Didn't get to see it until today.
I really liked it. I think you can nitpick about any movie, the constant escalation and retconning of Jedi powers is bothersome. The Force saving Leia from the vaccum of space was over the top, and there inability to ever get time or distance or technology to be contiguous in the star wars universe is frustrating.
Poe's sub plot and growth into a leadership role was a great prospective on who his character was and needed to become. I really like that it tied in nicely with the main plot of both him and Luke needing to learn from their mistakes. Poe learning that he needs to assess his mistakes before moving forward and Luke learning that he needed to continue moving forward after making a mistake.
Fin and Rose seemed like an unneeded diversion. But I think they really wanted to ground the resistance and give it purpose in a way that was hard to feel in the other movies outside of the broader context of fighting the dark side. This was really important if they will continue to forge Kylo into a greyer character. I also liked the death they gave Phasma and I'm happy they didn't just ignore her but dumped a character that was weaker than she should have been, and I feel like there are some good things you can pull out of their side story to setup the next movie.
Kylo was probably the weakest link in the force awakens and probably the strongest link in this movie. Star Wars finally created a motivated bad guy, you can understand that he want to explore more than he was allowed to, you can understand the fear and anger that followed the fight with Luke, you can understand the desire to exert his power and control over the galaxy after years of following a guy like Snooke. But even while understanding all of that you can still hate him.
Rey I like that she mirrored Lukes jury through 5 and 6 getting some training from a reluctant mentor, feeling compelled the reach out and fix the galaxy single handedly. I like that unlike Luke she saw success than instantly had it pulled away from her realizing that the desire to control everything, was a dark path she will have to move away from. the waiting, the training, facing her own dark side was just done so much better than Empire but that should be expected 40 years later. I also like that her and Snoke were not part of this 3 generation squabble of a small group of elites. creating those dangling loose ends just makes the galaxy feel bigger again. Also the "Mary-Sueness" of her is greatly overstated she was a perfect reflection of Luke in this movie and if anything a much more vulnerable character than she had been in the last movie.
Luke, was a story that needed to be told in this trilogy, I like the way they handled it in the story, i like that you saw even the master still needed to learn lessons right to the end, and i'm glad they just let him find peace with the force. I really hope this is the end of all force ghosts other than possibly luke, if yoda and obi wan start appearing to rey it creates more problems for 1-3 than those movies already have.
Liea was not really a needed part of the movie but they wanted her to pass the torch to Poe and she was there and she did that.
The droids i thought were pretty weak in this movie. in the original there was this funny dichotomy with droids where when they were removed from the action they had an outsized influence bringing knowledge and control to a situation that our characters could not have, while when they were in a conflict they were these outside observers that could not be hit nor could they effectively hit anyone. I really miss that now they are just goofy characters that could be replaced by ewokes without anyone noticing.
Generally, I loved the characters, I don't mind their strategy of taking ownership of Star Wars by mirroring the originals so much in their first two installments, and I'm happy they did some bold things killing of big characters and leaving loose threads
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