A quick version: I like Episode 9, and think you should see it if you like Star Wars.
I'll start out by doing a quick recap of my opinions on earlier Star Wars movies to give you an idea of whether you might agree and how to know if my thoughts on Episode 9 are useful to you.
Original Trilogy: I love these movies. I acknowledge that there are flaws with them, but the movies are good enough that I still love them... even though Ewoks somehow managed to take on soldiers in armor and who had blasters. The trench run isn't very logical in its setup, but it's one of the best scenes in all of Star Wars. And the best scene in all of Star Wars is Luke and his father dueling at the end of Return of the Jedi. I love the original trilogy.
Special Editions: I don't think they needed to add a bunch of stuff on the screens, but I like some of it. The windows in Cloud City that they added were beautiful and made it seem more like a place people could live. And the trench run got some added X-Wing dog-fighting that I liked. But the idea that Greedo got a shot off is dumb and hurts the character arc of Han Solo (he's a shady guy willing to kill for convenience at the beginning and he gets to grow into a hero). I prefer the original versions.
Prequels: These are truly awful. I heard someone suggest once (https://redlettermedia.com/) that Episode 1 seems like we had reached the point where no one was willing to push back against Lucas when he spouted off a stupid idea. In the originals, Han Solo was going to be some kind of green skinned alien (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Solo), and C3-P0 was going to sound like a shady car salesman (https://www.vulture.com/2015/12/anthony-daniels-c-3po-c-v-r.html). Lucas was also going to use Wookiees in Return of the Jedi as his primitive species that helped the rebels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewok). What he should have done was dropped his idea of a primitive species, and made it a slave labor force of Wookiees that the rebels could rescue and let them tear up the Empire... but I'm digressing. The ewoks were the first bad idea Lucas sneaked through, but we know it wasn't the first bad idea he had. He had a bunch of creative people involved in making the originals that apparently pushed back and saved us from lizard Han, and shyster C3-P0. By the time the Prequels were made, no one pushed back and told Lucas that his ideas were dumb, and we ended up with poop jokes, political drama, and pod racing taking up half a movie. We only get 9 of the story of Skywalker. And the prequels sucked. I'm pissed about this.
Episode 7 - The Force Awakens: I'm unhappy that they chose to copy episode 4. I wrote a long post about my thoughts on this movie, https://highdex.blogspot.com/2016/05/my-thoughts-on-star-wars-episode-7.html, and there's a section of it listing the ways it's a copy that I noticed. I would have preferred that they bring us back to the Skywalker story with the familiar faces, and introduced the new characters in relation to them, instead of making the characters I was interested in into supporting characters. I like the new characters though. I just would like to have gotten a better idea of what happened in 30 years, especially around why the Empire/First-Order is still the most powerful organization in the galaxy and why the Rebels/Resistance is still the low-resource under-dog. Or maybe... don't have the bad guys still be in power and do something different. Like have the galaxy have changed in 30 years after winning the war against the Empire.
Rogue One - A Star Wars Story: I think they did okay with making the characters engaging. I remember being moved while watching it, but the movie wasn't very good. If you're going to tell the story of how the rebels got the plans for the Death Star star, maybe don't set it up so that it breaks some stuff in Episode 4. No reason for the rebels to analyze the plans to find a weakness if they got the part with the weakness out of the huge data bank and sent that specifically. And why can Darth Vader move so well in Rogue One, but not in Episode 4? Why didn't they take this chance to make a very cool spy movie? Maybe help explain why the custodian of the most important data in the galaxy is the same person who is sent to pick up the old Jedi Master? Eh... this one had good emotional engagement with decent characters, but it wasn't a good enough movie to overcome the things that stuck in my brain while watching it.
Episode 8 - The Last Jedi: The worst Star Wars I've ever encountered. I hate it. A lot. I'd like to hit Rian Johnson (the creator) with a baseball bat. Repeatedly. I wrote a long essay about that one too. Here. https://highdex.blogspot.com/2019/12/if-anything-i-hate-star-wars-episode-8.html
Solo - A Star Wars Story: I'm... hmm... kind of indifferent to this one. It was okay. It did a couple things I didn't need. But it was a side story and didn't really screw with anything I knew about Han. Eh. Whatever.
