10 Movie Messages Completely Undermined By Their Ending

It's fair to say that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was ultimately a victim of the wildly mixed messaging and uneven plotting across the entire sequel trilogy, but nevertheless contradicted one of the more appealing messages established in the previous film, The Last Jedi.

Rian Johnson's divisive middle-chapter revealed that Rey's (Daisy Ridley) parents were some junkie nobodies, while ending with one of the young stable-hands on Canto Bight using the Force to move a broom.

These two plot points teed up the notion that anyone can be a Jedi, regardless of their humble origins - a slam-dunk of an idea which surely appealed to audiences both young and old.

But The Rise of Skywalker flatly betrayed this by ultimately revealing that Rey is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and then having her adopt the honorary Skywalker name at the very end of the film.

For many, the appeal of Rey was precisely that she was a nobody without any direct links to existing Force users, but by making her grandpa one of the most powerful Sith in history and then having her continue the Skywalker lineage aggressively undermined that.