saw the movie yesterday. here are some sloppy thoughts i had (SPOILERS, of course):
- the editing was weird as hell. especially in the beginning. we immediately get shots of kylo ren in the middle of battle killing a bunch of random people we have no idea who they are. rey's introduction where she's shown floating and lifting the rocks around her was done with absolutely no buiild up whatsoever. almost everything about the movie's editing was incredibly manic, and there were a LOT of cuts, probably moreso than any SW film.
- trying to build some emotional tension with no pay off whatsoever. two particularly glaring examples were with chewie getting 'killed' and c-3P0 'losing his memory''. in the first case, it could have had some great impact and character development for rey, but then we find out chewie is alive and rey herself finds out chewie is alive not too shortly after. hell, did rey even hug chewie when she saw him again?
then we had the shit with 3PO. that, i thought was also going to be a very important and sentimental moment, only for it to be treated comically when he loses his memory and then once again when he gets it restored. the crew seems sad about what's going to happen for a grand total of 30 seconds and then they just fucking move on! then when 3P0 gets his memory back, literally no one fucking cares! i swear, rey, poe and finn are some of the worst friends ever.
- jumping off of the previous complaint, i also absolutely hated how one of the important subplots in the movie was that 3po refused to translate the inscription on the dagger, so they had to fly over to some different planet so that they could get someone to extract it from his memory. i'm sorry, but come on, that's STUPID! i'm not a fan of self-made conflicts.
- the entire stupid dagger bullshit - one of the things that bothered the shit out of me in TLJ was how finn and rose were looking for this super specialized 'codebreaker', who they wind up never meeting, only to COINCIDENTALLY find some random dude, who just happens to be a hacking genius, in the same cell that they're locked up in. the universe is big, but apparently quite small too.
ROS does something similar where the team comes across the dagger BY COMPLETE FUCKING ACCIDENT. they fell into the sand trap or whatever they called it, and just HAPPENED to be the location to find exactly what they needed. again, small universe! also, very nice that the violent, raging, ocean it was right next to didn't happen to further deteriorate or even move the death star from it's position for over 30 years!
then on top of that, whoever made that dagger, just happened to create a map that (AGAIN) COINCIDENTALLY corresponded perfectly well to the remaining shape of the death star wreckage. i mean, WHAT ARE THE ODDS
- spoiling palpatine in the opening crawl was pretty shitty
- almost all the 'jokes' fell flat. there was barely any laughter in the theater (THANK GOD)
- i don't mind that force healing suddenly showed up out of nowhere, but would it really kill James Cameron to have offered at least some kind of throwaway line to explain what it was and why rey (and kylo) suddenly have that ability?
- while i thought the finn and rose subplot was the worst thing in TLJ, i thought it was pretty fucked up that rose got completely sidelined and relegated to paper pushing
- as someone already mentioned, the scene where the triumphalism for when the backup for the rebellion shows up felt really undeserved. sure, there was the grandiose theme playing, but it felt very flat imo. it SHOULD have been a great scene, but it wasn't. there was some build up to it, sure, but it wasn't particuarly well done, imo.
- i always enjoy seeing new tech introduced in the SW movies. while i think the star destroyers themselves are cool, just giving them a major powerup is a pretty lazy way to handle things.
- does anyone think this film had any memorable set pieces? again, not to be a broken record, but for all its problems, i thought TLJ absolutely nailed the final battle sequence on crait. there is nothing remotely as memorable imo as luke standing in front of the AT-ATs.
- and i guess the last thing i'll say is that i felt the movie had very few good emotional moments. i mean, maybe the scene with han and ben was good, i'll probably grant that. but that's about it. even with that though, i didn't think there was anything in the movie that was a gutpunch like when luke winked to 3p0 in TLJ.