Episode 9 - The Rise of Skywalker
As mentioned near the top, this section contains spoilers. If you want to avoid those, the rest of this essay is not for you.
I'll start with the short list of things that caught my attention and tweaked me the wrong way a little... but I'm going to point out that while I consider these negatives, they aren't enough to make me dislike the movie.
- The Kiss: The kiss was... I guess it wasn't offensive, but I don't feel like it added anything. I think it could have been good without it. One of my favorite things about the movie Moana (I have kids that love it... don't judge me) is that Disney didn't try to force a romance into it. The two main characters are a man and a woman, and they spend a lot of time together helping each other out, but Disney left out the romance and that's a fantastic thing. Now, I don't think Episode 9 had much of a romance, but the kiss at the end wasn't really needed. I didn't need to think that feelings went that way. It could have been left out and we see the real friendship bond that was forged through all the struggle.
- Diad?: I didn't need the mumbo-jumbo about the two Force users being some kind of special duo. That wasn't really needed to explain anything and it didn't make the story better.
- A bit of cheese: I've only seen it once prior to writing this, so I'm having a hard time coming up a specific example (other than the next bullet point). But I remember the feeling a few times in the movie where I thought they might have pushed the cheese factor a little high.
- specific cheese... C3-P0: They seem to have written the bit about C3-P0 not being able to tell them where the location is so that they could have a scene where he gets kind of emotional and the writers try to tug on the heart strings a little. It felt a bit forced. Remember it's not bad enough to make me dislike the movie... just... felt a little out of place.
- Emperor Palpatine: Okay, the big bad guy is once again, Palpatine. Maybe it's better they didn't explain it. But Palpatine is alive and he's been gathering a huge fleet of Star Destroyers that each have a planet busting gun on them. I actually really like that we finally get to see something that's been happening over the last 30 years. But I'm a little iffy on bringing back Palpatine. Did he not die in Episode 6? Was he a clone that got the memories written in as a sort of backup for Palpatine? How old is he supposed to be if not a clone? Eh... it's... it's iffy.
- Final Fight... get on with it: In the final fight where Rey, Kylo, and the Emperor are facing off, I think you go through too many ups and downs. If you've seen it, maybe that makes sense to you. I just can't think of a clearer way to describe it.
- Leia's Vision and Lightsaber: Maybe I need to hear the description again... but Leia giving her lightsaber to Luke to hang on to because she had a vision it would be needed to defeat her son or something like that... I... I don't know. It was confusing when it was being explained, but it was also just a weird idea. Why not just say that Leia had left the thing with him when Ben snapped because she didn't want it anymore or something simple? Why not just have Luke hand her the extra lightsaber and say "you might need this... it's was Leia's a long time ago."? Just felt weird.
- Damage Control: The movie had to do a lot of damage control to fix the story from Episode 8 before it could end the series. So, it has scenes that seem to be direct responses to Episode 8. I consider that unfortunate because episodes 7 and 8 should have been made with the level of fan appeal and Star Wars flavor that Episode 9 has... and then Episode 9 wouldn't have to do any of that extra work.
Alright... that's my list of negatives. Maybe I'll think of more, but I think I really liked Episode 9. I went into it with the belief that there was no way to recover from the disaster of Episode 8. I was sitting at the beginning of the movie certain that I was going to hate it. I paid attention, and figured that the hits would start coming and never stop. But it didn't happen that way.
huh...
I was thinking that this would be the point in the review where I'd start listing the things I really enjoyed and made it feel like Star Wars again, but it doesn't feel right for me to do that. I really liked everything I didn't mention as a negative.
It FELT like Star Wars again to me. Maybe that's all I need to say.
So, I love the original trilogy (unmodified) and now I think I really like Episode 9.
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