The Circle of Suck is now Complete

Rating: 1/10 (28 June 2020)

I heard this movie was bad but I had no idea it was going to be this bad; it was probably even worse than the Last Jedi and that's says all you need to know. Of course, it isn't all JJ Abram's fault for several reasons:
* The sequel trilogy was always doomed to fail no matter who made it because there's no way anyone can come up with a better ending for the saga than Return of the Jedi. That will always be the true ending of Star Wars for me and I'm never watching this Disney garbage again.
* Carrie Fisher's untimely death screwed up any chance they had of doing justice to her character.
* For the second movie, the Last Jedi, Rian Johnson came and farted and that was it. He didn't bother trying to establish stakes for the third movie even though he knew there was going to be one, he didn't try to solidify or even establish character relationships, and this movie than has to cram in all the stuff that he didn't bother with.
All right, on to the inexcusable issues. Nearly the entire plot is one long scavenger hunt with characters jostling around in so many different environments that none of them are anything more than a noisy visual blur. They're in some jungle, than they go to alien Bollywood, then they randomly meet a sand-worm from Dune (Disney is trying to wreak the upcoming Dune movie by getting Frank Herbert's ideas 'first'). Chewie goes off to take a leak, the Empire captures him, so he gets rescued, next up is some kind of oppressed, ratty Dickensian city, than a techno-club where they meet some dwarf named Babu, we have wayfinders and Sith daggers and hex charms and Death Star pieces and space horses and what the heck is the point of all this anyway? It's a manic attempt to disguise the fact that there is no story, no moral, no purpose, only flashy nonsense.
Palpatine. Everyone knows why his return is such an issue so I won't dwell on it. But he wants Rey to kill him, than she does, and then he is defeated? I'm so confused. Never mind, that's not even the biggest inconsistency. Why did Kylo Ren die again? Just because he could. It's so convoluted yet so simplistic I couldn't stand it. The new Force Powers. Ugh. Now Star Wars is now no different from superheroes, with main characters that are an emboldened Illuminati who fight power with more power and than whoever has the most 'wins'. Maybe in some far-off future people will realize that characters with superpowers are in fact quite boring, while those without are usually more interesting and engaging.
Side Note: Now that this trilogy is done, how does it stack up against the maligned prequels? Answer: It's not even a contest. The prequels are better. Maybe I am biased in their favor, but there are three aspects of the prequels I think anyone should put above the sequels. The first is story, which is probably the most important one to me personally. The prequels had a pretty good underlying story (Anakin's rise and fall) but the sequels are just an unadulterated mess. The second is John William's soundtracks. The prequels have magnificent soundtracks. For nearly the entire sequel trilogy, however, Williams acts on such a mediocre autopilot it's tough to believe he's the same guy who made some of the most iconic movie themes ever. The third is imagination. When we get two more movies with planet-destroying weapons in a franchise which already gave us two, it grates. Meanwhile, the prequels had the experimental creativity of George Lucas guiding it and the sequels have a calculating corporation instead. Everything other contrast between the two trilogies (dialogue, acting, mythology, etc) might boil down to personal preference, but, whatever, I find the prequels, stilted as they may be, infinitely more watchable. The sequel trilogy does have better special effects, though, so if you put that sort of thing above actual story you might prefer these newer ones...
Back to this movie, well, it made over a billion dollars. Some people like it. All I have to say to them is, well, you should be happy, because there is going to be a lot more stuff like this. And for the people who didn't like it, you'll just have to grin and bear it. CGI reboots and dumbed-down superheroes are what people pay for, what today's filmmakers are able to make, and what you're going to get.