Watching Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker, it’s so painfully clear. Endings are bittersweet. Goodbyes can be messy and difficult, even when you try your best. And this is true even when you know that the breakup’s been a long time coming, and it’s way past time to move on.

But must a wrap-up of a beloved, if highly inconsistent, 40-year franchise feel so disjointed, overloaded and so-so? Rise of Skywalker, directed by J.J. Abrams from a script he and Chris Terrio wrote, is sleek, hollow and anonymous. It feels like a capitulation to fanboys who got their tighty-whities in a twist over The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson’s terrific attempt to show a more adventurous, inclusionary, open-hearted way forward for whatever lies ahead for the Star Wars universe.

What Abrams and Co. have given us as goodbye to the nine-movie Skywalker series instead feels well-intended but corporate and unimaginative, box-ticking fan service heavy on nostalgia porn. His “solution” to a problem that some us thought didn’t need fixing is to jam every Star Wars movie ever made into one two-hour-and-22-minute movie. He bends himself inside-out trying to please, but by trying to give fans a little bit of everything, we get lots of sound and fury signifying little or nothing.

It’s nowhere near as good as oh, say, The Empire Strikes Back or The Last Jedi—and let’s face it, they’re good movies and not great ones. But few of us seem to crave a great Star Wars movie of the kind that maybe a Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho, Alejandro G. Iñárritu or Kathryn Bigelow could deliver.

At least for the first 30 minutes or so of The Rise of Skywalker—which more or less picks up where The Last Jedi leaves off—it’s maddeningly long on plots and subplots but frustrating in its lack of sweep, oddity, purpose or fun. The all-too-familiar voice of the Hitlerian Palpatine transmits a dark, menacing message from deep space (“The dead speak!” rumbles the familiar yellow opening crawl).

This sends our noble resistance fighters tearing around from faraway planet to planet, risking life and limb to gather an exotically named what’s-it. Unless procured, it will spell gruesome defeat to the good guys and the triumph of the villains, like the reigning new Supreme Leader of the First Order, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, giving his all despite ridiculous dialogue and tiresome plot twists).

The movie, basically action scenes and shootouts strung end-to-end, becomes slightly more watchable and amiably enjoyable because of the interplay among (the very, very good) Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, (especially) Oscar Isaac, C-3PO and Chewbacca as they band together to do what they’ve been scripted to do. But even the potential zip of these scenes is drained because the movie keeps them so busy running, dodging, flying around that there’s little focus on character, charm, humor or good, snappy dialogue.

Even the quirk and spark of actors like Richard E. Grant and Domhnall Gleeson get crushed under the weight of having to deliver silly, villain-y dialogue without a trace of a wink or dazzle. Only Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine raises a shiver or two, courtesy of the actor’s skills and some groovy lighting effects.

The film is full of cameos, resurrections and callbacks. Though the late Carrie Fisher’s mere presence—cobbled together from repurposed footage, trims and ends—should be enough to raise a lump in the throat, how clumsily she has been shoehorned into the plot conjures cold chills instead of the misty eyes and plucked heartstrings that John Williams’ majestic score delivers. And so, Star Wars ends with a whimper, not the royal farewell the franchise deserved.