Great job with what they had to work with.

Rating: 8/10 (21 December 2019)

I went into the movie and kept the most open mind I could and in the end: I loved it! Yes, it was jumbled and cramped, but it was all The Last Jedi's fault. In my opinion, J.J. Abrams did a great job summing up HIS story and did a great job course-correcting after TLJ. Was is perfect? Absolutely not. There were things that didn't make sense but I feel they would have if they just had J.J. do the whole trilogy. There were a few moments that made me groan and roll my eyes, but all in all, I took the movie and saw it as an abridged version of what the whole trilogy was supposed to be. If they could split Rise of Skywalker into three movies it would have been a trilogy I would have immensely loved seeing. (I was not a huge fan of Force Awakens and I hated The Last Jedi) Seriously, this one movie should have been the entire story of the new trilogy. All they needed to do was give Rey an origin and then just jump straight into this movie's story and I would have been happy with what Disney did. In my mind, TLJ never happened and the story is just The Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker, and I am truly happy with how it turned out. 8/10
From a life-long Star Wars fan that was beyond angry at them discounting and restarting the Expanded Universe, I am truly happy with this story and just wish they has done it correctly from the start.