They killed Chewbacca!

Nah not really, they made you think they killed him but he's actually fine. Like not even injured. He's totally fine.

But seriously, they wiped C-3PO's memory!

Nah they didn't for real wipe his memory cause R2-D2 had it stored in the cloud all along. It's all good.

But dudes! Domhnall Gleeson was a spy working for the Resistance the whole time!

But no, that reveal was only used to get our heroes from point J to point K and his character was immediately killed and replaced by Richard E. Grant, an Empire mucky muck who has been up to now unseen in the entire chronology but managed to get a transfer into the big leagues cause he was nominated for an Oscar.

My favorite part of this movie was when Rey, Finn, Poe, and the gang are walking through the desert and are swallowed up by quicksand. But it turns out it's not deadly at all, it just dispenses them into a tunnel system. This is when I decided to take a piss and get more beer. When I came back, every single one of them was back on surface level and literally nothing had changed. I skipped a scene of peril that had no effect on anything whatsoever.

I've never been actively mad at J.J. Abrams until now. M:I III is solid, and I remember The Force Awakens and Super 8 fondly. But as far as I can tell, The Rise of Skywalker functions as an event that leads to another event, at which point characters-- based on the near consequences of the previously mentioned event-- head towards another event where new and longstanding characters help them with a separate event, which leads to an event, and then that event leads to a final event. And ghost Hamill and ghost Ford make appearances.

I know I'm a Marvel fanboy and have been known to wear rose-tinted glassed to every MCU film, but I swear to God that if I bore witness to such careless storytelling, belligerent fan service, and inconceivable lack of cinematic principles-- by which I mean "story through pictures"-- I would be even more livid than I am now. Abrams is a corporate fuckboy. He quite simply does not know how to tell a story visually.

All hail Rian Johnson. I would never have said that before, but holy shit. I appreciate the courage, competence, and dynamics of Last Jedi so much more now.