Movie Review: The Rise of Skywalker

Over Christmas break, the final movie of the new Star Wars trilogy was released, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
J.J. Abrams, the director of the movie, had his work cut out for him to impress fans after a disappointing episode eight. Although the new trilogy has many of the classic Star Wars characters everyone loves such as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, this movie focused on the return of another character for the original trilogy, Emperor Palpatine.
The return of the Emperor caused mixed reactions and left many fans and critics asking how did Palpatine survive and what was the whole point of the character Supreme Leader Snoke? However, Abrams nailed Palpatine’s return by making him seem weak but manipulative in the beginning and when he sucks the life force out of Rey and Kylo at the end, he regains all his power and becomes the extremely powerful character we all know him to be.
As for the plot of the movie, it’s almost a hide-and-seek game where Rey and her crew are tracing the steps of Luke Skywalker to find the location of a Sith holocron, a device that leads to the location of Palpatine. While trying to find the holocron, Rey also is on the run from Kylo Ren who wants to find Rey and turn her to the dark side after Palpatine told him who her parents were.
Next, perhaps one of the biggest spoilers in the whole movie, we learn who Rey’s grandfather is, Emperor Palpatine. This explains Rey’s ability to use force lighting which she shoots to destroy the transport ship that she thought had Chewbacca in it.
Despite many negative reviews, “The Rise of Skywalker” was by far the best movie of the new trilogy and connects back to the prequels and the original trilogy, unlike episode eight.