LogFAQs > #980555654

The Last Jedi. It took the stuff from TFA and listened to audiences who wanted a new direction. And it lead to a potentially really interesting third act.

It made some unpopular choices, but it was at least trying to do something. Rise of Skywalker threw everything away as if that would win over anyone who didn't like TLJ but then tried to wrap a trilogy up as if it had two completely unrelated previous movies.

• New character in Rose Tico? racists online got really mad at her so lets cut her to "rebel with speaking role"
• Kylo Ren is basically an unhinged school shooter? naw screw that now hes a sexy badboy who just needs a girl to "fix" him

and so on. Throw in some shitty nostalgia grabs and you've got a soulless star wars movie.

I think if you ignore literally everything and put Rise of Skywalker in a vaccum, you might like it more as a "who cares generic space action romp" than The Last Jedi. But it isn't. Rise of Skywalker is trying to be both a capstone to a trilogy (that its largely ignoring) as well as the culmination of a 9-movie saga (that its largely ignoring).

Even if Rise of Skywalker was worse as a movie, if it at least tried to continue on from what TLJ actually did, I think the whole trilogy would be way higher regarded.