A satisfying conclusion to the 42 year old saga

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2019)

In 2015 JJ Abrams had the daunting but almost impossible task to come up with a new Star Wars movie that would not only entertain the critical old fans but also satisfy the new ones. His trick? He introduced new characters and made a remake of A New Hope. For me that worked fine.
He actually does the same with The Rise of Skywalker.
To conclude both the new trilogy as well as the whole Skywalker saga he revisited famous old Star Wars locations and "copied" some of the most famous scenes from A New Hope, The Empire strikes back and Return of the Jedi. And of course he made a comeback possible of the biggest Star Wars villain around, emperor Palpatine.
Cheap? Maybe. But all of Abram's decisions work out very well. With The Rise of Skywalker he made an entertaining and epic conclusion of the Skywalker saga. He wasn't able to please all fans of course, but that's what you get when you tackle a project like this. Too bad a lot of people wanted him to fail and never gave him a chance. Some people even suggests that this episode is even worse than The Phantom Menace - and that's absurd.
The Rise of Skywalker is not a perfect film.
There's a lot going on and especially C3PO's storyline in the beginning takes a lot of screentime. The "MacGuffin" in the story seems far fetched, but the film really delivers at the moments when it has to.
Because it's best to see the movie without knowing anything here are some things that I think are worth mentioning.

The opening crawl of the movie starts with "The Dead speak", referring to the return of Palpatine who has given the entire universe a terrorist-like message that he's back

Rey, Finn and Poe are together almost the whole film

The scenes with Carrie Fisher are well done. If you didn't know that she died you'd think that she filmed all new scenes. Only one shot of Leia seems fake

The confrontations between Ren and Rey are highlights

Kylo Ren's character is the most interesting

There one big WTF moment in the movie that no doubt will be spoilered by trolls on the internet

JJ Abrams does a lot of fan service (nothing wrong with that)

Who or what is Rey? I could live with the answer

In the last scene the thing that you hope would happen actually does

Well, that's it really. I hope in time the haters will see what a great JJ Abrams has made. I can't wait to see the film a second time!
8.5/10