This will be a spoiler free review.

The Rise of Skywalker is the most disappointing Star Wars film since The Phantom Menace. After the movie finished, I stayed to watch the top line credits. Two people working as a team were credited as the writer with four people working as two teams were listed for story. Frankly I am surprised the writing credits were so brief. The film has such a cobbled together feel with so many disparate elements smashed together lacking any unifying whole that it feels of constant rewrites throughout production.

The movie lacks any sense of serious character arc and none that were established the previous two films in the trilogy. Characters speak and act only to further the thinnest of plot contrivances with all sense of stakes and dangers coming from exaggerated escalations that borrow from earlier films in the franchise.

When The Force Awakens repeated the first film’s beats, I thought that had been a fairly smart move. Returning to the beginning seemed to be a way to clean the slate after the disappointing prequels a way to return and let the audience know that this was going to be Star Wars again and not the laminations of Anakin Skywalker Jedi Stalker. The Last Jedi for all its controversy took bold swings and made firm commitments to interesting themes and characters. At the time there were interviews where people associated with the production stated that Rian Johnson had been given a free hand and that there was no grand outline for the trilogy. I doubted them. I doubted that Disney had spent 4 billion dollars and would let the series simply wing it. After seeing The Rise of Skywalker, I doubt no more.

Not only does this film not build upon anything established in The Last Jedi it uses elements from The Force Awakens as mere hand waving tools to attempt to explain away its own plot holes and deficiencies. The film is a series of action sequences strung together with the barest of plot quests. It feels like a video game where after completing an absurd mission the player is treated to a ‘cut scene’ to explain the threadbare story and the more action and fighting ensues as the next mission is launched. Even this comment does a disservice to many video games which have spent considerably more thought and time on their characters and story than The Rise of Skywalker.

J.J. Abrams having destroyed Star Trek has now repeated himself with the Star Wars universe. Let’s hope that maybe Quentin Tarantino has a Star Warsscript in his back pocket it. It will take something that bold to save the series.