More specifically, I am compelled to discuss why it was simply not good. (Spoilers for the Sequel Trilogy and other Star Wars series below.)
Okay, so I'll admit that the Sequel Trilogy has had more than its share of issues. The most egregious of which was the fact that the writers have admitted they did not plan much of anything out in advance. While this may have been the case with the Original and Prequel Trilogies, the Sequels were done under the Disney umbrella, and after such long-term planning successes such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe-- which is another Disney property.
I'm not trying to claim that crafting a multimedia shared universe is easy. Warner Brothers and Universal both learned this the hard way in their respective attempts to create the DC Extended Universe and the Dark Universe, although in both cases it felt like WB and Universal were trying to hit the ground running with their shared universes, rather than starting slow, as Marvel did, and gradually building up from there.
But Star Wars has been able to shoulder the burden of an extensive shared universe across multiple media before. Prior to Disney's takeover, the Star Wars Expanded Universe covered novels, comic books, video games, and more, and while it was often quite convoluted to keep track of the timeline and who and what everyone and everything was, it still managed to pull it off. There are still many fans who think back to the EU and remember it fondly.
Disney, however, wanted to make more Star Wars movies and properties, but keeping track of everything and/or trying to adapt something from it all would have been a nigh-impossible task. So they simply packed everything from the EU up and rebranded it as Star Wars Legends and declared it all non-canon. That's not to say they're not cherry-picking the things they want to include-- such as Admiral Thrawn, a memorable villain from the Legends-- but it has streamlined it considerably.
Other Star Wars properties in the official canon have shown they can have long-range planning and arcs-- or at least build off of previous entries and weave a coherent narrative out of them. The Clone Wars animated series managed to do this, such as gradually developing a plot-line around the return of Darth Maul, evolving the character from a silent assassin serving the future-Emperor into a charismatic, manipulative chessmaster, who seized control of several criminal organizations and build his own syndicate out of them, then using these to take the throne of Mandalore, albeit from the shadows.
The Sequel Trilogy could have been a lot better if the producers and creators had sat down ahead of time and plotted out at least a skeleton of an idea. I'll flat out admit that I liked Force Awakens and Last Jedi. There are plenty of people who hated them, and that's fine. I'm not the kind of person who will get belligerent if someone else has a different opinion than mine. I'm not going to say they were flawless movies, but I liked them.
I'll admit, after seeing Force Awakens, I thought we were getting a "cyclical history" narrative out of it. Something broadly like 'The Pattern' in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Where similar roles and events unfold over the course of history, but with enough room for free will to alter it. That, to me, might have been somewhat interesting-- especially if the heroes had come to realize it as well, and tried to drive the action to breaking the cycle somehow, to end the endless war between the Light and Dark Sides.
The "cyclical history" narrative would explain why Force Awakens hit so many of the same story beats-- a young hero receiving 'the call' on a desert world, a tyrannical regime led by an evil sorcerer and his fearsome enforcer building a planet-killing superweapon, a militarized rebellion leading a daring raid to exploit the superweapon's weakness, and the hero awakening to their own power. Yes, so much of it was what we'd seen previously in A New Hope, but it still made for an entertaining spectacle.
Of course, The Last Jedi changed things up fairly quickly, and didn't follow the same beats as Empire Strikes Back. For a while, I thought of it as Kylo Ren becoming aware of the cycle, and subconsciously taking steps to try to break it, given his goal was to "kill the past" so it no longer held any hold over him. This tied into his own character arc, of Kylo trying to eradicate the "light" within him so he could fully subsume himself in the Dark Side. Even Luke Skywalker seemed to resent the past, as he had sunk into self-loathing for his own failures and how close he'd come to crossing a line. Ultimately, the lesson in all of this was both not letting history define you any more than you allow it, learning from its mistakes and moving forward from failures.
Granted, Last Jedi received flak from fans by not giving more information on things hinted at in Force Awakens. Speculation had run rampant about who Rey's parents were, and where Supreme Leader Snoke had come from. Along comes the movie, and Rey's parentage is waved off-- junk traders who sold her for drinking money-- and Snoke is abruptly killed with no revelation as to his past. I thought that having Rey not be related to anyone from the Saga was a good decision-- the idea being that a powerful Force-user can come from anywhere-- although I didn't like that Snoke was killed off so easily, for as powerful as he was presented.
