The man who's never had an idea strikes back

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2019)

When I was a kid, around 10, I started writing a story. About one page in, I realised my story was the same as Star Wars, identified this as a problem, and stopped writing it.
JJ Abrams did not. He has somehow been granted permission to take over two of the biggest sci-fi franchises without having had a single original idea in his entire life. He may be the world's biggest fanboy, I'll give him that - perhaps he is such a passionate fan that he convinces everyone he can do it; but he really can't.
If the Force Awakens was a mediocre remake of A New Hope, the Rise of Skywalker is a recap of things we've seen about a million times before in Star Wars. A few of these work great as nostalgic references, like when ghost Luke lifts his old X-Wing out of the sea. Most however are just poor copies of literally anything from the old films: Kylo Ren faces some complaints from his generals, so he force-chokes the disturbingly unfaithful minion; remember how Luke faced his bad self in a cave? Rey faces her dark self in a dark room; the crew enters a destroyer to save a prisoner; the whole affair ends with a rug tug fleet of small ships facing a bunch of big ships.
From start to end, JJ Abrams fails to come up with a single idea of his own - people complained about the Last Jedi, but say what you will (I personally loved it), it had its own ideas. Rey was nobody. Snoke died out of the blue. Disappointing or not, it was not generic plot device #47. In The Last Jedi Rian Johnson tried to deliver us from a galaxy where everyone who matters among trillions upon trillions of people was related. He tried to deliver us from a story where it's all about how an evil Sith Lord tries to corrupt the good Jedi. But, then JJ Abrams came back and couldn't even come up with a villain - no, 'the dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural' so let's bring back the Emperor. And not only that, but Rey is his granddaughter - yeap, he even copied that: I am your grandfather, and no one told him 'uh, no, just no, stop, please'. Straight out of JJ Abrams kindergarten level book of storytelling. I will admit that at least Ian McDiarmid has a presence and a voice to allow you to tolerate this useless repeat of an arch. That said, the whole thing is so poorly put together that it collapses easily: why can he now channel enough of the Force to destroy entire fleets or something? And he can only suck life out of Rey and Kylo because they are a Force Dyad because of reasons? Let's not even discuss how he's built a humongous fleet that can be defeated by shooting a single thing (HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?). Or that the New Republic doesn't care about this enemy to send any fleets, even when it is revealed every single ship has deathstar capabilities (oh, would you look at that, the whole of TFA was useless).
It's not all bad though: Kylo Ren didn't turn good at the very end but earlier, which was welcome as he'd never convince us he is a super-villain. But Adam Driver felt awfully underused all things considered, a pity since he was really good in the role. And Leia's death was handled tactfully, considering. And the photography was great, especially at the ruined death star scenes.
It was of course still full of ridiculous things:

the location of Exogal is written on a knife..ugh. And the knife can point you to the exact location in the ruins of the Death star (which are in the sea and rotting for decades). Generic quest item purchased from the vault of overused ideas.
C3PO can't speak the translation of the Sith language - haha, there is a joke there. Let's format him, because he can't just say 'go that way' and we don't have any online databases to translate one single phrase.
Ok, Star Wars is NOT really 'science' fiction, it's more like space fantasy. But JJ Abrams makes it a point to use such bad science as to shutter the suspension of disbelief of even the well predisposed fan: news (and ships) travels instantaneously through an entire galaxy (remeber how the laughable starkiller base in TFA shot the sun at other solar systems in seconds?), the death star technology is now portable (ffs), you can attack spaceships with infantry on goats. And nobody thought, ok, let's shake the ship a bit so the goat riders fall off. GOATS. Ok, I liked the goats.

-I won't even comment on Hux being a spy just to save the heroes and then instantly die.
I hope by now you all realise how much, much, much better a film the Last Jedi was. And how good (actually good, not in comparison to JJ's stupidity) the prequels were. They had a plot. An actual plot. The Rise of Skywalker is a few loosely connected adventures from place to place. Zero character development (Rey is worried about falling to the dark side but never even comes close to it, Fin and Poe are less than pointless, Palpatin repeats lines. Only Kylo grows, predictable though it is). Mediocre humour that only works (as much as it does) because of our familiarity with the characters (in contrast, the Last Jedi had actual jokes). A final battle that could be any previous battle (+ goats) featuring generic speech, last minute reinforcements, etc. No (none whatsoever) background lore - the New Republic is never mentioned, the creation of the new empire fleet raises no eyebrows, nothing to enrich the universe apart from a new species of war-goat. Gods, I miss George Lucas.