The Trilogy that Never Should Have Happened

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2020)

The movie looks good visually and is well acted. That is the extent of its saving grace. This movie is almost entirely a remake of A New Hope. Instead of the Rebels vs the Empire, you have the Resistance vs the First Order. Instead of the Death Star, you have Starkiller. The names aren't even original. You have the newbie to the force standing up to the seasoned villain. The only difference is that Rey is exceptionally good at the force and fighting with a lightsaber right off the bat. What? It took Luke, the greatest Jedi of all time, 3 movies to develop the amount of skill she has. This is explained, albeit poorly, in Rise of Skywalker. Her first use of the force is a freaking Jedi mind trick? Talk about ridiculous.
A new trilogy could have taken two possible directions. It could haven followed shortly after Return of the Jedi with new actors, or gone to a different time/place in the galaxy with entirely new characters. Instead they tried to walk some weird middle road where they brought back everyone's favorite characters and made them all freaking losers. Han Solo is killed off in the most ridiculous possible way. He survives attacking two different Death Stars just to get shanked by his whiny emo kid? Wow.
Disney really screwed up here, these movies never should have happened. I actually liked Rise of Skywalker because it attempted to fix all of the mistakes in 7 and 8.