Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
The whole family went to see this, and while I have some major dislikes when it comes to the last two movies, this one somewhat redeemed the sequel trilogy. To me it felt like episodes 1-6 told a complete story, and there really was no need to add anything to it unless they had something new to offer, which as it turns out, they really didn't. Episodes 7-9 just riff off of the originals (with episode 8 borrowing from Battlestar Galactica as well) while ruining the happy ending that the major characters earned at the end of Return of the Jedi. The treatment of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi honestly made me a little angry, and to date episode 8 is the only main Star Wars movie I have not gone to see in the theater.
Rise of Skywalker answers a lot of questions, finally treats the older characters with respect, and really attempts to be as epic as it can possibly be rather than deconstruct the series and the characters. It falls short, but it does try, and I appreciate the attempt. There are all sorts of callbacks and cameos to earlier movies and even the animated series. The late Carrie Fisher is given a decent storyline given the limited amount of unused footage they had to work with, and Harrison Ford gets a cameo appearance. Mark Hamill gets a small but crucial role, and C3Po finally gets more than two lines as he finally gets to play an important part in the plot. Even Lando finally makes a return. The newer characters, Rey, Finn and Poe spend the first half of the movie together, something they had not done up to this point, and get to show what a good cast they are and how well they work together. And since they killed off the ostensible big bad in the middle of the last one, they opted to bring back Emperor Palpatine who somehow returned from the dead.
Overall it's a fun action movie that pushes the nostalgia buttons and retroactively improves the previous two episodes, but this entire sequel trilogy has been such a wasted opportunity, and adds nothing to what Lucas originally gave us. The lack of planning is very apparent as episode 7 set up a situation, episode 8 completely alters everything, and then episode 9 attempts to course correct as best it can. That it largely succeeds is amazing.