Before it became a swear word, Star Wars was a massive franchise beloved by the world. With its simple outlines mixed in with complex ideals, charming characters performed by soon to be beloved actors and stunning visuals and fight scenes, the world of Star Wars was something that everyone wanted to be a part of, yet after the original trilogy ended back in 1983 with Return of the Jedi, its failed to please the majority of fans. The prequel trilogy only managed to anger people with its childish tone, bland storytelling and horrendous acting and directing, while the new trilogy owned by Disney has also been hit with criticism for both how much it changes and how much it doesn’t change , with the Last Jedi being one of the most hated Star Wars properties ever made. The follow-up, The Rise of Skywalker, was expected to match that hatred with how much bad press was surrounding it and that the script was leaked ahead of time, and upon its release, people clearly had a lot to say about it. Without hiding it all as the trailer didn’t attempt to, the opening crawl reveals that Emperor Palpatine (played by Ian McDiarmid) has returned from the grave and has joined forces with now supreme leader Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver) combing his first order with the resurrected star fleets of Palpatine to create the final order. Back in the resistance, Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) is still honing her powers, but still feels the mental grab of Kylo and begins to piece together the truth behind her heritage. Realising what Palpatine plans to do, Rey along with Poe (played by Oscar Isaac) and Finn (played by John Boyega) search for a device that can lead them to Palpatine’s location in order to finish off this generation’s long battle once and for all. Just from that synopsis, the movie sounds like a fanfiction, which is a great way to sum up the cons of this movie. With how much anger they had surrounding this franchise, Disney took no risks and kept to the same status quo that this trilogy’s previous movie was hoping to remove altogether. With plot twists either too stupid or too obvious popping up left and right, characters that seem to amount to nothing, and a surprisingly ugly looking picture, this franchise clearly didn’t end on the best note.

This movie was rewritten, picked apart and taken apart again so frivolously that it’s hard to ignore when watching the film how paranoid the people behind the movie truly are. The movie seems to jump from place to place so quickly that it’s hard to even get a grasp on what the main focus is on. This movie, directed by JJ Abrams, seems to contain all the negatives that surround his films; with the dull blue lighting, way too much flashing lights, an incredible lack of creative color or even pleasant imagery, the awkward editing in the action scenes, and never being able to close off a franchise effectively or even smartly. While his Star Trek movies felt like a demo reel for Star Wars, it now feels like this movie is a washed-up version of a Star Trek movie with how much it bounces from world to world without meaning, and how rushed and slightly hollow most of the character’s actions feel. This movie strangely feels completely alien to the previous two movies in this trilogy as both have incredibly different tones and ways of telling their story; The Force Awakens was too much like A New Hope while The Last Jedi strayed too far for people to be happy over. Because of its reception, this movie tried desperately to win fans over with a lot of forced pandering, call-backs and ret-cons that go against what the other films were building too. Even the greatest idea of killing the order of Sith and Jedi to create something new (a totally new angle to create a fresh slate for the next films) is 100% thrown away and it goes back to standard good vs evil again. While the movie does do its best to keep itself together and every once and awhile, there’s a nice scene that still feels effective even with all the changes, this movie is surprisingly underwhelming and feels very empty, which is poor for what should be the climax to all nine movies.

Since the story has been changed around so much, that also stems over to the characters and now it feels like they have no solid direction as to where to go after the first movie. Since the films had no clear direction of where the story was going from the beginning, that means it had no clear ending for most of these characters, so they either change on a dim or pitter out into nothing. Thankfully what was the best part of the previous movies, the relationship between Rey and Kylo, is still strong here, probably leading to the only great scenes in the movie. Anytime they share a scene, you feel the importance and weight even if what they’re saying is pretty dumb, probably coming down to both Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley’s great acting. Rey is acted very well by Daisy Ridley, but is a character that has caused a lot of negative attention for this new trilogy, Regardless of how people feel about her, she’s still a character that while not the most complex, whose definitely one who is prone to changes a lot, and has some inconsistencies with her powers, that people can follow behind. Her backstory is interesting but feels out of left field and kinda destroys the idea of what they were going for in the last movies. Ren is still acted very well and the scenes he shares with Rey or even some of his past family are legitimately good scenes, but his rushed conclusion makes him feel like even more of a Vader clone. Unfortunately everyone else is not so lucky; Poe and Fin are pointlessly bland and feel more like they’re doing their own sitcom with all their stupid banter, Leia has some great moments but is understandably not in this movie much, the new female characters they introduce are kinda cool but are used so minimally it’s hard to understand why they were in the movie, Lando saves himself near the end after a pretty poor opening introduction, and Palpatine as the villain looks so ridiculous it’s hard to take him seriously, along with how his plan makes no sense at all. Everyone’s acting is good enough in this movie, but the characteristics are what holds them back.

When people think of Star Wars, the visuals are usually very appealing and memorable to them; the grand space battles, the memorable locals, the wonderful mystic of the world, it all felt like a sci-fi epic done with the presence of fantasy in terms of its creatures and atmosphere. Here, the environments are either incredibly ugly and washed out of color, or just forgettable. Even to the prequels credit, the locations were great to look at, they had a spacey vibe but also felt grand and had a fancy aesthetic to them, where here they just look unpleasant and saturated in blue. Once and a while some of the shots gets some fun angles on the evil temple in the opening and ending, but aside from that, it’s pretty stale in terms of cinematography in both the normal scenes and in the fights. Even the fights in this movie are fairly slow and not that impressive in staging; the originals were slow and simple but they had great back-and-forth dialogue and were given a pass because of the time period and limited effects, and the prequels were flashy and incredibly well stage and choreographed, but went on too long and were mainly connected to things that meant nothing. These saber fights are very slow and honestly go on for too long, so when even the prospect of the movie’s action scenes isn’t done with that much weight, something is wrong. Maybe the only one that works is one involving Kylo and Rey fighting in two completely separate areas, but are able to clash through the forces, it feels like its evolving the force to new and understandable ways even if it goes nowhere. The writing in this movie never goes to the trash level of the prequels as the actors can still act here, but it very much feels like bad Marvel writing, where the comedy comes from a lot of excessive talking and banter that is never funny to begin with but has to be forced by the actors, it sometimes works with Marvel, it doesn’t work here. This franchise has always had elements of good concepts from beginning to end, but either never go fully through with them or backtrack on them instantly because it offends a certain group of people too much.

Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker ironically sinks past the limit of what we’d expect from this trilogy. While the past two had problems, it felt like they had ideas that they wanted to explore and still felt in the spirit of Star Wars, whereas this one has concepts that could be interesting, but while connected to everything else to pandering to the complaining fans to being in the command of the overpowering and directionless Disney, it couldn’t be its own thing without ‘’insulting someone’s precious childhood’’ and fell flat by the end. It doesn’t even feel like Star Wars and there’s honestly not much that’s worth watching in this movie, as what could’ve been interesting is gone or altered, and the fan service is too obnoxious and stupid that it doesn’t work for either fan or newcomer. Is it that awful, not really, is it the worst Star Wars movie, not by a long shot, the prequels still hold that title, but at least to their credit, they had a purpose and an end goal, it was just told very poorly, here it’s told passably and has moments that take better risks and chances, but the substance is so loose and interchangeable, it was obviously made just to keep shucking out merchandise. Right now, just stick to watching The Mandalorian. Not perfect, but what people forget is that besides Empire Strikes Back, no Star Wars movie has ever been perfect. If there’s any intrigue, check it out and see the franchise end in an incredibly underwhelming safe way.