I finally saw The Rise of Skywalker and I’m happy to say that if you spend months on the Internet encountering people’s explanations of why it’s terrible, it doesn’t come off as awful just not good. It’s bad, but I don’t hate it. I will not claim to have read or remembered all of your thoughts in this thread, so apologies if this is redundant, but it is nice to have a thread where I can write my thoughts out nonetheless.

The Good

Well the movie looked amazing. There were a lot of fantastic visuals, such as:
- Palpatine’s inverted trapezoid floating castle which is actually just a hat to his real fortress which is entirely underground
- The religious festival
- Rey & Kylo’s fight where they’re not even in the same room
- Rey & Kylo’s fight on the wreckage of the DSII
Palpatine’s return as an idea and his portrayal as a half-living corpse on the end of a medical robot-arm. I did not like this idea when I first heard it, but ultimately I think it’s pretty good (though not as good as maybe not doing this idea. But it did work.). I also liked the idea that Snoke was just a cloned-puppet, but of course it should have had some setup in the previous films (if they had given anything forethought)
Hux is The Spy. You don’t suspect him, but he does have a motive.
“The dead speak!” I know people hate this, but it’s pure Star Wars cheesiness, right up there with “War!”
The opening sequence with Finn & Poe on an exciting mission
Rey’s training and the tension between her and her friends and her priorities in life
The ways they managed to get Carrie Fisher into the movie. That was impressive
The idea that Palpatine contains the spirit of the previous Sith Lords. That was fantastic.

The Bad (aka Confusing, Poorly Explained, etc)

How did the Emperor return? Who knows about it? etc etc. This really should have been shown.
What was Kylo doing at the beginning of the movie? Yes, I know he was getting the Wayfinder, but it was way too short. Yes, I know this is because they cut out a lot of stuff - it really felt like they made a mistake there.
There should have been more stuff involving The Spy proving useful before his reveal & demise
An explanation of how the Emperor came to possess a big fleet. The Sith-Cultist society laboring for decades in secret isolation explanation is both implausible and barely in the film. Would have been better to just do it Katana Fleet style
The whole subplot about Rey’s parents being killed by that guy with the dagger was insufficiently set-up and poorly explained
Poe & Finn’s dangerous mission at the start should have taken place on Couruscant (fan-editors take note!)

The Ugly

Lightspeed skipping
The Jetpacks & Speeders chase
Not killing Chewie
Restoring Threepio’s memory
The size of Lando’s backup fleet
The attempt to cram as much OT stuff in as possible, especially the meaningless glimpses of Bespin & Ewoks at the end in an obvious but poorly-done and unnecessary callback to the SE ending of ROTJ
Obviously the whole thing with the dagger revealing where to find the wayfinder made no sense and was extremely stupid. Thankfully it was brief.
The Emperor’s Fleet was overpowered. Enough with the super-weapons, it’s been done, redone, and done again.
But if you’re going to blow up a planet, then Poe’s ex should have stayed dead (just like Chewie)
I, sadly, found Dominic Monaghan too distracting, as his every appearance just felt like Charlie from Lost had suddenly joined the Rebellion. And I say this as a person who liked Lost!
No characters except for Rey & Ben had a story or anything to do. This is a huge screw-up, and the cast’s obvious frustration with this in interviews is completely justified. Poe had a little bit of something when he talked with Lando about the burden of leadership, and that part was actually good, but should’ve been more. Finn had nothing, and should have had the lead-a-stormtrooper-rebellion as originally conceived. Rose had nothing to do and it is so sad. Even if you hate her “Saving what we love” bit in TLJ, her story with Finn was not all bad (except for the horse race, but that’s a different thread) and she should have been treated as part of the gang in this film instead of being reduced to the same level as Grunberg & Monaghan. Similarly, more Hux would have been good.