If the central tenet of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was to kill the past to make way for the future, The Rise of Skywalker is all about bringing the dead back to life. After the divisive middle entry to this new Disney-helmed trilogy, The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was tasked with the Herculean feat of pleasing both the fans and detractors of The Last Jedi and with The Rise of Skywalker decides to just lean into resurrecting and regurgitating the past as much as possible, much like he did his first time out. The most obvious example of this comes in the form of our old pal Sheev, the Senator-turned-Supreme-Chancellor-turned-Emperor, whose appearance was teased to fans from the very first trailer, and his handling is a microcosm of the film’s issues writ large.

Bringing back the heaviest of heavies is no small task no matter what long-cherished property you’re talking about but feels even riskier and tenuous with IP as seemingly sacred as Star Wars. Palpatine’s presence has cast the longest of shadows over the franchise, the Sith Lord arguably as iconic a villain as protegé mouth-breather Darth Vader, so one could reasonably expect his resurfacing to be treated with the utmost attention and care. That, however, is simply not the case, the opening crawl doing the heavy lifting when it comes to reintroducing the character, Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) yada-yadaing how a principal legacy character survived certain death with a wave of the hand and a blurted offhand mention of clones, or whatever.

I bring up this example not to spoil the film (this happens in the very first moments of The Rise of Skywalker mind you) but to introduce the pretty flimsy logical framework which becomes more and more evident as the story proceeds. Here, more than ever, there seems a total disinterest in asking “how?” Star Wars has long thrived in the mystic and the mysterious, the whole idea of the Force at its best as an intangible abstraction that ebbs and flows through the fabric of the story. In fact, at critical points in the saga, the storytelling lost its luster when it sought to over-define the cogs behind the magic of the Force. The Phantom Menace’s attempt to qualify it as a measurable quality (vis-à-vis the much-maligned midichlorians) is held as a long-disdained ding against Lucas’ prequel entries. But there’s a major difference between allowing mystic qualities to embolden the series’ inherent mysticism and failing to properly address questions of logic and character development.

The Rise of Skywalker is victim to bungled character arcs and miffed logic partially because the new trilogy simply doesn’t operate as such. Cohesion is hard to come by because there is no apparent guiding narrative and subtextual principals that align beneath the Disney trilogy. Rather, this feels like three films loosely tied together battling to convey different theses. The passing of the baton from J.J. to Johnson was problematic, if not broken, and almost impossible to resolve coming into a final chapter. Just as The Last Jedi shook off its predecessor by tossing the metaphoric baton (in the form of Luke’s lightsaber) over its shoulder, The Rise of Skywalker picks up said baton and beats Johnson about the head with it. There is not harmony between these three films as a result and major story elements suffer in turn.

The ninth chapter and final entry to the Skywalker saga is an overstuffed, exposition-heavy, wild-goose chase across the galaxy that sees Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac) race around the galaxy to acquire various doodads and MacGuffins sure to lead them to the ghost-faced Palpatine, who plans to rule the galaxy once more, for whatever reason. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is there to throw a wrench in their plans and somehow is both the new Supreme Leader of The First Order and yet always seems to be off on his own chasing down Rey, trying to turn her to the dark side for reasons that are as murky as a glass of Bantha milk. The combative relationship/sibling-like-rivalry between Rey and Ren has until now been the most developed of the new trilogy but The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t really deliver in further complicating their bond or earnestly untangling it. Instead, they smash lightsabers a lot until the movie realizes that it needs to tie itself up into a tidy bow and things fall into place with a bit of a relegated whimper. The conclusion for many of these characters is neat and clumsy, none more so than Driver’s character, Abrams and Terrio rushing towards a predetermined conclusion without stopping to do the character work required to make said conclusion feel earned. The broad strokes are there but the minute connective tissue is paid almost no mind at all.

