Fall of Ambition

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2019)

Not really the final part of a trilogy as it throws out everything that came before from character development to plot points and attempts to cram its own (bland and generic) saga into its two hour runtime.
Being its own film doesn't inherently make it a bad one but being rushed and lazy does, the dialogue is awful even by prequel standards and with the plot having more holes than mouse covered cheese its hard to imagine the script had many passes. The viewer is expected to get on board with massive, unexplained story developments with no time to wrap their head around them as director JJ Abrams stuffs in as many "fanboy" pleasing checkpoints as possible, seemingly almost out of spite. The effects are as impressive as ever but often spoiled by bad lighting choices and even when they aren't it is the same iconography you've seen time and time before.
The acting is mostly solid, with Ridley and Driver exceling but the film is a mess and a worrying turn for the franchise. After the clean slate given by The Last Jedi it would appear the series has no ideas of its own other than to continually go the same well time and again. Not a good sign given Disney's determination to squeeze the property for every penny.