Star Wars ends with a fizzle

Rating: 3/10 (25 December 2019)

There are inherent problems with this latest incarnation of Star Wars that are pretty obvious from the reaction of the fan base and that simply cant be ignored. Its not a good movie in terms of what story it is trying to tell and how it will finish off 42 years of Star Wars. The idea that the "Skywalker Saga" had to end is just advertising executives trying to sell you the idea that THIS will be the final time these heroes will be referenced by a Star Wars movie.
Sets, costumes, Effects and cast put in a great effort to deliver the best they can with the convoluted and overpopulated story they are trying to portray, but it all comes down to the strength of the story, and sadly, the Rise Of Skywalker finishes off a 3 movie attempt to retcon extended universe material back into the Canonical world of Star Wars because it was better than what they had to begin with.
Most of the plot of this movie can be found in the pages of the Dark Empire comics that were released after the original trilogy, but the lacklustre exposition, new characters that have no real effect on the story and zero effort to establish important plot points in previous films makes this a mish mash of ideas that come from nowhere, go nowhere and weren't that important anyway.
Having the plot that is a treasure hunt could have been interesting and entertaining. Relying on a McGuffin that was pretty much straight out of the movie "The Goonies" to set up finding another McGuffin to allow the movie to move on meant 30 minutes of set up for the final confrontation that was just a much shorter do over of the last third of Return Of the Jedi, but came off more like it was intended to be in the style of a Roger Corman exploitation B movie.
Nothing really works in the plot of this film. Even the final confrontation seemed to rely on fan service to bring it to a close because "that's the best we could do this late in the day", and its a commonly used "Wrapping up the loose ends because we don't want to do this anymore" ending that ruined the final season of Game Of Thrones.
A throw away plot that has more holes than a sieve, no real weight to the consequences of the outcome, throw away characters and whole plot lines that were just left on the cutting room floor and a rush to just get over the finish line meant that this was never going to be great. JJ Abrams could have directed a great movie if they had taken some time to craft a meaningful arc for the characters, but as we have seen many times, when film companies start meddling in the affairs of crafting a movie, you end up with a diluted product that fails to achieve anything.
...and so it is that the latest Star Wars movie fails to deliver. Where do you put the blame? When all the shouting and vitriol is done, its probably best to just let it slide under the ocean of disappointments and let those who can re-craft something special for its next incarnation get on with coming up with something original.
Its sad to see Star Wars end up like this.