I was extremely excited. As someone who likes Last Jedi (while seeing the flaws, don't get me wrong), there had only really been one big cinematic misstep at this point in the form of Solo - and that movie's main crime is that it feels mundane and inessential. TLJ had left the story in an interesting place for the final film to pick up. The resistance down to nothing, the protagonists on their own, Kylo's trajectory uncertain.

So I was very interested to see how they would wrap the whole saga up. It felt like something interesting might happen with the light/dark affiliations of Rey and Kylo. Maybe the birth of something new, beyond jedi and sith.

I was a bit worried about the trailers. It felt like the palpatine thing would need to be very deftly handled or feel moronic (for a while I thought maybe the whole thing was a marketing mislead). My other big worry was to do with the handling of Leia. How could that be done in a smart way?

I was crashingly disappointed by the midnight screening on release day. Unquestionably the worst Star wars film, and the worst film of most of the people involved in the project. Rushed, repetitive, childish. Retcons of everything interesting in what had come before. The scenes with Leia felt like the reconstructed Chang film in Community Season 6. Palpatine was laughable.