Star Wars Turned Into a Microwaved Turd

Rating: 2/10 (18 February 2020)

This movie is almost total garbage. If it wasn't for the great score, some decent (though completely wasted) acting by a few of the actors, and as usual the fantastic effects, I'd be happy to give this a zero out of ten.
The writing is the biggest problem they have. As other reviewers here have pointed out, JJ Abrams, whats-her-name and Disney have completely betrayed the Star Wars franchise with sloppy, lazy, revisionist storytelling. This borrows many of the best parts of the original trilogy but slaps them together in a haphazard way to make what is much more a commercial for new toys and video games than a movie.
Say what you want about Lucas, the original trilogy showed actual vision and creativity. Those are stories, characters and moments you actually remember. This finale to the series? It's just a mess of effects and dumb "big" moments.
Finn seems to exist only to whine about his emotions and yell. Seriously he's only got a handful of lines and always yells them. "Rey!!!" "Chewy!!!" "We gotta go!!!" Also he apparently has something he wants to tell Rey but never did, which is mentioned a few times, and then he just never tells her and disappears and nobody even cares because he's so annoying now.
Lando finally returns and does, well, pretty much nothing ever than sit in a desert planet vehicle (one of a zillion cool new toys for the kids) and deliver expository dialogue. "Oh yeah the way-finder, I actually came here with Luke to look for it many years ago but even though he has the force and can feel such things and the magic dagger key is just a few feet underground by his ship we just couldn't find it. So anyway, then I guess we just forgot about it or whatever and also didn't mention it to Leia or anybody..."
People have mentioned the Mary Sue-ness of Rey, and they should. It's pretty bad.
Yes, she has "The Force" but even that has its limits, or at least it did in all previous films in this franchise. Seriously, all of a sudden people can bring each other back from the dead? That scene where cousins Rey and Kylo kiss each other was so stupid and awkward the people in the theater laughed - literally laughed - at what was supposed to be a deep, meaningful moment. It was such a predictable, bizarre, dumb cliche, and they still did it?! Why were they kissing and why does that all of a sudden bring people back to life? It's all nonsense.
Rey having parents who were nobodies was actually good, and original... all of a sudden having Emperor Palpatine say "I am your GRANDfather!" Yup. Just take exactly what Darth Vader said to Luke and, since it was good, just do it again. It's apparently not enough that you already recycled the entire original Star Wars film to do the first movie in your prequel trilogy. Gee whiz.
How Palpatine was handled is one of the most blatant examples of poor writing in this film. It's almost three hours long yet they just dump it on us in the opening crawl. "So anyway Emperor Palpatine is still alive..." What?! How about giving us a cool reveal, or a storyline? We're thinking "well that's lazy writing but at least we'll get a cool flashback of how he managed to survive Vader throwing him down the shaft in ROTJ" - but no. All we get is some throwaway line of "something something Sith clone technology" or "special abilities" or whatever. Anyway, he's the Big Bad, so obviously we get a great final fight right? Nope. Rey stops him with a Skywalker light sabre and then defeats him when she remembers she has a SECOND light sabre! She just uses them to deflect his lightning hands and slowly walks toward him until he dies. The end. Really, the end?!
Carrie Fisher's scenes are awkward, which we can cut them slack for because she sadly passed away. But I can't help but think that, even using the footage they had of her in this movie, they could have cobbled together a better story with her. She's just kind of there, listening to people and not responding (just looking back at them), and saying things completely disconnected from what other people are talking about. Anyway, at some point she just lays down and then dies and disappears... because Ben dies apparently? But hey, at least they don't have her flying around in space... again!
Too much is recycled. Remember the cool scene in the original trilogy where they hide in the dumped trash to escape the Empire? Only to then have Boba Fett's ship come to life and follow them away? Even that is redone. The throne room fight is basically redone.
The fact that this trilogy is STILL miles better than the prequel trilogy says a lot about how awful the Jar-Jar era films were.
I hope at some point they actually make the sequel trilogy that George Lucas wrote years ago. There's no real downside to it, is there? They'll once again rake in billions. Maybe that was their plan all along? Who knows. I just wish that either they'd hire somebody who can actually fix this thing, or that they had never made any sequels to begin with and just left the story at the original, classic trilogy.