I'm going to post spoilers here and I'm not going to apologize for it. You're reading a Star Wars thread right after a Star Wars release: you'd be an idiot to click on it if you cared.
I have a lot of thoughts I'm probably too lazy to write down. I said before that the movie was a "fun, touching mess of a movie" and after sleeping on it, that seems right. Did I
like
the movie? I don't know that I really did. It was fun to see once, and I'll see it again with my family over the holidays I'm sure and it'll probably continue to have elements that are fun. But unlike TLJ (which I liked quite a bit despite some flaws), I guess in a thumbs up/down manner, I'd give it down. Still, it has great moments.
As a kid who grew up reading the now non-canon "Legends" series, one of the thing that appealed to me most about Star Wars was the world building: the first movies were very much of the hint at larger things variety, but I think in movies that's strongest. But still, it was easy to imagine a real world that operated, had economies, criminals, etc. It didn't all make total sense, obviously, but it felt like this was a world where a tyranical meglomaniac came to power with his darkly magical henchman and did what they could to build power. It was evil (explicitly so) but the point was
power
not just evil. The prequels, flawed and (having recently rewatched them) bad as they were, embraced that. I don't mean to say Star Wars had a perfectly devised world, but it at least pretended to be a sorta rational one if you squinted.
JJ Abrams does not give a single shit about this. He's going to blow up some worlds. He's going to somehow conjure up and staff a fleet the size of a planet from fucking nowhere. He's then going to conjure a "civilian" (supposedly) massive armada all at a convenient time to mop up the stupidly large evil fleet he made. JJ Abrams does this because he wants to focus on characters and pace. He ups the stakes of the movies in TFA to a ridiculous point (Starkiller Base) and then inexplicably does so even more (giving ordinary star destroyers deathstar powers). Anyway, JJ Abrams here is concerned about setting up memorable and emotionally compelling moments that exist to a large extent irrespective of the greater world.
Anyway, there are other problems the movie has. Some of which are the clearly missing Carrie Fisher (which they handled better than I thought it would be) and who from what I've read was intended to pretty much be a focal point (Han Solo coming in at the end as a ghost or memory to haunt Kylo Ren almost certainly was intended to be Leia). Some of which are JJ Abrams either (a) responding to the backlash to TLJ and just making a movie Disney thought fans would love or (b) being pissed his toys had been rearranged. Others are just the nature of the beast: endings are hard.
Reck isn't wrong that the movie feels like 3-4 movies crammed into one. It's just too fast for it to feel like a good story. And maybe that's on purpose, so you don't think too hard about whether its elements fit together.
All that said, I thought it was touching. Some of the emotional beats didn't really land for me, but the bundling of lightsabers certainly did. The movie had a lot of fun moments. The set up and execution of the lightsaber transfer being the highlight. Rey and Kylo's fight over the transport was legitimately good. Poe's stubbly face was as sexy as ever, according to my wife. I'm always more comfortable talking in depth about flaws in movies than stuff that works, which i guess says something about me. But there was enough good stuff in the movie that I didn't
hate
it or anything. It was fun. It was touching. It was a mess.
Smaller points: was the new droid supposed to be autistic? The droid hacker was pretty great. I was not comfortable with how all the black characters ended up on the quests together.
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Star Wars Discussion Here [SPOILERS]
