Fan service is undoubtedly going to be a term thrown around in bunches over the next year or so as everyone hashes out this movie in both good ways and bad ways. I get it, as it has to some extent hit some levels we've never seen before lately. However, with that said, I'd caution everyone to maybe not use the term as loose as people in general have used it over the past couple years, as I think it has somewhat gone too far and turned into a lazy, loose and easy word to throw out. Its been pervasively and will be pervasively used a lot with both this movie and Avengers: Endgame most notably, which both happen to be the capstone or conclusions to a long saga of movies. One needs to maybe ask themselves first, what are we truly wanting out of these movies really? If we are wanting a true conclusion/capstone to a series, isn't part of that intrinsically to hearken back a decent amount to its predecessors in order to pay off story lines and pull everything together into a satisfying conclusive manner? Shoot, isn't that what we SHOULD want from a great conclusion, because I'm seeing a decent amount of this stuff also getting lumped in as unneeded fan service? On the flip side, I get it that writers/directors can go a little too hot and heavy sometimes, which then gets into the true fan service category and nobody is going to deny that there is at least some of this in "The Rise of Skywalker". How much is somewhat debatable. There is definitely somewhat of a sliding scale to this whole thing. Anyway, I'm not trying to call anybody wrong or anything, but I do think that fan service has turned into too loose and wide of a derogatory word when a healthy level of fan service is actually a really good thing to have.
With all that said, I do leave a big counterargument question hanging out there for sure after all those word I just threw out, which is what was this new trilogy truly supposed to be? Great question, and it is honestly maybe one of my biggest criticisms of Lucasfilm throughout this entire trilogy. Is this supposed to be a brand new trilogy in and of itself, meant to take us into a new territory of Star Wars? Was this trilogy truly supposed to be a continuation of its predecessors/the Skywalker story, and meant to be a conclusion to a 9-film arc? Or, was it meant to be something in the middle somewhere? Well, beings how there seemingly was no story-arc planned from the get-go to this thing, it kind of seems like it ultimately attempted being all 3 of those things at once, but just at different times in the trilogy. Therefore, the inevitable result was a bunch of wonkiness to the whole thing that inevitably didn't satisfy anyone entirely throughout.
