A decent movie by all standards

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2019)

Alright, people. I think we need to stop doing what we think is cool and just look at things realistically: we already knew where Star Wars was headed when Disney bought it from Lucas, and the expectations for this entire Sequel Trilogy were set with the release of The Force Awakens.
I am a huge Star Wars fan. I absolutely LOVE the original trilogy, and I've come to really like the prequel trilogy.
I've read almost every book in the new canon set by Disney, and a lot of the books that are being labeled as "Legends" after Disney took over.
When I watched The Force Awakens I wasn't blown away by originality or any great character development, but the effects were good and it was nice to be back in the world of Star Wars.
The Last Jedi was less than satisfactory for me, and probably the worst Star Wars movie I've ever seen, especially because a lot of times it made no sense at all, and I felt like it ruined a lot of it by adding unnecessary humor where it didn't need to be. I saw it opening night and I only watched it for the second time when I was rewatching all the Star Wars movies before I went to see The Rise of Skywalker and I enjoyed it more the second time I watched it because the way I looked at it was a sort of thrill ride - you have great CGI, you have a lot of beautiful shots that do nothing to the story, and you are just sort of observing nonsense that makes no sense to the actual story but you enjoy it nevertheless because it's familiar.
Which brings me to THE RISE OF SKYWALKER...
I didn't go in to watch this movie with very high expectations, but I did enjoy it very much.
I honestly thought it deserved a solid 7, but I couldn't bring myself to give it a 7 because of the cheesy Disney cliche dialog that gave me stomach problems, so that's why I settled on a 6.
What I liked about The Rise of Skywalker:

It had good effects and some of the best Star Wars shots done to date;
It honored the old characters and also for the first time managed to make me feel some kind of emotion towards the new ones;
We finally find out Rey's origin story and I thought it made (sort of) sense and explained a lot about her;
They gave Carrie Fisher's Leia (which is my favorite Star Wars character, right after Grand Admiral Thrawn) a good send off and I thought it was an ending fitting to such a legendary character;
They tied up some of the more bothersome loose ends and fixed a lot of the chaos that was caused by the mindless nonsense that we came to know as The Last Jedi;
It had a good ending that personally gave me goosebumps.

What I didn't like about The Rise of Skywalker:

Too much done-before Disney cliche dialogue. I could predict what the characters were going to say before they even opened their mouth because it's been so overdone in Hollywood, it makes me sick to my stomach;
Too many cute animals and scenes that Disney is obviously using as a marketing tacktic to sell merchandise. We get it Disney - it's who you are, but we just wished some of that money was used for better writers who would write at least couple of more original dialogues;
Some things didn't make sense and in a sense a got a lot of Harry Potter vibes from The Rise of Skywalker, which is not necessarily a bad thing except for one thing: this is Star Wars, not Harry Potter;
The scenes between Rey and Kylo Ren were too much at times;
Nobody in the theater really cared about Poe because he is just such an unlikable character, so I could've done without him in this entire movie.

Overall, I think this movie was a good movie, even as a Star Wars fans. It is most definitely not a legendary movie that will go down in history and I won't rewatch it as many times as I've seen A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, but it is a good movie in its own merit.
I feel that a lot of the Star Wars fans out there will always find something to complain about, just because of how much this franchise is steeped in history and of how long it's been with us. But things change, our society changes, people change. Star Wars is not an exception.
I feel like people should still go out and watch this movie. It's an enjoyable ride and it has some very good scenes that gave me goosebumps, and those are always a welcome treat. Try not to judge it too harshly and I promise you it'll be worth your $10.