Damage control

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2019)

Spoilers
Lets get the good out of the way, I like the insight into Poe's backstory. Of the new good guys, Poe has been the best. Oscar Isaac is a treasure. Lando got a few good scenes. Its always nice to see Carrie Fisher. The music and visuals were still great. All the actors gave good performances. And Chewie had two great scenes: his reaction to Leia's passing and he finally got his medal.
Now for the bad.
So this is JJ's star wars fan fiction. We get it, you didn't like the Last Jedi. Its so blatent that you might as well have had Luke come out and say the last jedi was bull and his previous characterisation was wrong. Oh wait, he literally did. Hey Its fine to not like the last Jedi but maybe let's try to roll with the punches and build on what it did so this trilogy can have some semblance of a reasonable trajectory from one movie to the other or we could just recton this to hell and back. That opening crawl was the biggest pill to swallow. So Palpatine is back from the dead. Did that feel like it came out of nowhere. Cause it did, completely unexplained how he survived the return of the Jedi, he's just always been here, behind everything. He created snoke. That was the moment I thought I may have a bad feeling about this movie.
This movie is a Russian nesting doll of fetch quest maguffin hunt. We need to got the final order fleet so we need to find a guy who can get there. He's dead but we have his dagger so we need to translate but 3po is forbidden from translating the sith language. Because making your droid unable to tell you what enemy transmissions say is a great idea. So we need to find a guy who can rip open 3po's memory. Every quest leads to another quest.
This is the first time that rey felt overpower. She can force heal anyone, she can shoot force lightning, she stop ships from taking off. Oh and you know how in the last jedi that rey was discovered to have no important lineage. Psych, turns out that the galaxy is just a small town's graduating class where everyone knows everyone else and is connected. So rey is a Palpatine.
Kylo is redeemed. Adam driver acts his heart out and is tied with poe for best new character in this trilogy but it happens too fast and is
Quickfire bad stuff
C3po loses his memory only to get it back. Finn is just wasted potential. Hux is on the side of the good guys now and he's dead. There's no tension in any of the fights. Are these people friends. This is the first time poe, rey and finn and together on screen as a team. Hey, did you want a new deathstrar. No. Ok. How about a fleet of destroyers that can blow up planets cause we apparently can do anything new. This movie is utterly predictable. JJ loves his mystery boxes but you can see the answer to every mystery coming a mile away. What does rise of the skywalker mean, well rey rejects her Palpatine heritage and takes the skywalker name.
I don't like this movie. Its a hot mess that feels like its two movies in one. Its pretty much all plot, the characters are barely allowed to be characters. They have to move from plot point to plot point. Its exactly like another highly anticipated dumpster fire: Batman vs Superman. Oh wait, Chris Terrio wrote both.