addiesin said:
Personally I'd like to have a conversation with someone who doesn't like this film, and I'd like them to describe what they think the missteps were, without using the word "bad" or any synonym or loophole ("terrible" "horrible" "awful" "worst" "not good" "if only it was better", etc) with specific examples.
1) I don't like the fact that the New Republic was basically written out of the picture just so
TLJ could recycle lots of
ESB beats. Yes, losing the Hosnian system should be devastating, but it should
also have prompted a massive cavalry rescue for our forces. Instead, no one comes to the aid of General Leia, who was instrumental in destroying
three Death Stars. Not much of a leader, then, is she?! :-/ I wish the movie had had a much more original story.
2) At no point in either Sequel Trilogy movie did Finn act like someone who was so brainwashed and inhumanely treated since birth he never even privately came up with a name for himself. He should be overwhelmed and utterly confused by his new surroundings; instead, he wisecracks, takes everything in stride, and parks his spaceship wherever he pleases (which is
not how a lifelong grunt should think). Neither he nor Rose have much of a sense of urgency on their quest, which drastically lessens the overall story tension.
3) Indeed, the whole Canto Bight subplot drastically lessened the tension of the slow starship chase. Even if we assume that Maz just happened to know a code breaker in the area, and all the many other plot conveniences in this story thread, and even if we assume the whole Resistance couldn't have escaped that way without being noticed, it felt like Johnson giving Finn something to do because he was a major character last time, at the expense of the main plot. Also, the whole "infiltrate an Imperial ship/base" has been done in
ANH,
RotJ,
TFA,
Rogue One, and countless episodes of
Rebels - it's one of
Star Wars' biggest cliches, and one I've grown so, so
very bored by.
4) I don't like the fact that, two movies in, I
still don't know what attracted Ben Solo to the Dark Side in the first place, except maybe genetics. It feels as though the writers want him to be a complex character, which is how Driver portrays him, but they haven't done any of the work to
make him one. (No, him wanting Rey to be his girlfriend, at the cost of abandoning her new friends and
entire moral fabric, doesn't in of itself make him complex.)
5) I get that the whole Poe mutiny plot illustrates the movie's theme of well-intentioned failure, but it largely robs him of his swashbuckling charm, and Holdo, while not in the wrong, per se, doesn't endear herself to the audience by being so short with such a charismatic character. This whole plot thread just isn't
fun, and
Star Wars should be fun first and foremost. And I get that they intended to give Leia a big spotlight in the third movie, but she was really darn near wasted in these two.
6) I found the movie dull and overlong. A suspenseful starship chase flick, mixed with a bit of broken hero/redemption story for Luke, should not be roughly half an hour longer than
Casablanca - IMHO.
7)
Lots of little details felt
off to me. I think that Luke, as a Jedi Master (even a fallen one), should be a vegetarian. I don't know why someone as young and unbalanced as Hux should be such a prominent FO leader. I spent the whole red guard fight wondering who those guys were, and why they bothered to fight Kylo instead of pledging their loyalty to him instead of trying to avenge their dead boss, so I couldn't even enjoy
that sequence. Rose's whole maneuver of ramming into Finn's craft to save his life, while the entire FO battalion just watches them kiss instead of easily destroying them... just, no. Also, as RLM points out, the utter lack of grieving from the survivors at the end. "We have all we need," says Leia cheerfully, just witnessing the loss of almost all her friends. I get that she's an optimist and all, but still,
Huh?