They sat down to make this movie, talked about how everyone hated different aspects of each of the last two, and then said, “You know what? Fuck it.”

And the “fuck it” that they made was incredibly entertaining and I had a ton of fun watching it.

This isn’t the Episode IX that I would have made, and the ST as a whole is not the ST that I would have made. But I’ve enjoyed all three films to varying degrees for different reasons. This is the only one where it didn’t feel like they were trying too hard to either Please Everyone (TFA) or to Do Something Super Serious and Controversial but Also Silly at the Same Time (TLJ). They were just having fun and inviting the fans to join in on the fun.

I really wish we’d have gotten an entirely different approach for the ST from the start rather than competing visions and then a “fuck it” finale, but I liked each of the competing visions for different reasons and the “fuck it” finale had me grinning the whole time and when it did take some risks, I liked the risks it took (even if the one big one I really liked seems to be a thing no one else interpreted the way I did).