Honestly, I liked The Rise of Skywalker a lot.

"It's all true. All of it!"

The Rise of Skywalker is, in many ways, both a better and worse film than the previous two sequel movies. It was poorly constructed by comparison - admittedly because they were trying to scramble to put together an ending based on two setup films (rather than a bridge title). It had some of the most entertaining fan service and action of the bunch, but also completely devalues the first six films by having Palpatine

Here's my super-short review done in my typical Undy a Hundy style: http://undy-a-hundy.com/content/star-wars-episode-ix-the-rise-of-skywalker-2019/

~Spoiler tag

Oh boy, oh boy. Talk about some hot garbage. Designated love interests, power creep, a convoluted mess of a plot that seems lifted straight out of fanfiction like Game of Thrones Season 8 (admitedly, perhaps, because of the rushed pacing on both), the list goes far and wide. At least we're free forever from Rey & co. and the old cast... and Disney probably won't mess with mainline "flagship" trilogies in a while given this seems to be grossing even less than TLJ.

The only positives are 1) no more wet fart-tier Disney humor like TLJ, instead we get witty lines more befitting of Star Wars; and 2) Rey, though she's now basically Darth Plagueis tier, is fucking training for once.

On a related note, here's a new Harry Potter idea for JK Rowling, since Fantastic Beasts is faltering in the box office as well: Voldemort is, like, back. And now he has a million Death Eaters following him. And each of them has Horcruxes so they're basically, like, way more powerful than before.

I don't love everything about TLJ, but Johnson only painted the next director into a corner if they were completely inflexible in their creative process. Snoke being dead, Rey being a nobody, and the Resistance in desperate need of a turn in the tide literally opened all doors for ANYTHING to happen. 

JJ actually read and signed off on Johnson's script before shooting began - said so himself. He just didn't think it would be HIS business to pen a sequel to it, so the departures from his vision didn't matter. When he was brought back on, rather than working from Trevorrow's sequel to TLJ, or creating his own sequel to it, he duct-taped together parts of his original ending with Treverrow's work and added in bits of inspiration from a conversation he held with George Lucas. 

... and we got a Frankenstein's monster of a script, rather than a fresh sequel to the last film in the series. 

Ok, just saw it, really liked the movie. Thoughts might get more nuanced in the morning, but my first impression usually sticks.

I hated The Force Awakens. I thought it was boring, and it felt really obvious that it was trying hard to capture the Star Wars feel, and it failed. The Last Jedi, to me, was even worse. The subversion at every turn was not cute or interesting, it just made everything bleak and it single-handedly nearly ruined the entire franchise for me. The trilogy was already off to a crap start and this pretty much killed it.

Going into this, I was ready to hate-watch it... then something weird happened. I really enjoyed it. Somehow a lot of the problems I had with the previous two were gone; no more Guardians of the Galaxy non-joke lines and awkward pauses. There wasn't any beating the audience over the head with a particular agenda. They managed to make a film that captured the spirit of the franchise just right--at no point, to me, did it feel forced. This was just Star Wars. Still, I wouldn't call it a good, quality movie. A lot of the criticisms I do agree with, but to me it felt like JJ knew he had been written into a corner, so he basically said "fuck it" and did whatever he wanted in the most over-the-top, almost Doctor Who levels of campiness. I think the last two felt pretentious, like they demanded to be taken seriously. This movie is just having fun with it.

If The Force Awakens is a 5/10 and The Last Jedi is a 3/10, I'd put The Rise of Skywalker at a 6.5/10. The bar has been set so unbelievably low, that I'm sure the score would be lower if the last two had been any good at all.

So between this and The Mandalorian, hopefully they will realize they need their own George Lucas-type to oversee the continuity and have a grand vision for the franchise moving forward. Maybe that Dave Filoni guy?

Last Jedi killed my interest in the series so thoroughly I won't even be watching this one, a first for me as I've seen every other numbered Star Wars film to come out in my lifetime in its opening week. Not since the 1998 American Godzilla have I seen a franchise so butchered.

My take away? Holy shit, The Force Awakens got a 93%? That movie was hot garbage, and I can't believe they went back to Abrams for the third. I haven't seen the new one yet. I will probably wait a few weeks for when the crowds die down before I go see it.

True I suppose, as much as the 1998 Godzilla absolutely gutted the character and stripped out everything that made the franchise awesome, at least it was easier to retcon out of existence.

Still though, fuck that movie, I'm still pissed off about it 21 years later lmao

Maybe yeah, and both of them have a chance at delivering quality with each new iteration of it's franchise.

We can be hopefull,i'm sticking with being foolishly hopefull atm.