The more I dwell on it the less I blame this movie for its shortcomings, I feel like I can’t lay all the criticism on IX’s shoulders given the tight spot it was in. Had there been a through line things would be different, but especially in hindsight I got issues with the whole trilogy and TROS inherited some of that baggage, forcing it to be worse than it would have been with a cleaner structure underneath to support it.
This movie could have been about Max Rebo getting the band back together for one final performance of Jedi Rocks and it would have been better than TROS.
I don’t buy for a second the argument that the movie was dealt a shit hand from which to build from. Palpatine’s terrible return was the fault of TROS. Rey Palpatine was the fault of TROS. The lack of a final character arc for Finn, the total waste of Hux, the corner they painted the story into in the final battle, the joke of a final scene was all the fault of TROS.
There was a universe of squandered possibility here, and the filmmakers deserve no credit for this complete abdication of vision.