man, where to begin. There was soo much stuff going on in this movie, I can't recall any other star wars movie having this much stuff crammed into it. Well let's start with my overall impressions of it after leaving the theatre. I thought it was ok. I thought it was very ok. Not more, not less, but very o.k. It was more of its own thing than Ep7 was so I'm fine with it even if I thought it was only ok.
After discussing it with my friend though and thinking on my own, I'm starting to feel a little disappointed by it. I'll start from the first half of the movie.
The first half of the movie was really exciting for me. They introduced some really neat ideas and plot directions that were very interesting. I especially liked the mysterious connection that Rey and Kylo found themselves to have, those were some of the best moments in the movie. When Rey reaches out to feel the force, Luke feared her because she went "straight for the dark" and I really liked where it was going, I thought they were really going to go full dark for her. With Kylo's growing insecurities I was quite hoping that the plot would somehow go in a direction where Kylo went Light and Rey went Dark. After the sort-of reveal that Luke was trying to kill Kylo I thought they were going to go even darker and have both Rey and Kylo go darkside.
Well that didn't happen though. The "connection" that Rey and Kylo had turned out to be some jury-rigged machination by Snoke for his evul planzz, that was really disappointing. Also while I'm glad that they weren't afraid of putting some smear on Luke, not treating him like an untouchable OG character, they still went with Kylo already having been corrupted (kinda). Kylo gets no redemption or interesting character arc. I thought he was going to go through one what with his backing off from matricide. Instead he just gets more evil and angry at... something. "The old things." Now, I know that he's not finished yet, so I'll reserve my ultimate judgement of his character until it's concluded in the final episode of the trilogy. Still, I was pretty disappointed that nothings changed pretty much. Kylo bad, Rey good; Empire evil, Rebel in dire straits. Also Snoke dies like a bitch somewhere in this paragraph.
I do agree with you on the Rey's parents bit, on every point you said. I do wish they did more with it though, she just kinda got over it. Kylo called it her greatest weakness and yet nothing happened. If there was a time to deal with Rey's darkness this was the movie to do it in, but they didn't. Like I mentioned above, that thing with Rey reaching out to the darkness was really interesting. It turned out to be a mirror playhouse, and that was it. Darkness resolved. Shouldn't a 'face your own darkness' part involve some kind of foreshadowing or inner insight on something? Anakin had one, Luke had one.
All the cool things they setup in the first half of the movie was completely brushed aside in the latter half that I'm almost confused here. Was the script handed off to someone else at the halfway point?
You know, there was only one twist to this movie. Pretty much every star wars has one, that one moment where your expectations are subverted. This one sucked though. It was that moment of Kylo killing Snook. They didn't execute it well either since they put in ample time for the audience to catch on to what Kylo was doing. Not that it has to be a surprise, but it removes a lot of that impact of the moment. That being the case, the "real" twist may have been the double subversion moment when it turns out Kylo wasn't really going to be good afterall and he wants to... burn everything to the ground(?) or something. If that was supposed to be the twist of the movie, then that was executed poorly too because there wasn't much explaining done of what he actually wants to do or why he's even doing this in the first place. We saw he was conflicted but nothing I remember had any relevance leading to his actions at this critical moment. Came across more as a I'm so sick of everyone's shit, fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything, burn everything the whole thing it down gyaargghh! incohesive angrish shouting kind of emotion. But again, I'll withhold judgement until next next year.
I say all this like I hate the movie but I don't hate the movie. I thought it was ok. I'm just kinda a little disappointed after what the first half led me to think it was going to try.
and well let's not really talk about the whole resistance side of the movie. It seemed pretty pointless. The point of it was to be pointless, which is a point, but doesn't seemed more concerned than adding to the dialogue in the meta-conversation of subverting the whole small-sabotage-strike-team thing that star wars loves to do.
my friend really didn't like the whole force ghosts being able to physically interact with the universe thing, which I didn't mind, but oh boy if all the new stuff they included won't put a new wrinkle in the canon of what the force can do.
