It had heavy lifting to do and it held up

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2019)

I would honestly give this movie around an 8/10 but because of all the unfair low ratings I rated it higher.
First thing to understand is that this movie has a lot of pressure and heavy lifting to do, including concluding the new trilogy, concluding the Skywalker saga as a whole, and bringing the momentum of the story back after "The Last Jedi" slowed it down significantly. I will say though, the overall problem with the trilogy is that the story, I have to assume, was not clearly written from the beginning, hence why the change of directors had an awkward shift and we were got to see two different versions of a story at the same time, which was not pleasant.
However, here are the positives and negatives of this movie, "The Rise of Skywalker."
Positives
1. Rey's story arch is developed very well, and we get to see the conflict of the dark and light in her and they tie this in well with being Darth Sidious' granddaughter. Her scenes with Kylo Ren are the best scenes in the movie, because we get to see their relationship develop more and the connection they have through the force. Their duel is the peek of the trilogy and, in my opinion, in the top duels in Star Wars, because we finally get to see how powerful both Rey and Ren are in the force
2. Kylo Ren finally finds redemption. We see this over arching story throughout the trilogy of him dealing with the guilt of killing his father. He comes to terms with his guilt after his mother touches him through the force and then he confronts his father through a memory and gathers the strength to do what he wanted to do since the beginning.
3. Finding out that Palpatine is all the Sith is an awesome conclusion to the saga and the "rule of two" which states there can only be two Sith Lords fits in to this conclusion. ( the disappointing part of this is that Palpatine never fully explains it)
4. The Visuals are amazing. The lightsaber fights are epic. The unexplored parts of the galaxy are visualized well. C3PO and Chewy are still enjoyable. The planets look better than ever. The starship battles are pretty cool to say the least.
Negatives
1. I'm okay with not explaining some things that are not essential to the story and later explaining them in books, comics, etc. But it's not okay when it's essential to the story. How is Rey Palpatine's granddaughter? This is the main question, but there are manymore, especially about Palpatine that probably should have been explained so that we're not scratching our heads till it's explained in issue 13 of "Palpatine."
2. Finn's character has no development besides the fact that he thinks he's force sensitive. Since the moment he took off his helmet in "The Force Awakens," his character has been flat and not interesting, especially for being a stormtrooper.
3. Leia's death is forced. I don't know if it was because they didn't want to mess with her scenes or add CGI to her but I don't really care what it was because it felt like they just threw that part in the scene because they needed to get rid of the character. There are many other routes they could have taken but this was route was not a good one.
4. The final battle was a bitter sweet moment. It was going sweet till a little before the final confrontation between Rey and Palpatine. It was anti-climactic. We see that Palpatine has reached is full power and Rey, with the Jedi within her, reaches her full power. And then... SURPRISE Palpatine is defeated by his own electric. Seriously? No final duel? No epic music? Think about it this way, a big bad guy is built up for 8 movies and when he finally reaches his power he is defeated by his granddaughter blocking his electric Meanwhile, the battle above reaches its anti-climatic ending as well.
Overall, I enjoyed the the movie, and there will always be things we think they could've done better on.