Yeah, but we were talking about the dead serious moments: the epic battles between light and dark.
OK, so it’s better than Force Awakens…that’s pretty much the only good thing I can say about it. It’s still very derivative of Empire Strikes Back (and a little of Return of the Jedi) but not as badly or blatantly as TFA was of A New Hope…or maybe my expectations were just so low I wasn’t insulted this time as a fan. Someone had to use a free ticket they got to get me to go though. I was content waiting three months for it to come out on DVD. Although, I wasn’t looking forward to avoiding spoilers for that long. I had Rogue One spoiled for me in this thread…twice. The second time, I did not forget what I read though. >_<
If you haven’t seen the movie, what are you doing in this thread? I strongly suggest you stay out of here until you’ve seen it. (Please don’t pay for at ticket. Wait for it to come out on DVD. It’s not worth it.)
Many things were predictable, just stupid, ripoffs, or badly done:
1. The crawl is the worst written one yet. It feels so blunt.
2. Opening sequence is obviously homage to something that happened offscreen in OT (the evacuation of the Massassi Base) but the Rebels had a much longer head start than this idiot "Resistance."
3. Kylo’s custom TIE is an obvious TIE Avenger knockoff.
4. The “phone call” seen was just overdone, felt forced, and just didn’t feel Star Wars, even though it was supposed to be homage to the "slight weapons malfunction."
5. OK, I’m fine with the female leads, but I felt like Leia’s successor to command should’ve been male or better yet, non-human. At that point it just felt like they were trying too hard with Vice Admiral Holdo. (Go ahead and crucify me for this.)
6. Deus ex Force Leia after sucking vacuum
7. Oh noes! The Rebels, er, Resistance is being pursued by the Empire, umm, I mean First Order after fleeing their base. Hmm…where have I seen this before…and done better!
8. Seriously, you can track ships through hyperspace? What the fuck is this, Battlestar Galactica? Even they had an actual explanation for that shit instead of pulling it from their asses! Being able to track ships through hyperspace like they did seriously diminishes the significance of hyperspace.
9. Rose fangirling over Finn made it obvious they would get together after spending time on a “sidequest” on Canto Bight.
10. Seriously, that diversion on Canto Bight is almost entirely irrelevant to the plot!
11. Other than the fangirling I didn’t really see any foreshadowing to Finn and Rose getting together, but that fangirling was way too fucking obvious that they would hook up. It should’ve been more subtle. I mean Leia slowly warms up to Han, and the fact they are in a life-or-death situation brings those emotions to a boil in a much more believable way than how Rose and Finn get together. Did not see her saving him coming though.
12. Bars in a jail? They have all this fucking money on this planet and they don’t use force fields?! C’mon, this is Star Wars! At least just use a locked room.
13. Some of the bad homage to the OT are just there for the hell of it. Those that are really in to Star Wars will recognize that Luke going to Cloud City to save his friends had no effect on their fate whatsoever. Similarly, Poe’s plan to temporarily sabotage the tracker on the Star Destroyer didn’t seem like it had any effect on the plot either, but it actually did. It put the evacuating transports in jeopardy, because of DJ, the Fair Weather Mercenary Code Breaker. I completely agree with what Poe did, based on what he knew (better to go out on a Hail Mary than doing nothing). If Holdo would’ve let him in on the plan so he’d shut up, maybe he would’ve backed down (probably not) but from a narrative point, he makes their situation worse.
The only way to rationalize Holdo’s decision is that she was hoping an opportunity would present itself while the clock was ticking. How did they not detect Crait before? Was it that they traveled that far in a matter of hours? Possibly. The Falcon flew to the Anoat System from Hoth on engines. I don’t know, it just seems implausible. There was really no indication that Holdo had some plan she wasn’t letting anyone in on. That makes her seem rather impulsive than cool, calm, collected, and deliberate. This move is a fucking ass pull on the writers, because we don’t know what’s going on in her head, and there’s no indication in dailogue they flew into another system while on the run.
OK, I realized this isn’t true now, because if Luke never went to Cloud City, R2 never would’ve been reunited with the party and found out from the city’s computer that the Falcon’s hyperdrive had been deactivated, and the party would’ve been captured by the Executor, so technically, Luke did save his friends…by bringing R2.
14. No ship(s) that small has (have) a cloaking device, and the materials to manufacture them no longer exist! (Yes, EU I’m citing, I don’t care).
15. Vice Admiral Holdo utters “godspeed” twice. What the fuck is this! This is Star Wars! God has no place in the Galaxy Far Far Away! The most immersion-breaking moments in the movie. There is no “God,” there is the Force. She should’ve said, “may the Force be with you, Rebels,” or “may the Force be with us.” What the fuck was that?
16. This probably only bothers me because I was totally expecting, “do you know who your parents are, Rey,” big reveal, although, the direction they’re going in seems like Rey is Luke’s daughter, but they could be using foreshadowing to mislead the audience, in which case, they better have a really good explanation in the next sequel or a lot of people are going to be mad. I thought they could be brother and sister, but it seems unlikely Han and Leia would have been convinced to abandon her in response to Ben turning to the dark side This doesn’t seem like it lines up with Rey being Luke’s daughter either though…but I guess that could be slightly more plausible…unless Han and Leia hid her cause they didn’t want her to become a Jedi. I’m pretty sure they will turn out to be related, as I don’t see anything else that would connect them with a Force bond.
