An Honest Review From A Lifetime Star Wars Fan

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2019)

(Skip the first part if you wanna get straight to the review, this is just background information about me so you can understand my rational behind the score and review I'm giving you)
I'm going to be as fair and as honest as I possibly can with this review. A little background before I get into this, I've been a Star Wars fan for over 20 years. I loved the original trilogy. Although the prequels weren't the best (especially with that cringe dialogue), I still enjoyed them for what they were. I was entertained by the lightsaber battles and great character additions such as Darth Maul, Jango Fett, and Christopher Reeves as Dooku. I enjoyed the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series. I enjoyed Rebels for what it was. When The Force Awakens came out, I was satisfied. That movie kinda played it safe and redid some of the stuff from A New Hope, I didn't like how Rey beat Kylo with literally zero training; However, overall, I was satisfied. I thought there were a lot of good things set up for the sequel. Then we got the Last Jedi, and i'll be honest I borderline hate that movie. I can barely find the strength the rewatch it. Just everything I loved, or whatever hope I had for the sequel to Force Awakens was utterly crapped on and destroyed just for the sake of subverting expectation. I enjoyed Rouge One, hell I even enjoyed Solo for what it was worth. Sure It felt weird because it wasn't Harrison Ford; but nevertheless, I didn't feel offended by it as a Star Wars fan like The Last Jedi did to me. That being said, let me give you my honest take for Rise of Skywalker.
Honestly? It wasn't THAT bad. I was actually expecting this movie to be WAY WAY WORSE. Some parts made say "What the hell?!" and confused me, but after a rewatch i'll probably enjoy or be at least entertained by those initial "What the hell?!" moments. This movie could've been way better, The big reason this movie suffers so much is because NOT ONLY is it trying to be it's own stand alone film, it's doing it's very best to course correct all the things fans (including myself) didn't like about The Last Jedi. The Pacing for this movie is very very fast. It's trying to cram a lot of information, AGAIN, because not only is trying to do it's own thing, this movie is one big course correction. Okay now for some NITTY GRITTY details that I disliked or got (at least) confused by. Rey is SUPER powerful in this movie. I'm talking CRAZY powerful. This movie is supposed to take place a year after Last Jedi and she uses the force like a full blown master. Granted, she does get training from Leia (It is established in this movie, that Leia was trained by Luke to be a Jedi at some point in time. She was a Jedi Master in the EU). And IF YOU'VE READ THE LEAKS YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS, Rey is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine. So her year long training from Master Leia, plus her lineage, could suspend my disbelief a little to how she could have gotten so power in so short of a time. However, if you wanna just call a spade a spade, and say "That's bullcrap. She shouldn't be this powerful despite her heritage." Then I would say that is some fair criticism. At least Rey got some training. That made me at least a little satisfied knowing she got some training if at all. She does some really cool things with the force in this movie. Some great Jedi power action in this movie. It's like The Force Unleashed type of crazy badass force powers. However, The lightsaber combat in this is kinda mediocre. It's nothing like the prequel lightsaber battles. It's more just angry hack-n-slash rather than a display of master swordsmanship. But its okay I suppose. Leia dies. And the way she dies is by saying her sons name. She's laying in bed and using the force to connect to her son, she say's "Ben" and dies. Kind of a lack luster way to go out imo. Chewie breaks down and gets super emotional after finding out too. Which seemed silly, because he didn't act nearly as emotionally when Han Solo died. The battle with Palpatine was a little lack luster. Sure the force powers were cool, but idk. It just seemed so simple or not much of a thrill. Idk you'd think with all the money they put into the production for these things, they'd at least make the Jedi Sith battles just absolutely out of this world, but they don't and they didn't. There were plenty of great nostalgic moments. Plenty of great star wars feel good moments. But when it gets to brass tax, I'd have to give the movie maybe a 4-6/10. It was a tad underwhelming. However, it made me personally feel good because it wasn't as bad as i thought. And certainly wasn't as bad as the last Jedi. I'd probably rank this movie somewhere with The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. I enjoy those movies too, but i can recognize aspects that make them critically not as great as others. I Hope my review was helpful to you. If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll mildly dislike it, hate it, but maybe you'll enjoy a little too, kinda like me.