okay okay just sat my ass down and watched Rise of Skywalker (i didn't care enough to pay actual money for it, lmao) so here are my thoughts.

Pros:
- ILM did an AMAZING job with VFX, some of those ships are sexy af (ahem T-70 X-WIng)
- Decent characterisation for most* characters
- Cohesive, well-thought out plot
- Scenes doing multiple things at once (as they should)
- Better than TLJ and fixed the mess of canon

Pros, continued:
- Nostalgia factor was strong with this one (Red Five, Wedge Antilles, R2 being awesome, Dejarik, and FUCKING BILLY DEE WILLIAMS WHAT A LEGEND)
- REY'S LIGHTSABER IS AWESOME
- Ian McDiarmid is a LEGENDARY MAN with an EVEN MORE LEGENDARY VOICE GOD DAMNNNN

Pros, continued:
- The touch with all the different Jedi voice actors saying Rey's name was really nice, they even included Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka!

That all being said, there were several points of this movie that made me cringe, so let's get down to it......

Cons:
- Reylo
- Reylo
- No seriously, the kiss was only for fan service...
- Poe got stereotyped into the "Hispanic drug-runner" role, because of course
- Even JJ can't fix the story after TLJ
- Pacing was a bit uneven
- Soundtrack was a bit lacking (no duel music? really? cmon)

Cons, continued:
- Character motivations for Hux and Kylo still make very little sense
- "Use the ion cannons", he says, just before all ships open up with TURBOLASER CANNONS (there's a big difference btw, see the end of this thread)
- Flying complex routes with no astromech

Okay things:
- The film was kinda self-aware (Holdo Maneuver, SKB was a waste of resources, etc)
- First Order actually was semi-competent in this film
- Horses?
- What happened to the dagger?
- Force visions being physically connected??????
- Force ghosts interacting physically?

More okay things:
- Hyperspace skipping... they were right in that it's extremely damaging to do (see: the Falcon is on fire), but blind jumps are obscenely dangerous because you could jump right into a fucking star or black hole or out of the plane of the galaxy...

And the greatest part of the whole film, of course:

CHEWIE FINALLY GOT HIS MEDAL!!!!!!

if anyone cares the difference between ion cannons and laser cannons/turbolaser cannons is that ion cannons are used to drain power (kinda like sheev's force lightning trick) but usually don't directly damage targets and also are inaccurate and slow

laser cannons are what you'd wanna use against fighters, they track very quickly bc they're relatively light weapons but they pack enough power to fuck up fighters. they fire really quickly too, which is important in anti-fighter defense.

turbolasers are like, giant fucking cannons used in ship-to-ship combat (like against an enemy capital ship) but they're slower-firing and slower-tracking, and also much more powerful. if you can hit a starfighter with it, there will be nothing left at all.