Neither a good film nor a good Star Wars film

Rating: 2/10 (21 December 2019)

Ironically, the original Star Wars was a landmark in cinema. The first "blockbuster" of its then era in 1977, which changed cinema forever. SWTROS suffers from the same rehash malaise and lack of originality as the other two sequels. Nothing new here. Same old same old. Excessive use of pseudo spectacle, explosions and rapid scenes. Scenes which are so short and overstuffed that you don't get chance to react or feel anything, before the film jumps to the next thing. Much should have been cut out and the important parts extended. The other flaw is you don't care about the characters because they're so thinly sketched. The original film leads had great camaraderie with an unforgettable villain in Darth Vader. Here, I only liked Poe. Finn was ok but thinly written. Rey was too serious and unlikeable in each film. Characters were introduced and wasted, as we'd seen in the other two films. YMMV. There wasn't the mix of lightness of touch and balance that the original films had. Balance between key events, character, humour, seriousness. Here it was like Star Wars on steroids. People died and came back to life. It was like a cheat episode of Doctor Who with its "everybody lives" cop out.
There's much that could be criticised in the plotting of these sequels. Given it was effectively a greatest hits copy of the original films, they would have been better, over three films, directly portraying the return of the Empire/First/Last Order under the Emperor and his eventual defeat again and entirely restructuring how they used and disposed of the original characters, Luke in particular. Rather than what they did. These films will likely drift into obscurity, as with the prequels. But for different reasons. They're unlikely to have the longevity of the original trilogy, which had such an impact on cinema and audiences.