The Rise of Skywalker is a product of The Last Jedi's failure.

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2020)

While I enjoyed myself watching The Rise of Skywalker, it is not a great movie. Most of the complaints I have heard have been about how ridiculous, fast-paced, and messy this movie is. But the more I consider these issues, none of them would have been an issue had Rian Johnson progressed J. J. Abrams's story. Instead, Johnson tried to make what a Star Wars movie was in his opinion instead of what the fans wanted. The Last Jedi did not progress anything, in fact the story is back at square one by the end; Rey has barely learned anything, Luke barely did anything except show that Johnson does not understand his character, the Casino planet was a waste of time, Holdo could have saved so much time and panic had she just told everyone they were going to seek refuge on the nearest base, and Snoke (the supposed new big villain) is killed without any story to his character.
J. J. Abrams had almost nothing to work with, just the death of Luke and Rey & Kylo Ren's force connection. Who else would be the villain other than Palpatine? Who else could train Rey but Leia? The only things I found truly dumb were the dagger that perfectly aligned with the Death Star remains, and Rey & Kylo's ridiculous use of the force (i.e: grabbing a ship from the sky and magically making a lightsaber disappear into the other's hands).
This was a 4 hour movie crammed into 2. I hope that Disney will allow for a Director's Cut so we can see a more clear, but still fairly flawed movie. If IMDb allowed for decimals in my rating, I'd give it a 6.7/10