The ninth installment in the Skywalker saga tries to undo all of the plot points set up in Star Wars: The Last Jedi but it fails altogether.

Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker takes place a year after The Last Jedi. Palpatine, played by Ian McDiarmid, has returned and is planning on taking over the entire galaxy with a fleet of star destroyers that Palpatine calls The Final Order.

With this news, Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver, and Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, race to discover where Palpatine is; with both of their intents being to kill Palpatine, but for different reasons.

J.J Abrams returns to direct the final movie in the trilogy, after Rian Johnson was criticized for the ideas and new story elements brought up in The Last Jedi. But instead of trying to build upon Johnson’s vision, Abrams spends a third of the movie throwing all of Johnson’s ideas out of a window instead of writing an interesting story.

This results in many characters being wasted. Primarily, Finn, played by John Boyega. Finn’s character arc in 2015’s The Force Awakens, portrayed what it was like to be a stormtrooper, and explained to the viewers that most troopers were forced to kill and take over planets. Having Finn go rogue from the First Order and joining the Resistance was amazing storytelling and one of the most compelling plots brought up in the new trilogy.

But Rise Of Skywalker completely dismantled this idea, and Finn and Poe, played by Oscar Issac, kill stormtroopers without thought: ruining the idea that the troopers are real people and just degrading them into target practice.

The movie has a huge amount of plot holes with the most glaring one being the introduction of force healing and force draining. The idea that people can bring others back to life retcons every single death in the entire 9 episode saga. If it was possible for Jedi to do this, why wasn’t it done beforehand, or how did Rey and Kylo Ren learn it?

Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship is also horribly written. They constantly try to kill each other during the whole movie. Then Kylo turns back to the light, so Rey kisses him after he revives her? It’s so obvious that Abrams was trying to appeal to the fans who wanted them to end up together, even if it was from out of nowhere.

Palpatine as a villain is laughable. He manages to force drain most of Rey and Kylo, EMP’s all of the Resistances fleet, and ends up killing no one. He then is killed after Rey deflects his force lightning, and Palpatine doesn’t think for a minute to just stop shooting when he realizes Rey is deflecting said electricity.

Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker sends the Skywalker saga off on a terrible note. With terrible attempts to retcon the previous two movies although said movies actually had decent plot lines, Rise Of Skywalker earns a 2.4 out of 10.