This film was a creationof J J Abrams?

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2019)

**** SPOILERS****
Until today I have always considered J J Abrams to be a very competent director. He is the only one I know of who could reboot, complete with new cast "Star Trek" creating a great film going forward, and in spite of what some think, I believe he did a respectable job on "Star Wars: The Force Awakens". But this film is a complete mess. There is not a coherent plot. As others have written, it appears that we are dumped into a 2 hour and 22 minute trailer for a blockbuster film. If someone were to ask me to tell them plot of this film, front to back I couldn't do it. Let me try: Kylo Ren finds out that Emperor Palpatine, who, at last check was dropped to his death into a bottomless reactor shaft in "Return of the Jedi", is seemingly alive and well, and has been in control throughout this trilogy. Now he has created a secret armada of star destroyers with enough firepower to destroy entire planets. Meanwhile Rey is on the verge of completing her Jedi training with Leia while her pals, Fin, Poe, and Chewy also learn of Palpatine's resurrection. So Rey decides to finish Jedi training later and joins Poe, Finn, Chewy, BB-8 and C3PO as they head out to find an old contact of Luke's who might know where Palpatine is located, while R2D2 stays behind with Leia. On their way they meet up find Palpatine, Lando Calrissian joins in the quest. They find a message containing a clue but C3PO can't interpret the message... his original programming forbids translation of messages scribed by the Sith. So C3PO gets his memory wiped so he can translate the message telling where to find Palpatine. Meanwhile Chewbacca gets nabbed by the bad guys and when he is being transported off the planet surface, Kylo and Rey have a force tug-o-war with Chewy's transport ship and Rey uses force lightning (a first for anyone except Palpatine). In the process the ship explodes, presumably killing Chewy. But it turns out that Chewy wasn't on the transport so he lives. And R2D2 had a backup of C3PO's memory so it gets restored.
See what I mean, things happen one minute, then they are reversed in the next minute. And we aren't even half way through the film yet. But it doesn't get any better. Perhaps after watching "The Rise of Skywalker" 3 or 4 times it might come in to focus, but I'm not paying $10 each for tickets to try to figure out this film. I have read other reviews praising this film so it could be me. But believe me, 5 stars out of 5 is generosity on my behalf. This is easily the worst film of the 9 film trilogy of trilogies.