This is what happens when people without vision finalise what has become 'a franchise'

Rating: 3/10 (28 December 2019)

A life-long fan of Star Wars, the other day I harnessed my courage to go see the last film. The reason I wasn't too keen on going to see it, was that "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi" were for me films lacking in about every way the magnificent see and feel of the original three movies.
My worst fears were confirmed: "The Rise of Skywalker" sinks even lower than the previous two episodes in the final trilogy. It was so bad that while watching the film, half the time I had the impression I was looking at a bad parody of Star Wars instead of the final episode of the real thing. What a horrible film in every way.
As with Game of Thrones seasons 7 and 8, I'm afraid that this is what you get when people who lack the original inner vision get to lay their hands on a work of art, backed by sponsors who are just into making money.
And in the case of Star Wars, it is what you get when Lucas sells his lifelong artistic project for a huge amount of money to a bunch of people who turn it into a 'franchise' without having any serious feel for the universal mythology which inspired the original three films.
After all, when Lucas conceived of the original Star Wars films, he was deeply moved by Joseph Campbell's "A Hero with a Thousand Faces" and other modern classics on archaic mythology, of which Episodes IV to VI were novel translations, albeit in a sci-fi setting.
What remains of all this in the Disney franchise? Nothing whatsoever. Seeking to emulate Lucas' original masterpieces, they ended up maiming Star Wars into a bunch of abysmal secular action-hero movies lacking any form of deeper feel with what Star Wars was originally about.
To put the cherry on the cake, at the very end of the film Rey Palpatine -the last of the Jedi, an order deeply involved with truth, honesty and justice since time immemorial- ends up, without any shame, lying about who she is to a passer-by, just to feel good about herself. What is this? Are the Jedi into feel-good little lies from now on, then?
But maybe Rey Palpatine blandly lying about herself to a hapless passer-by is an appropriate ending for a Disney franchise lacking both a coherent storyline and a genuine feel for a mythology pulsing so vividly at the heart of the original three films that people are still raving about it today.