[Cecil Terwilliger]

Good not great.

Didn’t read every post but skimmed it and had read some general comments online before seeing it.

Slow chase plot and the casino was a bit silly but overall the plot was fine. They are clearly trying to take this in a direction that moves on from Luke/Leia/Han. Liked Poe’s storyline. Learning that it is more complicated than always being a hero. Rose kinda sucked. I just didn’t dig her character or the actor. I thought her friend who died gave a better performance in the first 5 minutes. She was just too, I don’t know, soft and lame. The character and the actress.

I liked it but understand some of the comments here and I’ll address some of that stuff when I’ve digested and can post more.

But some of these complaints though, wow, talk about over the top. Some people are really reaching for reasons to hate this movie. The prequels are trash. Mentioning them in the same breath as this movie takes away any credibility of your post. Complaints about Rey’s parents are just people who spent too much time online theorizing and missing the entire point of her character arc and storyline. She’s alone and desperate for guidance. At no time did either movie mislead you to think she was gonna be the child Leia or Luke or ObiWan never knew they had. This movie forcefead is that every individual can make a difference. Even the little guy. The fact she’s an orphan is the whole point no matter who her parents are.

Snoke was a placeholder. Like Luke and Leia he is meant to signify the passing of the torch to the new generation. He didn’t need a big backstory. Kylo is the focus here. Making Snoke have some elaborate backstory would just cheapen Kylo’s character and his role as a villain.

The battering ram made perfect sense. The idea that people are making comments that suicide missions should be commonplace and military should be spending huge amounts of money is asinine and it is something that was explicitly covered in this movie wasn’t possible because good and bad guys have to get their stuff from somewhere. Literally nothing about it didn’t make sense. It is abundantly obvious that using it all the time isn’t practical. You’d need dozens of huge ships at a huge cost. You think an XWing could’ve taken out that dreadnaught by flying really fast? Lol ok then. There’s a reason why suicide missions aren’t real popular in real life or these movies, especially when they require huge wastes of resources.

I’m also not upset there were no lightsaber duels. Not every movie needs one. If all you care about is action and not story or character just watch the prequels. I don’t need a meaningless action sequence squeezed in if it doesn’t make any sense. And only two people in the entire universe even have lightsabers.

Someone also mentioned janitors saving the resistance. Uh, what? Finn was a stormtrooper. Remember him on that planet in TFA? He just mentioned that he did some janitor stuff. I guess marines are all janitors too when they get put on latrine duty. And rose was clearly not a janitor. She talked about science #### constantly and could friggin fly a ship. She was obviously some sort of engineer or a mechanic. And even if she was a janitor, who cares? Luke was a hick farm boy. Han was a smuggler. Yoga is two feet tall! Not exactly Navy seals we’re talking about here.

As for Leia in space, the problem there wasn’t the idea, it was the editing. Why did they put in another full scene in between the blowout and her saving herself? It made no sense to cut away and show us Kylo and awful, awful Huxley (more one him in a second). But the idea of her using the force like that was cool, just shouldn’t have come a full minute later because it was jarring.

Ok so the one thing I hated, in TFA too, was the terrible casting and terrible acting of Domnhall Gleason. Honestly his terrible high pitched angry voice, embarrassing over acting and hilarious look just ruin every scene he’s in. It’s like he’s supposed to be comedic relief. But in a cringeworthy way. What the #### were they thinking casting him? And who let him give those Spaceballs worthy performances?

Again though, overall I’d give it a B-. Behind TFA and Rogue One and the originals but still about 5000 parsecs ahead of the “we almost ruined one of Hollywood’s greatest franchises and did ruin Hayden Christensen’s career” prequels. It had some warts and I’ll talk about some of the smaller stuff later but overall solid.

Oh and did anyone else notice the kid force moved the broom at the end?