JJ tried to cram so many references and returns from the original trilogy that's ridiculous... characters come back, species, scenes are recreated, lines are repeated. the only thing not included in this package deal is Leia's golden bikini.

characters die and they come back. more than once. coupled with the "Hey kid" line and others, it's basically a mashup of Lost and Star Wars. was glad when it was over.

The dialogue was super weak, with every line being a stock action movie cliche delivered in a loud declarative manner, rather than like any real conversation. The story was a lot of bland cliches. Having Rey turn out to be related to Palpatine felt like some serious fanfiction-grade bullshit. All of the story choices could have been good if the movie felt like it had teeth, but it's just like cotton candy, no substance at all.

THE BAD:
Okay, so Palpatine had a son who ended up being completely normal and not indoctrinated to the dark side/Empire? Really? Everything about Palpatine in this movie was insanely lazy and contrived. He *checks notes* somehow survives falling down the Death Star exhaust shaft in ROTJ (thereby rendering Anakin bringing balance to the force moot), has legions of cultists who *checks notes* manage to produce a fleet of Star Destroyers with each one carrying a literal Death Star cannon. What. The. Fuck. This is carbon-copied from the absolute worst dregs of the old EU. Of course they destroy a planet with said Death Star cannon and we don't care. Why should we?

Of course Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter. Nothing matters anymore.

The "find the Sith wayfinder" plot was really poorly-written, as each prior victory is rendered meaningless by the subsequent plot development. Kylo Ren crushes the other of the two wayfinders? That's okay, Rey can just use the one in his TIE fighter. And great, the unicycle droid already knows where the location of Palpatine's planet is. Awesome. It really feels like the writers were just spinning their wheels, trying to kill time.

I'm not entirely against Palpatine coming back in some fashion, but the way they introduced him was so ham-fisted. "The dead speak!" Haha fuck you. We're just going to have him pop up in the first five minutes without explaining anything. Either before or after this part.

There are so many "what? I can't believe they actually killed that character!" fakeouts. Chewie. Rey. Kylo Ren (twice!). Nothing matters.

Old characters show up just for nostalgia's sake. Lando didn't need to be there. Why was he on that one desert planet anyway? Doesn't matter.

I literally laughed out loud when General Hux spontaneously blurted out "I'M tHe SpY." Really hilarious stuff.

The Knights of Ren were pointless. Basically just more mooks. Why did they fight Kylo/Ben Solo at the end? Presumably he was still technically their leader? I don't know. Nothing matters.

There's a lot more that I can't think of at the moment.

THE GOOD:
Honestly, I thought the continuation of the "force link" plot device from TLJ was mostly well-done, especially at the end with the saber-switching. Acting, especially from Adam Driver and the main trio, was pretty good. That's about all I can think of.

how the fuck do they hammer the "don't be afraid of what you are" theme so hard only to completely ignore it at the end? rey's a palpatine, and should've said her name was palpatine not fucking skywalker.

chewie getting the medal he didn't in a new hope was also just palm-thru-face bad and almost degrading

They should have killed Chewy for real instead of pulling off that lame switch. Give me some real hero setbacks dammit.

- Planets blowing up, again (and we care less and less of course).
- Kylo redeems himself Vader-style at the last moment and of course all is forgiven.
- Luke being Vader's son is a cool plot twist!!, so of course we have to repeat that with Rey (nevermind Rian Johnson saying "fuck all that", gotta have that magic blood!).
- Rey vs Darth Rey = Luke fighting Vader-as-himself in ESB
- Secret hidden planet no one in the galaxy knew about, coordinates hidden on MacGuffin = literally the premise of TFA (which was stupid back then too, gotta love that double down from JJ)
- Poe = discount Solo
- Palpatine = ...well, we don't have any ideas of how to make a villain as cool as Palpatine so let's just literally bring him back!

Someone on Era summarized it better than I could so I'll just paste it here:

Ochi is a "Jedi hunter"/Sith loyalist who Sheev, who must have been alive since at least 15 ABY or so, sent out to capture his granddaughter. He found Rey's parents on Jakku but they sold (!!) their daughter to Unkar Plutt to protect her, then he captured them and took off in his ship (even though Rey was standing RIGHT THERE YELLING AT THE SHIP TO COME BACK). When he couldn't get the parents to speak about Rey's whereabouts, he killed them with his ceremonial dagger, which he had specifically carved to visually demonstrate the location of Sheev's Wayfinder within the wreckage of the Death Star if you hold the dagger up at a certain angle and stand on a certain spot of land. For some reason. He also inscribed on the dagger in the Sith runes the coordinates to find the DSII pieces. He then went to Pasaana, for some reason, and Luke and Lando were chasing him presumably because he's a Jedi hunter and he knew the way to Exegol, which they wanted to find for reasons, but he died when he stepped into quicksand outside his parked ship and got eaten by a snake.

If he wanted Rey to strike him down so he could enter her mind and control her as some supreme Sith Lord, why even tell her his intention, which would make her hesitate? If he had said nothing, she would have struck him down in a rage and he would have won...

So of course she refuses, so... he starts killing her friends with his super-OP Sith lightning. Okay. That's not a moral ultimatum that Rey is meant to struggle with, that's just... overpowering your foe with force. So, he's winning no matter what, aight. Except... he stops attacking the ships, and starts attacking Rey for some reason. Even though he doesn't need to because she's powerless to stop him from going all Zeus on her friends and if she attacks him she also loses because "mwahaha Sith magic". But now that he attacks her directly she can just defend herself and AH-HA SHE HAS TWO LIGHTSABERS, didn't see that coming huh Palpy? So.... he gets melted by his own lightning and loses.

Again. Like.... bruh just stop using the lightning. Just... stop. Are you a Force Lightning addict? Do you need help? Is it like incontinence but with Force Lightning instead of a bladder?

It was essentially trying to destroy what Rian did and build back up again. The rebuilding of Kylo's helmet pretty much blatantly gave an f you to Rian.

- Ignore the stupid romance angle Johnson tried to shove onto Rose/Finn. Just ignore it.
- Ignore Poe being a mutinous asshole who gets people killed. He's a smartass leader again.
- Train Rey formally as a Jedi, as was intended after TFA but fucked by Johnson. And Leia did it, which was cool. I liked learning that Leia had formal training from Luke, because that just makes sense, and that she had her own lightsaber and everything.
- Can't un-kill Luke, so have him Forceghost around.
- When the Resistance calls for help, people fucking COME. Not the no one helps so oh well I guess we lose after all bullshit of TLJ.
- Nobody runs out of fuel going anywhere, for any reason.
- The "Hondo Maneuver", aka ramming things at lightspeed for an insta-win, is just hand-waved away. And good riddance.