Hate mail to the story

Rating: 1/10 (2 August 2019)

Imagine a parent whose kid watches the original Star Wars 100 times, and the parent gets completely sick of it. Then they get control of directing the sequels, and deliberately wreck it so their kid never wants to watch it again and moves on to something else.
That's what this film feels like. If the Force Awakens was a homage, a deliberate fan love-letter, this is blatant hate mail. It deliberately wrecks everything in its first two hours. Our hopeful hero Luke who saw good even in Darth Vader? He's a grumpy failure now who lives alone on an island and wants the Jedi to end. The Rebels as symbolizing good and the Empire as symbolizing evil? They're both the same really, as they both buy weapons from the same rich people. The battles in space? They're pointless now because you can blow up any ship by going to light speed. The shadowy Emperor guy, Snoke? Just kill him off. The teasing of Rey's origins as a mystery we're going to learn more about? Her parents were nobody alcoholics and she has her powers without learning from a Jedi Master for no reason. The Knights of Ren and Rey's vision of Anakin's lightsaber? Not even brought up.
And after two hours of tearing down and building nothing to replace it, it's like someone mentions that they need to make money on IX and further movies. So they forget the tearing down theme and build up again. Luke comes back as a projection and says he won't be the last Jedi (despite saying the Jedi need to end and he won't train another generation). The last few rebels get saved and fly off to be in IX.
And now we hear, IX is apparently bringing back Palpatine, Sith, has Second Death Star wreckage, and is called the Rise of Skywalker! After months of being defended as a necessary letting go of the past, the proof is now out that this film was a dead end. There's no way to take pure deconstruction. So they've brought JJ back to remake the past. You can defend this film if its makers could take it forward. But they're not. They're going back to what was likely the original plans for the sequels. This film was a total mistake, a total wrong-direction for the series.