Just watched this. I'll spoil just in case.

Spoiler

All in all, I was somewhat disappointed. Reminds me how how I felt about VII. I was overly critical, perhaps, but I spent a lot of my time mentally complaining or scoffing.

I also think that Luke was a subject to some pretty serious character assassination. Pulling a lightsaber at his sleeping student? Jeez. He just didn't feel like Luke. It's worse when you've read almost all of the AU/EU books. I feel like you can rationalize Luke's current mentality - after all, his experience with the Force was mostly negative (Vader, Palpatine, some days of training with Yoda, swamp cave), I still just didn't like it.

The scale is completely out of whack. This entire thing felt like it'd fit the scope of a single planet. Like USA vs some rebel forces. A few hundred rebels? A few thousand at most? Some dozens of ships on both sides? A small scirmish more than anything. The movie is hyper focused on the rebels and the evil empire, there's nothing about the larger galaxy, other than the casino planet. This was my complaint about VII as well.

The evil empire is comically incompetently evil. It's just bad.

Holdo's little sacrifice was ridiculous. I see it's already been heavily discussed. If it really worked that easily and effectively, it'd be the standard tactic, with remotedly controlled ships. Utter bullshit.

I was surprised that Snoke died so soon (I expected him to live till early part 3) and that Rey's parents were some unimportant trash.

Overall, the space battles were cool (except the Holdo thing), the rest of it was meh.

Decent movie, like 3/5, still disappointed it's called Star Wars though.

 

I have to disagree. Most of the things you said you didn't like are the things I liked. (BTW, not going to use spoiler tags. The thread is tagged.)

I'm glad Snoke died. I'm tired of the rule of two. I agree with Kylo there; let the old things die. Same with Rey's parents being nobody important. Star Wars had gotten too formulaic; lets shake things up.

I think that worked especially well in this movie, partially because it started out seeming like "Empire Strikes Back part II". People gave episode VII shit for being too similar to episode IV, then this one started with the Evil Empire closing in on a hidden rebel base just like on Hoth. Then Rey is training with the old Jedi Master in seclusion. But then everything runs off the rails and I loved it.

But I also like that they went back to their roots in some ways. Luke pulled an Obi Wan; Yoda was a puppet; it was great. Also, I got the sense that Rey is just not scared of the Dark Side the way every other Jedi ever was. Like Luke said: she didn't even fight it when it wanted to show her something. That's cool.

I don't really have a problem with the Holdo space ship crash thing. I'm sure the only reason it worked was because it was a surprise, or something. I don't know how future/past technology works.

The scale is weird, but it helps to keep the audience invested in the characters. Maybe it doesn't really make sense in the setting, but oh well.

Over all, 5/5.

 

I get what you mean by throwing out the old and all that, but it's still bad storytelling to set up a bunch of questions and never (assuming Snoke is actually dead and Ren was telling the truth) answer them. It feels like several creators trying to pull the story in different directions and I'm less okay with that.

 

If they come out with a book that details more about Snoke and answers some questions then I would be okay with that. Basically, I'm assuming that whatever wasn't answered in this movie will likely be answered in comics and novels that will come out in the following year or two. They likely need a novel to explain whatever is up with Snoke, there likely isn't a way to explain it properly in movie format.

 

What does the rule of two have to with anything? Neither Snoke or Kylo Ren are Sith or have anything to do with them, other than Kylo's seemingly finished fascination with Vader. They were never following that particular rule (as the Knights of Ren prove) or any other. If anything I want more than two dark Force users on the enemy side, not less.

 

I wasn't necessarily talking about the official "rule of two" the Sith of Bane's lineage obeyed; I was talking about how there have been two dark side users in every movie and I'm tired of it. Having tons of them would just devalue it; like the conservation of ninjutsu trope.

 

CONS:

- Luke considering murdering his nephew in his sleep because he got some bad vibes is stupidly out of character, and it's probably the most important event in Disney Wars.

- Lack of any sort of satisfying resolution for anything The Force Awakens set up, e.g. Snoke, Rey's background. A large part of my thoughts on TFA were predicated on them setting things up for further development. With this, the previous movie is actually made worse in my eyes, and now we have nothing to really give a damn about in the next movie. There was no thought put into this shit.

- Carrie Fisher is the only one dead out of the OT main actors, and yet her character is the only one left alive now? Are you fucking kidding me? They even had multiple events that they easily could've killed her off in, and yet they pull shit out of their ass like making her fly like Superman to keep her alive.

- Finn's boring adventure just made things worse. Poe's mutiny was useless (and strangely unpunished). "Admiral" Gender Studies Professor not telling anyone her plan was just needlessly suspicious. Finn's suicide charge probably would have worked, but whatshername had to fuck that up too. The whole movie was just "hehe, we're gonna blueball the audience for two hours, we're so clever."