And then... we got Rise of Skywalker.
As I said at the start, I did enjoy the movie. It was fun, and at least gave us a conclusion. But right after leaving the theater, I turned to my Dad and remarked, "Well, that was a disjointed mess."
I'll get this part out of the way, although it's just an issue I have with the Star Wars universe in general, rather than just with this trilogy. I don't like how inconsistent Star Wars has been with regards to the scale of the galaxy. Traveling between star systems is sometimes treated as if it will take days or weeks, but here in Rise of Skywalker, it takes seconds or minutes to jump from one place to another. The Resistance is under a deadline-- in less than a day, the Final Order Fleet will launch and destroy any free world that refuses to surrender-- and the heroes are able to go from one world to another in very little time, all of which takes place before the deadline hits. And Rey is able to fly off from Endor to Luke's exile, then turn around and fly back in an outdated relic that had been submerged in the ocean for years. Furthermore, Lando and Chewie are able to take the Millennium Falcon from the Resistance base in the Outer Rim-- literally in the edge of the galaxy-- to the Core Systems, raise a massive fleet of friendlies, and then fly into the Unknown Regions to
Then we have the fact that we're introduced to more random new characters, presumably to drive The Merch. This has always been a thing in Star Wars movies, but even here, they felt shoe-horned in. Here comes an old flame of Poe's, to reveal his checkered past and tell us how evil the First Order is. And here's the tiny cute alien critter to hack into Threepio's brain. And here's another cute little droid. Here's the new military boss of the First Order, you know he's eviller than Hux was cuz he has a British accent! Oh, hey, the Knights of Ren finally show up and... contribute nothing except bodies to get cut down with a lightsaber.
But the most egregious issue that I had with Rise of Skywalker was just about everything to do with Palpatine. The Emperor himself returns in all his hammy glory, but his survival/resurrection is hand-waved as "the Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural." He's shoved in as being the one behind everything in Kylo Ren's fall to the Dark Side, even the one puppeteering Snoke from the shadows. He's also possessed by "all of the Sith," which is something that was never addressed in any previous Star Wars series like Clone Wars or Rebels-- although given this is Palpatine we're talking about, he could very well have been lying.
Palpatine was a master manipulator, though-- this is evident in the Prequel Trilogy, where he plays the Republic and the Separatists against one another, and further developed in Clone Wars, and he nearly turned Luke to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi just by talking at him and trying to drive him into despair and hatred. Here in Rise of Skywalker, however, he abandons his subtle manipulations and outright shows his hands way too soon. He broadcasts a message to the galaxy to reveal he's alive and that he'll destroy any world that opposes him, and furthermore tells Rey that if she kills him, he'll possess her and rule his new empire through her body. These actions cause the entire galaxy to rise up against him over Exegol, and it stays Rey's hand long enough for her to re-center herself and stay true to the light, rather than succumb to hatred.
And then we have another thing. Two words: Rey Palpatine. The biggest revelation is that Rey is the Emperor's granddaughter, the daughter of his son. A son that has never been addressed anywhere in the canon, and again it's hand-waved that her parents shed the name and lived as "nobodies" to protect her from the Emperor, who was actively searching for her. Nevertheless, you'd think that the fact that the ruler of the Empire having a child would have been public knowledge. Not that his son would have been a public figure-- Palpatine was savvy enough to know that allowing his child to go out in public would be a way for his enemies to strike at him-- but it still should have been known. And sure, if I were the son of Space Hitler, I'd change my name too and live as off-the-grid as possible, but it's still a huge ask to expect fans to not find that a bit out of left field.
I'm sure other critics and analysts could go on further about the issues that Rise of Skywalker had, but I think I've touched on enough of it. My brain will likely come up with ways to fill in some of the plot holes and weave more coherence out of what we got, but that doesn't excuse the mess of a script this movie was. We got a conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, as ham-fisted as it was, but at least we've got The Mandalorian to give us something good.
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