The Disney Trilogy roller-coaster ends on a sharp dive

Rating: 2/10 (23 December 2019)

(QUICK EXTRA NOTE: In fairness to critics who think hating the new Star Wars movies makes you a sexist Russian bot and, given their stance on Episode IX, can no longer use that defense mechanism, haters can't claim y'all are being paid to shill Disney anymore either.)
The new era of Star Wars films has been a roller-coaster - one with shoddy inspection routines. The Force Awakens was at best a magical return to that faraway galaxy of space knights, but a little too familiar at worst. The Last Jedi didn't match its predecessors in terms of tone, character intelligence, internal rules, general sense of danger, or even basic imagery - which is, of course, a laudable subversion of audience expectations.
Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is the finale of the Reboot Trilogy and sells itself as the "real" climax of the Skywalker saga. I expected this to be the most interesting of the new movies. After getting all the rehashing out of their system by referencing both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in Episode VIII, and also ending the previous film on "not much of a cliffhanger", Disney were more or less forced to take this space opera to new, even more nonsensical places.
What would we see? Does the puny Resistance stand a chance against the supposedly imposing First Order, now ruled by the hilariously unstable Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)? Might we finally see an outright romance between him and Rey (Daisy Ridley), the inexplicably gifted apprentice of self-exiled Jedi knight Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)? Would such a connection between two powerful users of The Force, each from an opposing side, throw the universe off balance far more than the Sith Lords could?
We do get sort of an answer. But still we have questions, pertaining to things like Ian McDiarmid's Emperor Palpatine (played by a toy on the poster because Disney's fresh out of f--ks to give) still being with us and apparently having offspring somewhere that we no doubt need to buy Disney+ to learn more about. And indeed, having misconstrued the point of people's complaints re: The Last Jedi, this one retcons some of Rian Johnson's subversive, almost "anti Star Wars" turns (showing it through visual metaphor by having Kylo "patch up" the Vader tribute mask he shattered in the previous episode) and goes heavy on the member berries. The movie, astoundingly, still has problems.
Joining the fun once more are the late Carrie Fisher as Leia, Oscar Isaac as Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, Domhnall Gleeson as the bellowing General Hux, Joonas Suatamo as the hairy Chewbacca, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO (bidding farewell to his "friends" as if either he or we know these new heroes that well), R2-D2 as R2-D2, Kelly Marie Tran as the mechanic-turned-officer who sacrificed herself to stop a heroic sacrifice, and John Boyega as Finn, notorious for functionally learning the same lesson in every film. New faces, at least for this trilogy, include Richard E. Grant as another First Order general and Billie Dee Williams as Lando. J.J. Abrams himself voices D-O, new friend of BB-8.
Nonetheless, I can't say I'm impressed with Episode IX. The characters and their end destinations rarely make sense (rewatch the last two movies and tell me if the Hux twist seems at all believable). The rushed plot jumps back and forth with too many fetch quests. There are still decisions that seem rooted in a petty disdain for those who admire the old characters most. There is a sudden armada of superlaser-equipped Star Destroyers so huge that it is comical, proving that "bigger" does not equate to more threatening, especially when it seems random and unlikely in-universe. The action in general is over-the-top and weightless (using a Hobbit-like "bigger is better" approach and having too many fake-out deaths). New Force powers are introduced in a similar "kids playing with toys" sort of way.
I will give Rise of Skywalker some credit, however. It does fill in some of the blanks we were left with after Last Jedi, e.g. Leia becoming powerful enough with The Force to cheat a deep-space death and the enigmatic rise of Lord Snoke. Sometimes waiting for a trilogy to finish pays off, guys - even if the answers as such are unsatisfactory in that unique Abrams fashion.
At this point, several geeks will have lost interest due to my non-existent complaints about the film's political agenda. And yes, I will criticize the movie for its narrative this time since it causes actual flaws, but not before a clarification:
Politics are not enough to point at to call a film bad; it needs to impact its measurable qualities. You cannot decide that Avengers: Endgame is bad solely because of that one "girl power" shot, for instance. The problem with politics when it comes to Star Wars, rather, is that it ostensibly panders to a branch of feminism that requires women to be perceived as wholly indestructible and flawless, which comes at the price of engaging character writing with struggles and development to connect with (Captain Marvel suffered similarly and now seems largely forgotten, although Charlie's Angels failed much harder). Thus I'll be fair: the continuing opposition to fascism is not what nerds complain about when it comes to the Disney trilogy's politics, unless they're... ya know.
The Rise of Skywalker admittedly aims to explain Rey's extraordinary powers, but at this point in the saga, I can't get much out of her other than vaguely cool lightsaber scenes where she looks bored. Disney so badly wanted her to be what Star Wars was leading to - even undoing Anakin Skywalker's self-sacrificial killing of the Emperor, making us wonder what other deaths so far have meant as little, so that he could be destroyed "for really real" - but we'll see which heroes last the longest.
In the end, I don't know if it was at all worth it. I don't know if this, ideally, was the closure I wanted to see for characters I've loved and looked up to since I was little - or even that I needed to see more after Return of the Jedi after all. But I am intrigued by the expansions that Kathleen Kennedy and Disney seem to be adding to this already gigantic sci-Fantasy universe with shows like Mandalorian. They still insist Episode IX is the moment all other episodes have built toward - as if to say a barely-planned trilogy where one dude set things up only for another dude to do whatever he wants was planned even when Lucas created A New Hope - yet this is only "true" until they decide to tack on even more Star Wars. Unless Solo ruined everything, that's very possible.