Fixing "The Rise of Skywalker"

The Star Wars sequel trilogy have not aged well. By my book, "The Rise of Skywalker" remains the best of the bunch, but that's largely because "The Force Awakens" is a Greatest Hits compilation of older films, while "The Last Jedi" is just a mess. Still, "The Rise of Skywalker" has very significant weaknesses.

I've been giving some thought to this, and I have a proposed fix. Though, naturally, it's largely useless - there's no more prospect of this film being redone than the final season of "Game of Thrones".

In my opinion, there are three big problems with "The Rise of Skywalker". The first is the revelation that Rey's parents aren't "nobody" after all, but rather that they all tie into Palpatine's plans... but in a frankly ham-fisted way. Secondly, there's the issue that our heroes' big plan at the end is to send a message calling for help from the galaxy... which they did in "The Last Jedi" and received no response. Finally, there's the problem that Finn basically has nothing to do - apparently, he's Force Sensitive, but this is handled so badly it reads as an unrequited crush on Rey, and even that goes nowhere.

So...

My solution to the Rey thing is actually pretty simple: have her parents be, almost literally, nobody. More specifically, we know that Anakin was conceived through the Force and therefore had no father - it would be easy enough to have Palpatine repeat the same trick to conceive a new child into which he planned to pass his consciousness. Indeed, it would be a fairly small step for him to combine that with Kaminoan cloning techno-magic and eliminate both parents entirely. And thus, instead of being a previously-unmentioned son, all we need is for Rey's 'parents' to be researchers who absconded with the child, and that all ties together.

Regarding the other two issues...

One of the big themes of Star Wars, in all the films, is that complacency kills. The Jedi are brought down because their arrogance blinds them to the danger of Palpatine. Tarkin dies because he doesn't recognise the danger the Rebels pose to the Death Star. The Empire is ultimately undone by the Ewoks.

One of the plot points of the sequel trilogy is the use of child soldiers by the First Order - they have abducted masses of children from the galaxy (apparently including Lando's child, though they neglected to actually mention that in the film), indoctrinate them, give them guns, and call it good. And, to a large extent, those troops are held in place by the force of Phasma's personality - Phasma being dead as of "The Last Jedi".

So...

I would have thought that the solution to both the final plan and to Finn having nothing to do would be for Finn to lead the First Order's Stormtroopers in their own rebellion against Palpatine - and thus the First Order is brought down by its complacency about its own troops.

And this would actually be easy to arrange with minor tweaks to the film: there's a scene early on where the First Order agree to step up their "recruitment" - step one is to add a comment to the effect of "are you sure? We've been seeing many more defections now that Phasma is dead..."

Step two is to reveal that the informant is actually legion - lots of Stormtroopers are leaking information under a single codename (Fulcrum). Then, when Finn and Poe are captured and set for execution, rather than Hux shooting the Stormtroopers, it is they who shoot him in the leg, reveal themselves to be Fulcrum, and then they all flee together. (And then Hux gets shot as the informer without a chance to explain himself, followed by the same arrogant "I've found the leak" statement by Pryde as in the film...)

And that way you get a well-established indication that the Stormtroopers are fit to rebel, and so in goes Finn, back in armour, together with the ex-Stormtroopers from earlier in the film and Jannah and her troupe.

(If they wanted, they could even still have that whole "there are more of us..." scene - there's no reason Lando and Chewie couldn't take the Falcon to try to gather allies. It just shouldn't be something they rely on.)

And that's more or less it - the rest is details. For instance, I would be inclined to name the Final Order flagship "Skywalker", thus making the Rise both literal (in that it is seen rising from Exegol) and thematic (as it rises from captivity back to the light). The Sith dagger shouldn't point to the ruins of the Second Death Star (much less a singular location within that ruin) - you need some other, less contrived, path to that. And, frankly, there should be a massed battle between Jedi and Sith Force Ghosts at the end - with Vader and Anakin being the last two standing.

Or something like that, anyway.