- Hyperspace doesn't work that way.

- I could do without some of the attempted humor.

- Yoda burns down the tree and says the books were useless, but then we find out Rey took them anyway so it didn't even matter? What? Also Yoda looked like he was doing too many Midichlorians.

- You wouldn't think something as simple as astral projection would be so terribly difficult that it would fucking kill Luke.

PROS:

- I liked the scene with Luke explaining the Force to Rey.

- Some of the humor was okay.

- I liked the Rey/Kylo scenes for the most part.

- Mark Hamill is pretty great, it's just too bad how they used him.

- The movie looked great, and I would probably use some of the shots as computer wallpapers once the home video release hits. The music was good too, I think Williams did a better job in this one than TFA.

 

I'm referring to hyperspace-ramming the Freudian Nightmare.

I don't think there's been an example of that tactic being used before in any Star Wars media, and if it was possible there's plenty of times that it would have been extremely useful. Especially with the CIS, considering they would only be sacrificing droids instead of real people in a maneuver like that. So I'm going to go with "no it doesn't work like that, the writers are just stupid."

 

Am I the only one who liked Holdo? She had good reasons for not telling Poe anything. He disobeyed a direct order from Leia, resulting in a ridiculous amount of deaths, and was demoted immediately afterwards. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for someone who had never met him before to not want to tell him what she's planning. I mean, hell, the first thing he does is walk up to her, ask what she's planning, and gets mildly insubordinate when she doesn't immediately take him into her confidence. Holdo was fine, and I'm somewhat surprised no one else is bothered by how this makes Poe look as a character. Poe running off and making decisions on his own instead of following the chain of command directly killed most of the resistance. Yeah the purple hair looks ridiculous, but it doesn't invalidate or make anything she did a bad idea.

The movie was good. It wasn't the direction I wanted them to go, but I enjoyed it at the time, and I think I'll like it more as time passes. Episode 9 will make or break the trilogy though.

 

No, I loved her, for all the reasons you listed. That's a true command-level officer right there. If you're fucked, then save your crew and go down with your ship. If you happen to be able to hyper-fuck the First Order on your way out, then that's a great goddamned death.

I just love the complete nerd-rage over this movie. I mean, this is election-level anger. I heard someone say yesterday they'd rather watch an entire trilogy with Jar-Jar as the protagonist... I mean, that's going full retard.

 

Holdo was fine. Poe not being in the brig or executed after the mutiny was not.

Also...I know this is unpopular...but I liked Jar Jar. I was a kid when I saw the Phantom Menace and he made me giggle. So I hold fondness for the character and don’t get the hate...

 

Possibly, had Leia not been conscious, he would have been.

Indeed. And some fans/bots are getting a little excessive in their negative reviews...

 

Hey, I just had a thought; did anyone lose a hand in this movie? I don't remember that happening.

Was this the first Star Wars ever that had the same number of hands at the end of the movie as the beginning?

 

Snoke lost an arm.

 

I think people complaining about the anti reveal with Rey are missing the point. Rey being a nobody, who chose her own path, is representative of the people across the galaxy who will be inspired by the story of thr Skywalkers, especially those who are born with a connection to the force. She's her own person, and her actions, not her background, are what matter. I'll take that over her being the child of Luke/Obi-wan/Space Jesus any day.

It also has a nice symmetry with the original trilogy, where Vader being Luke's father was huge because it came out of nowhere. Here, the anti reveal is huge because it was so hyped.

 

I don't think that counts. He lost an arm as he was killed. He doesn't have to live arm-less or get a robot prosthetic.

 

For the love of god someone call up EA and let Star Wars ships have GARDIAN lasers or something similar to counter snub fightersr. Can we please make capital ships actually awesome? #MakeStarDestroyersGreatAgain

Also, it was annoying in Empire and it's annoying now. Quit deploying fucking soldiers in trenches against gigantic armored walkers with personal rifles. By the time the enemy will deploy footsoldiers, your trench will be so colossally buttfucked, you puke dicks. Also, the First Order using TIEs as air support makes me want to know why the rebels didn't field X-Wings and instead used the speeders during the Hoth Invasion. Ya-ya-yadddah-yaddddddddddah temperatures, lick my nuts. We can defrost to -50F these days, future longtime ago tech should use anti Bose-Einstein condensate shit or something. Strafe the big ass walker fuckers for gods' sakes. I demand fanfiction.

Also. Vader would have choked out Hux in like 2 seconds. God

 

Who lost a hand in the phantom menace? Or Rogue one?