So for starters I feel like the entire film is meandering and a bunch of filler leading up to one underwhelming battle. In the first five minutes the Emperor summons a gigantic fleet of star destroyers and then....they just sit there until the final battle. There is one brief scene before the climax where a star destroyer blows up Kijimi which has no consequences or any impact especially considering the lone character on the entire planet that "mattered" throughout the whole movie was the female equivalent of Poe who survived and shows up at the end of the movie anyway. There is no threat throughout the entire film. Palpatine just sat in his over-the-top throne room doing nothing while the main characters insisted repeatedly that "if this doesn't work it will all have been for nothing :'(" news flash, writers: just because your characters are SAYING that there is tension doesn't mean that you have actually created tension.

Next there's the ridiculous amount of retcons and trying to "fix" what Rian Johnson did in The Last Jedi. They really implied at the beginning of the movie that Palpatine was "pulling the strings all along"? Okay if that's the case how about some explanation on how he was doing that? We're supposed to roll with it just because they said so even though there's two full movies worth of plot holes created by that fact? Alrighty then. Instead of tying in anything or creating any interesting story branching off of that, the film decides to be a sequence of MacGuffin chases where the characters run around various setpieces looking for a map to Palpatine's secret lair. It literally felt like a video game story from that point and not in a good way. The tutorial level: Rey training in the jungle. Next level: Desert planet with big snake and convenient mythical dagger that will tell us where to go found in a quicksand pit. Next level: Snowy planet where we stealth around storm troopers. Next level: Bad guy ship where the characters shoot a bunch of storm troopers and oh no Poe got shot in the arm that will totally matter! (oh wait no it doesn't). Next level: Kef Bir where we introduce irrelevant side love interest for Finn or something (ignoring the love interest that was set up in The Last Jedi, that poor girl only had like 30 seconds of screentime in this). Next level: The fallen Death Star, featuring a quick boss battle against "evil" Rey and then another big boss battle against Kylo Ren, which was ultimately again just a completely pointless action set piece. And then...the final level, where Rey literally rides an elevator and then walks down a hallway to the final boss. I was honestly laughing at that because my friend and I had agreed that the film felt like a video game story well before that.

Then there's even more random crap thrown in: when and how did Rey gain the ability to heal all wounds from everyone? Why the **** did Rey and Ben kiss before he comically vanished from existence? Why was the pacing so horrendous and the film cuts so rapid and jarring throughout? Where was the character development for literally anyone except for Kylo Ren? Finn's character arc finished in The Force Awakens and he was the same guy ever since. Poe never did anything besides be a Han Solo ripoff. There's so little depth to any of these characters, especially compared to the original trilogy although I've long since accepted that there's no use comparing any Star Wars content to the original trilogy anymore.

Oh and there's also the blatant merchandising attempt with the new rolling robot guy, which was another unnecessary addition. In fact every single new character in this film actively detracted from it more than anything just because of the breakneck pace leaving no time for anyone to be developed at all. And what they did with Rey was just predictable and ultimately embarrassing. She is just female Luke without any of the depth or moral gray area, which is really sad. She's the descendant of an evil villain...who was living a humble life on a desert planet before being whisked into a giant galaxy-wide adventure where she must be trained by a master to defeat the bad guys. It's the exact same character arc at its core except way less interesting because Palpatine is just PURE evil whereas Vader had a huge, sad backstory.

Then there's all the fan-service, which gets to a point where I'm taken completely out of the film. Yay Chewy gets a medal at the end because he's famously the only hero that didn't get a medal at the end of A New Hope. Like we're really referencing fan memes at the conclusion of the modern trilogy? There was no other point to that scene.

Then there's all of the plot points that are still open. Finn wants to tell Rey something as they fall into the quicksand. This literally gets brought up multiple more times throughout the film...and we never find out what it was. I mean what the ****? Was that a deleted scene that somehow could removed? Are they saving that for the next trilogy? Do we get a Finn solo movie?

Some of these complaints are moreso with the trilogy as a whole, because it is glaringly apparent that there was no long-term plan in place when they started and the decision to change directors was a complete disaster. And I'm not saying that because I hate The Last Jedi, I actually liked a lot of the risky turns Rian Johnson made. But after seeing Rise of Skywalker I feel like The Last Jedi may as well have no existed. This is a sequel to The Force Awakens more than it has anything to do with The Last Jedi. As with any fan I wanted to enjoy this film but it succeeded at almost literally nothing for me. It was basically Disney: Episode XI - Look at How Big Our Budget Is more than it felt like Star Wars.