to the relationship between Finn and Rose? Did I not see a kiss or relationship in TLJ? They literally just threw that down the drain. They might as well have taken Rose's character out of this movie; she didn't serve any purpose. Finn and Poe's character? Not funny, not what they were in the last two movies. And how did Rey suddenly know how to heal people with the force and beat Palpatine, a sith lord, with two lightsabers, by HERSELF? It just doesn't make sense.
And what were the point of the new characters in this movie? They served no purpose whatsoever. The random bring-back of Han Solo even though he was never a Jedi and couldn't be a force ghost but somehow was some sort of "memory"/ghost Kylo had. That scene was a reincarnated version of the one in TFA, but the complete opposite.
Kylo Ren's redemption was forced and way too fast, considering all it took was seeing his father and Han saying the same thing he said before. And why did Kylo have to just chase Rey around the whole time? As much as I love their relationship, that's all he did in this movie, which is sad considering he's one of the best characters, in my opinion, better than Rey.
Oh, and C3PO also shuts down, but suddenly comes back to life from R2 just messing with his wires.
The ending of this movie was the icing on the cake for me. I thought "Oh Rey and Kylo will definitely come back and beat good ol' Palps together and everything will be all good, etc", but unfortunately, that was NOT the case. Instead, Rey, (somehow) defeats Palpatine with I guess just the force? And then dies, Kylo comes on the scene and puts his life into her through the force,(which I predicted as a possibility because hey, it's our soft Ben) Kisses her, and dies. Yes, I was happy they finally kissed. Was I happy our redeemed Ben died RIGHT AFTER we finally officially got Reylo? No. Yes, This may have been a prediction that this would happen and one of them would die saving the other, but the fact that the scene just cuts off after that and we get no closure of Ben is kind of sad. Not kind of, it's just depressing. Kylo ren was an amazing character and the fact that he finally was redeemed and then killed with no closure was really sad.
And what happened with Kylo and Rey's relationship? We got all that romantic tension in TLJ and in this movie we got fighting until the last 10 seconds they had together, and then Ben died. Yes I knew they would fight, but I thought we'd at least get one good, emotional force bond scene.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Worth the watch? Yes, I would say it was, because even though it definitely didn't have the potential the last two films had, we all are going to see it anyway. It's the last film, for crying out loud. TROS might not have been fantastic or horrible, but it was okay/good. I was definitely disappointed considering JJ did such an amazing job with TFA, and then decided to completely twist this one, and not in a good way. He incorporated too much of the past in this film, whereas in TFA he incorporated just enough of the old with the new to make it fit. Do I still love the franchise? Yes of course! Just because we get a bad SW film doesn't mean I hate it all now, though some people tend to do that. Star Wars will forever be my favorite franchise/series, even though this last movie wasn't that good, I can live with it. We got TFA, we got TLJ, and we got TROS. Concluding this review, I would say to go watch it for yourself and see. But personally, I was disappointed with the turnout, but I can live with it. It was neither horrible nor fantastic, just okay/good. Interested to see what Disney/Lucasfilm does next with this adventure of a franchise.