Great Fun and Great Damage Control

Rating: 8/10 (31 December 2019)

To me, Star Wars was always about fun, science fiction, and storytelling. It did not take itself too seriously with the story and logic, but it had great character development, cool settings, and each movie brought us things we never saw before. The was true especially for the original 3. In a New Hope, we saw a light saber for the first time and different looking robots, in Empire we saw Imperial Walkers and floating cloud cities, in Return of the Jedi, we saw force lightning, a party sand barge, and speeders zipping through the moon forest of Endor. The new and fun things is what Star Wars is and was. The prequels brought even more new things to us, but fell a bit flat with strained dialogue and the goofy Jar Jar Binks. But they also introduced us to great new characters like Palpatine, Count Dooku, and Qui Gon Jinn. They also expanded our appreciation for some original characters like Obi Wan and Yoda. And then the last 5 movies came out with Disney as the new owner. Even though there were glaring similarities between and A New Hope and Force Awakens, it was still a great movie, with interesting and exciting new characters. The Force Awakens got me excited about Star Wars again and made me want movies that expanded on Darth Vader and some other favorites. Rogue One was a great story and showed us that Star Wars is a huge galaxy and not just about 6 or 7 main characters. Then The Last Jedi came out and wrecked it all. I wrote a review on that mess of a movie so I'll save the space and simply state the fact that most everyone was disappointed by what Rian Johnson did. They were so disappointed that I think it turned the Han Solo movie into a failure compared to other Star Wars movies. I even think that Galaxy's Edge attendance suffered from the blowback of the Last Jedi. JJ Abrams was brought in to salvage this third trilogy and had a huge hole to crawl out of. Disney and the producers may publicly deny that this was NOT the case, but they all know that the Last Jedi did some major damage to the brand. The fans hated the Last Jedi.
I waited to hear what others thought of The Rise of Skywalker before going. I was in fact always going to go, but I was not going to give them the satisfaction of participating in a record opening. I was going to wait. I ended up seeing the movie right after Christmas and I have to say that Abrams did a good job. This movie is fun, fast paced, was not burdened with too much cheesy dialogue, and paid respect to our beloved original stars. It made me want more and made me wish I could have seen some other favorites in ghost form, such as Aniken, Qui Gonn, Yoda, and Obi Wan. I can also say that this movie nearly eliminates the need to watch The Last Jedi (thank goodness). I'd like to see more adventures with Rey Skywalker and hope that they give us a movie focused on Darth Vader, Palpatine, Yoda and Obi Wan in the years shortly after the Emperor took control of the galaxy with Vader. Just keep Rian Johnson and Tim Burton also, away from directing and writing any Star Wars or other Disney movies for that matter. These two directors seem to mess up movies that have great potential and fan interest. I Think Abrams did the best he could do. I suggest watching The Force Awakens, and go directly to The rise of Skywalker. Both really fun movies.