In the wake of Palpatine’s return, the First Order too is relegated to a convoluted and relatively minor threat, another decision that undoes what the first two films in this trilogy were seemingly building towards. Endeared to a sense of exponential and endless escalation, the latest Star Wars suffers a now-familiar miscalculation in assuming that bigger is necessarily better and Rise of Skywalker doesn’t hide its aspirations to be the biggest of the saga’s nine chapters, even if that means dismantling the narrative scaffolding that has existed up to this point. This results in some tremendous and breathtaking visual effects – a legion of Star Destroyers lining the skies for example – underscored by a darker palette that skews towards the older members of the audience who long begged for some tangible grit in their Star Wars. Abrams’ skill as a visual storyteller is never far from mind, his prowess as a technician persistently outshining his skill as a storyteller. But even the production design and wowing special effects play into the overwhelming criticisms of J.J.’s new movies: that they are little more than reflections of the original trilogy blown up to bigger proportions, often devoid of new storylines and unique themes.

Lucas famously opined that his prequel trilogy was meant to rhyme with the OT but Abrams has taken that mantra and driven it into the ground, opting to beg, borrow and steal rather than repurpose and reflect. There are flashes of originality to be had in Rise of Skywalker (and I unabashedly love the pure aesthetic look and texture of this entry) but they are too often few and far between and stuck between clunky exposition, far too much of the film devoted to plot contrivances, rescues, double-crosses, and reveals. With so much going on plot-wise, main characters/heroes Finn and Poe are again stuck in the same stalled-out gear, their “arc” (if you can even call it that) sadly resembling a flatline. Finn had one of the most intriguing introductions to the series imaginable but Rise of Skywalker doesn’t even try to grapple with the fallout of a deserter Stormtrooper and leaves the character with much unsaid. Place some blame on the fact that Skywalker has to make time for a deafening number of pitstops with nostalgia, a certifiable army of fan favorites clustering into the frame as if on a victory lap after a Super Bowl win, with pretty much any and every Star Wars character of note passing through the narrative for a fist bump or high five at one point or another.

While the first entry of this new Disnified trilogy put Harrison Ford’s Han in major focus and with Last Jedi centering around Mark Hamill’s Luke, Rise of Skywalker was intended to put Leia center stage but those plans were scrambled when Carrie Fisher unexpectedly passed away in 2016. By using archival footage, Leia is still a significant character in Skywalker though it’s hard to ignore the uncanny valley created by a script trying to make sense of footage that was already shot and somehow puzzling that into new plots and conversations. Her scenes are often awkward and choppy and makes one scrunch up their face with a “hmmm” but the impossible situation that the trilogy-capper had to handle was never going to be neatly resolved and Abrams and co. do the best with what they have to give the character a proper send-off without her presence feeling too contrived or off-colored.

Perhaps this is part of the main takeaway from a trilogy that has been all about taking two steps forward and one step back, one that has split fans down the middle, and left few wholly satisfied: that through the ups and downs, there remains for some an undeniable affinity for these characters and their galaxy far, far away. That the Star Wars property even at its least inspired is still Star Wars. And despite the myriad issues I claim with this new trilogy, I cannot deny its raw wide-eyed entertainment value and my inherent inexplicable draw to its telling. Nothing in the world of movies quite looks, feels, or sounds like Star Wars and even though Rise of Skywalker may ultimately be more impersonator than originator, I still found myself gawking and gasping, often in spite of the critical warning bells going off in my brain trying to checkmate the diehard fan still alive in me. And like Luke telling Vader that he still senses good in him, I find myself at a crossroads, examining my own relationship to fandom, weighing out the laundry list of critical shortcomings against the loads of activated pleasure centers that Skywalker endeavors to light up. It’s a disharmonious process and not one I’ll soon have a concrete answer to but, at the end of the day, I still sense a fan in me.

CONCLUSION: The Star Wars series as we know it comes to a close in a clunky and almost-kinda-maybe satisfying fashion, but not without its shortcomings. The force may not be strongest with Abrams attempt to wrap up the Skywalker saga, amd some of the characters certainly get the short end of the stick because of it, but fans will still probably find themselves seduced even by its dark side, so long as they don’t search their feelings too much.