Saw it.
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I have a lot of conflicted feelings about a lot of things in this. I appreciate a bunch of things they did, but I feel let down by a lot of other things they did. And for a movie that was expected to be a really good Star Wars movie, that makes it rather bad by default.
I like the lessons that Luke teaches Rey about the Force. Clear and concise, settling the score on Jedis and Siths once and for all - just by explaining what the Force is in a simple way, no Light or Dark. But then it doesn't actually go deep enough. Luke wants out with the old orders and old views, but he doesn't bring any new suggestion about what to do with the Force. So naturally, after not wanting new Jedis because it's an old religion, Rey who is learning abot the Force is... still a Jedi, and Luke is even almost saying it with pride. They didn't even bother actually saying "well, let's just call a good Force user a Jedi, without the religion" for an easy rebranding of a name that couldn't reasonably be pushed aside. Of course, the idea of a Jedi from the original trilogy was already idealized, so tearing it down in this movie just to bring it back up immediately would be kinda weird (except that's already what they do), but at least it would efficiently get rid of the "Light vs Dark" fatalism that everyone started to question soon after the original trilogy (coming up with grey Jedi and whatnot).
The whole "just pass on your experience to the next generation and that'll be good enough, even the failures" and "we are what they grow upon" bits are always a great point to make, but again, in the end, they just acted like "Jedi = good" at the last minute, not actually *teaching* anyone about failures (Luke is literally the only one who hears the lesson). They even brought Yoda in to make that lesson (he looked real bad BTW), but once again, they didn't even try to illustrate his lesson about remembering failures just as much as success with a clear and simple "I failed to stop Darth Sidious, Obi-Wan failed to save Anakin, you failed to save Ben" to make you feel the weight of both success and failure. It felt like a big miss.
Also related, I felt this Luke character arc is finally making the prequel trilogy work - it always was about how the Jedi Order could fail and bring about Darth Vader, but because of how bad it was, it was hard to actually connect to the original trilogy and the whole "new hope" symbol, and it just seemd like the edgy take on the original theme. Luke addresses the hubris and decadence of the Jedi Order without really dissing too much the iconic symbol of a Jedi itself (he deflects most of that to "the old religion", and the symbol part comes back at the end), and gives you a solid sense of the sliding scale of good and evil of the Force and how it led to the advent of Vader. It puts both trilogies in a common perspective, and that's good enough to make you forget the quality of the prequel IMO.
When Phasma finally showed up and after Snoke compared Kylo to Vader, it hit me how much Phasma was wasted (I mean even more so than her having all of two and a half scenes over both movies, what the hell was even her point beside the whole one-hit-wonder marketing of a strong female character that quickly disappeared under the rug). When Kylo was the Dark Side aspect of Vader (except angry and lashing out to be different enough), Phasma should have gotten the Terminator aspect that can't be shaken off, the actual military threat. But with the conflict between Kylo and Hugs, Phasma just got dropped off a cliff. Seriously, what the hell. And Hux himself was useless beside being made fun of by Poe, Phasma should have been there when he told Kylo to back off his army. Hux himself doesn't even make it work, Phasma should have been the personification of "his army".
(oh, and I feel showing her eye when her helmet is broken is weird, they avoided giving her a face to not draw attention to the "pretty lady" aspect, and now they want us to realize she's a person, but I feel showing just her mouth would have been better, especially since she's shit-talking Finn at that moment)
I feared old Luke would be a bit difficult to really recognize compared to the original trilogy because of how much Mark Hamill changed, but the flashbacks and the final fight where he looks a bit younger really gave you that feel that it was really Luke, and how much Luke himself evolved rather than just Hamill aging.
Speaking of the final fight... The first bit with Luke unscathed by all the blaster shots felt way too much like a bad fanfiction on the spot, but the twist makes it work out... except Luke ends up dying anyway. Why the hell did they have Luke fuck around with Kylo's head and make Kylo feel like he failed to kill Luke, if Luke actually dies all the same ?? He'll probably show up as a Force ghost to mess with him some more just as he promises, sure, but the whole fake-out-except-not was super weird.
And speaking of the flashback, when Luke admits he caught himself with a really bad thought (trying to kill Ben) is really missing an extra sentence connecting it back to the "hubris of the old Jedi order" to really make this the point where Luke started questioning the "old religion".
The "cute animals" were all completely useless. Same with Benicio's character that didn't pay off - in fact, Finn and Rose actually got half of the Rebellion killed for some bullshit lol. You'd expect Benicio's character to parallel Lando and redeem himself, but he did much worse than Lando. A redemption for him in ep 9 would look really bad. I just don't see where's they're going with that, if anywhere.
Thumbs up to the lightspeed kamikaze attack. Really well brought up and executed, biggest win of the movie IMO. Too bad the whole part about her not telling her plan to people and telling them about the secret base made Poe, Finn, Rose and others doubt her, leading to the useless destruction of half the fleet.
LOL SNOKE FAKE-OUT I'm not even expecting him to return, neither as a ghost nor as a clone / backup host body or whatever you might come up with.
I was wondering how they'd make episode 9 work without a villain (especially after literally dropping Phasma out like an old sock), but it looks like they're dead set on really making Kylo the final antagonist after all the back and forth on turning him good or killing him. The problem is... Ever since he killed Han, I can't see how ep 9 would make any sort of redemption work out. The best he can hope for is die like Vader, but I can't see how they'd bring that up well enough, give it a good reason. Especially since he's the last villain, they can't bring up a surprise new big bad out of nowhere. Only thing I can think of is him straight up losing his shit and starting hallucinating Snoke, like Kylo is the real last villain but he thinks he's not and he just goes off to cause his own death in some stupid way by going full straightjacket crazy. They've been hinting pretty heavily at his insanity for a while. But then, Rey's obsession with saving him is making it all look really weird, because... why would we actually want Kylo to be saved !
Last thing I appreciated was the very last scene showing that the "Resistance" is made alive with everyone's desires, and connecting that with kids dreaming of the "legend of the Jedi Master" works out well, it picks up on both the hope for toppling down the Empire of Evil and the magical dream of superpowered heroes (even if Luke himself tried hard to deny it). Its a little bit self-contradicting with the whole point of the Resistance being made up of little people and nobodies - and of the whole Force affinity not being tied to bloodline because even a child of some complete nobodies like Rey can become very strong - but... it works out on the level of dreams and ideals.
On the other hand, the resistance theme feels really forced in this trilogy. They just got out of decades of Republic, suddenly the First Order blows up a few grouped planets and the whole galaxy is out of a Republic ? I didn't even realize the Republic was over at the end of ep 7, I thought ep 7 introduced this new group as "just a splinter of the Republic" that tries to fight off the First Order when most of the Republic don't realize how much of a threat they are. It really feels that they're just playing hard on the old empire vs resistance theme of the original trilogy without a good justification. Until Poe and everyone kept hammering the idea of the "spark of the resistance" I didn't even understand why they were using that name. I mean, all the First Order has is a bunch of ships and not even a Death Star, the Republic is out of a few planets but the First Order doesn't even have one that we've seen. Why is this movie telling us the First Order is in a so much better position than the Resistance.
It's a good movie with good characters, but quite frankly, it felt far less Star Wars than Rogue One IMO.
I understand that this was the starting point for a new trilogy that branches off the main Skywalker bloodline with the world building, but Rogue One did a better job at feeling connected to the universe while being its own thing with different people (actually Benicio's character would have worked a lot better in Rogue One).