17. I really thought Holdo was going to use the cruiser to physically shield the transports from the Star Destroyer’s gunfire, but using it in a hyperspace kamikaze attack goes against the physics of hyperspace in the Galaxy. They took Han’s ass pull escape with the Falcon from his freighter’s hangar in TFA to a whole new level. They must’ve had to dig so deep for that one, they had to perform a colonoscopy to find that!
18. OK Phasma, next time you knock someone into a supply lift shaft, make sure they actually fell to their death. That fight had so much potential and it was so anticlimactic. I don’t see how she’s going to get out of that one. (I’m almost certain she will though.)
19. Blatant reference - Salt planet, ice planet, it’s fucking snowing, and the Rebels, I mean Resistance line up in trenches (almost same exact shot from Empire) to fight the Imperial ground assault (only there doesn’t seem to be any escape this time).
20. Snoke’s chambers set was so plain and boring.
21. Your skimmer is falling apart/melting from the heat of the ramming gun, and yet somehow you haven’t, Finn? Damn, that’s some strong plot armor you got equipped…or is a it a shield, cause this is Star Wars?
22. Fanservice - Millennium Falcon TIE Fighter chase was already done in the last sequel movie. ¬_¬ John Williams even uses the same leitmotif from the OT (first heard in TIE Fighter Attack in ANH). I don’t think it was used in the TFA chase though.
23. Is Chewie flying the Falcon by himself? How are the Porgs helping him?
24. How the fuck does Rey lift all those boulders with the training she’s had?! There’s no way you’re Satele Shan or Yoda or Orgus Din! Even Luke couldn’t lift his X-wing from the swamps of Dagobah. (When you get as old as me, you learn a few tricks.) No…just, no.
25. Rey is still a Mary Sue. Where the hell are her faults? Yes, she’s lonely, but if they didn’t outright state it in TFA, you wouldn’t know that. I would think she has abandonment issues because she was literally abandoned as a kid, but they haven’t delved into that. Also, attachment is discouraged by the Jedi, but Luke was probably more lenient on this with the New Jedi Order. Rey doesn’t seem to have any character development. Kylo and Poe have way more character development! This story is supposed to be about Rey and Kylo, and only the latter has had any development!
26. Movie feels kind of long. At least twice I was like, “wait there’s more? Is this ever going to end?” The only time I’ve been like, “there’s more?” with anticipation was when I saw Skyfall.
Things I Actually Liked (Upon First Viewing)
1. Kylo being chewed out by Snoke. This is an obvious reference to the people that found Rey besting Kylo in a lighsaber duel inconceivable.
2. Rose is not a “hot Asian chick” (her sister might’ve been though)
3. Luke on the Falcon
4. Luke and R2 reunion
5. Yoda’s appearance
6. Yoda still teaching Luke (Whoa, seriously, he trolled him? I thought those were the books in the drawer, but it’s so brief I wasn’t sure.)
7. DJ offering a different point-of-view of war
8. Kylo and Rey cutting down the Red Guard
9. I like the realist theme that war requires sacrifice, but I dislike how it was executed. Now that I think of it, the OT had this theme too, but it was never with a character you had enough time to really connect with. Although originally, Lando was meant to go down with the Falcon while escaping the Death Star, but this was changed after the response from test screenings.
10. The setup for the Phasma Finn duel (probably one of the reasons it was such a letdown). The ship’s heavily damaged and burning down, yes let’s fight to the death, fucking epic.
11. Leia stunning Poe, she would totally do that. Notice, she even has her original blaster.
12. Finn is not a sacrifical black man (narrowly, really made me think he would be for a minute). Thankfully, Rose is thinking beyond the fourth wall and stops him.
13. That kiss Rose lays on Finn as the blast door ramming gun fires was perfectly timed
14. Luke and Leia "reunion"
15. I really wanted to see Luke give Kylo an ass kicking, but with the direction they took this in, they really would’ve needed to do that in TFA. Instead, Luke takes the high road I think one would do with a member of their family. I still would’ve liked for him to actually had been there and absorbing all that blaster fire and Kylo’s saber, because if anyone could do that, it would be Luke Skywalker, grandmaster of the Jedi Order! OK, the blaster fire would be ridiculous, but the saber absorb would’ve been OK. Then he gives him the talk and just becomes one with the Force without being struck down (cause that’s too much like Obi-Wan). One last troll on Kylo before he leaves. Well OK, he did troll him with a projection.
16. From what I noticed of the score, it seemed much better than TFA. It more or less felt Star Wars.
Other Observations
1. Newtonian physics in Star Wars?
2. Reference (but probably unintentional) - the remains of the Resistance being tracked through hyperspace by the First Order, obvious BSG reference
3. Homage - Old Luke is obviously modeled after how George had originally written Obi-Wan Kenobi: a recluse that is a few cards short of a sabaac deck. Luke is a cynical, jaded recluse. I don’t know how I feel about this. I just don’t see him being like that. It looks like some of Han rubbed off on him at the end. (See you, kid.)
4. Homage - Luke becomes one with the Force similarly to how Obi-Wan did.
5. Rey in the gunwell during the Falcon pursuit sequence could be foreshadowing that her parents are actualy Han and Leia. It’s not that far of a stretch, since they’ve been stealing from and bastardizing the EU.
6. I feel like Rian Johnson did the best with what he inherited from Jar Jar Abrams, so that’s pretty impressive, since I expected the cringefest that Force Awakens was. But watch out, for Jar Jar may strike back, since Colin Trevorrow stepped down from the last sequel and JJ is now directing it. Now I’m going to wonder what this sequel trilogy would be like if Rian Johnson set the stage with the first movie instead of JJ Abrams. This doesn’t mean I liked the movie. It was just better than the last one…and not by much