[CaptainCrunch]

I have a love hate relationship with the New Trilogy. I'm a huge Star Wars Nerd (no secret) but this new trilogy really doesn't resonate for me.


From a technical standpoint, the filming, the effects and the acting for the most part are really good. The scene at the start with the First Order Jumping in was amazingly well done. The hyper space ram where there was no sound was amazing. The strafing by the tie fighters during the final battle looked great.


So from executing what was writing its really an A+. Daisy Ridley really evolved her acting chops in this film and she has action abilities to boot.



But the problem for me is the story itself, or the execution of the story, and that's where the luster has come off. The first movie was a reboot of ANH, realistically the second movie was a reboot of ESB right down to Canto being a substitute for cloud city.


I personally think that the PT's fault was in the execution of what was a good story with a really good villain. The fall of the republic and the machinations of Palpatine who was the primary villain was a great story in itself. The rise of Vader could have been done better though, and the CGI and the acting really stiffled things.


With the ST the story just isn't that good, the villains are dumb and non threatening and can be counted on to be stupid when it counts. Some decisions were made and then changed and made things confusing. I still cringe at the prank phone call scene with Hux. Phasma was worthless, Snoke was a red shirt, and Ren just isn't that charismatic or interesting, and while the idea of killing your past is interesting, he sells it like a spoiled teenager who didn't get a corvette for his birthday.


They could have handled Luke's fall from grace in a better manor that made him more broken, instead he was basically foolish and uncaring and uncommitted to his path.


The whole Rey's parents thing was just dumb and the scene in the cave, which was supposed to be a more serious cave then the tree in ESB made no sense with 9 million Rey's snapping their fingers.


Even the ending which was supposed to be even more dire then the last scene in ESB as Luke and Leia watched Lando flying off in Hans clothing just didn't have the same kind of emotional resonance to me.


It was to me a poor story disguised by a high level of technical execution, and its made it really difficult to connect with the characters like we could in Star Wars.


I don't know how they can "save" this trilogy, my fear is that they're going to do a midnight hotshotting of reveals in this movie. Suddenly Rey will be the love child of Ben Kenobi, the knights of ren will show up late to the fight and completely decimate the Resistance, and we'll get a scene in the end with 10,000 jedi knight ghosts with Palpatine doing a keg stand.


But in a trilogy its hard to recover from bad story line decisions and poor endings, trilogies have a certain momentum and a life of their own and we saw what happened in the Matrix when they lost quality and control in the last two films and tried to hotshot coolness into it.