Boy oh boy this was bad. I posted this in the unofficial thread too, and figured I'd put it here because even if one person doesn't give money to Disney for this then I'll be happy.
This film is like watching a 3 hour long sci-fi themed music video with no music. Staggeringly beautiful scenes, VFX and production design lift up what are basically bits of terrible Star Wars fan fiction. There is no tension, nothing makes sense - on a character and plot level.
The second Poe begins throwing grade-school pranks at Hux I knew this was gonna go south. Comedy at points of drama is a really powerful way to completely destroy any dramatic tension (which is basically rule one of what not to do in any writing handbook). Hux, who has risen through a galactic organisation of incredible sophistication - who has grown to lead thousands of men and women - is unable to understand that he's being made fun of - or even more than that - basic operation of a war machine. All of a sudden, he isn't scary, or smart, or clever, he's just there - the admiral of a fleet with one of the most sophisticated death machines ever made but can't work out if he should aim 600 of his 600 cannons at the big ship, or maybe aim 300 of the 600 at the other ships too. And why wouldn't you be scanning for escape ships, given that's literally the only way the Rebels would leave the wallowing cruiser?
The fact that the plot of this movie only exists because the same people who can use lightspeed haven't invented a speed between "really slow" and "lightspeed" is so laughable that I felt embarrassed when evil lackey #56 had the shameful task of explaining why they couldn't shoot the ship right in front of them. "Because, uh, the shields are on, and they're out of range of our cannons (300m range with a firing arc resembling a catapult) and they have to run out of fuel so that they are really close and then we can shoot them, but until then we just sort of follow along next to them instead of sending out more fighters to board them, uh, like when Kylo Ren basically flew through the ship completely fucking it up, uh".
Nevermind the issues actual Star Wars fans have with lore and other backstory - as a film fan this film had nothing beyond production design. Why did the characters land their ship on the beach at the Casino? Why not park it so not to draw attention to themselves? Why did the irritating old-lady alien need to be fighting someone while she spoke to them? Why was Po not executed for mutiny against the entire fleet? Why did every single character - whether in the Order or with the Rebels - never show a single ounce of actual military training? Gee, it's a good thing that Kylo somehow managed to salvage an inexplicably niche siege cannon from his entirely shattered and destroyed fleet in order to transport it down to the mining colony which has a single giant door.
Even worse is that no single part of the film - set in a stunning series of environments and worlds - ever explain any of them. Nothing gets a name or explanation. Hoth was Hoth, Tatoine was Tatoine. Now we have salt planet and monte carlo planet. It's like any sort of political gamesmanship has been replaced by single sentence explanations for things AFTER THEY HAPPEN.
"We are evacuating but there is a mining planet where we have an empty base that's very well armored and we will go there because they can't see our small escape craft!" What???? Why not use the escape craft and just leave? Why did you bomb them? Why did the bombs have to fall down? Could you just shoot them at it?
Benicio Del Toro is a lovable rogue obsessed with money, who then relents and shows a trace of warmth when he returns Rose's necklace (one of the few touching moments in the film). Then he completely annihilates his character development by betraying them. Why give the necklace back at all? Wait, why were they even on the ship at all, when their actions had zero consequence? Why not just insert some boundaries for the plot, and then use them to buy tension? Why tell us the mine had no other escapes, and then immediately escape out of the back?
What happened to Snoke? Why would you reveal him immediately and then kill him 20 minutes later? He's engineered this genius plan of hacking into peoples minds to convince them to do anything he wants them to and then instantly kill him? You build this terrifying figure of ultimate darkness and then pop him on screen in a 1980's dance studio before killing him off as fast as he arrives?
It felt like the entire movie was trimmed down to one line per scene: "We have to go full speed!"/"You have good in you!"/"Take this to save this."/"Take that chrome dome!" Nobody refers to anything within the rich universe of Star Wars itself, beyond generalisations and incredibly irritating anachronisms ("Godspeed!" in a world with no god, "chrome dome", "if anyone moves, stun em"). You have the incredible richness of the entire Star Wars universe and you can't at least fit your basic-ass exposition into some form of Star Wars theme?
The endless "comedy" in this stripped all drama out of it at all.
Stormtroopers - the original space gestapo - are now brainless props to be bumped into by droids. They're incapable of doing anything beyond standing on parade.
Entire loading bay of prize and talented Rebel pilots are entirely incinerated but lol look at the droid cartwheeling through the air with trill of beeps and boops. Luke sees Leia for the first time in decades and manages to make a comment about her hair.
Can someone give the Rebels a basic lesson in military tactics? If every single one of your plans is a suicide mission, you probably shouldn't be commanding forces comprised of human beings. When you're besieged, don't fly out and try and blow the enemy up with inferior numbers in totally open ground. How about also having some strict chain of command instead of tutting every time a psycho "flyboy" mutinies and tries to take over your ragtag band of morons? Every single action taken by both "militaries" was a punch-and-judy show of dumb and dumber, where cutting edge military tactics is lining up your stuff and then making them go forward.
So many dumb story decisions. It's amazing. Finn needs to try and crash into the center of the cannon (not sure why given not a single vehicle the Order brought with them could have fit in the mine), Leia needed to be resurrected 3 times over (presumably to die of old age off screen) including her survival in deep space, beloved Admiral Akbar dies off-screen and instead Holdo gets a dramatic death (because apparently autopilot and turning a ship around are too complex to do without someone loitering in the bridge of the ship).
The Millennium Falcon has to have a scene where it's piloted like a minecart through some narrow underground area while tiny and nimble enemy fighters smash into everything.
Even worse is that the reviewers are making it out like this is anything approaching 50%+ on Rotten Tomatoes, when placed alone this would be something around 30% on a good day. Be aware that this film makes John Carter From Mars look like an actual film (with plot, characters, scenes with more than one line of dialogue). It even makes Jupiter Ascending look inventive.
I think the reason my rant is so long is that this film also manages to spend far too much time (which is basically any time at all away from the plot) trying to hamfist some incredibly lame message about the evils of corporate enterprise. I do not care either way politically, but to have DISNEY of all companies try and preach about how evil the corporate 1% are in this franchise (the same company that issues legal threats if anyone didn't toe the line on their release schedule) given their history for basically press-ganging and blocking reviewers for even a whiff of a negative review is so grossly cynical it's actually more evil than anything Hux and his bumbling fools manage to do the entire film. It's also incredibly long because I feel like the reviewers watched a totally different film. The absolute fact that not a single reviewer has torn this apart (and there is about 15 things per scene that'll raise your eyebrows or make you shake your head) is really worrying, and gives you a pretty good idea that either a) every single otherwise good reviewer suddenly loves terrible films or b) the Disney juggernaut monopoly is able to scare everyone into compliance.
In 2-3 months time (once Disney's release schedule has made them billions), everyone will suddenly talk about this like the monumental film-making dumpster fire it was.
The most genuine moment and performance for me was when the nun toads had their wheelbarrow smashed and their look of shocked disappointment mirrored my face the entire film.
The only thing that'd get me back in the cinema for another Star Wars outing would be Alfonso Cuarón directing a Knights of the Old Republic trilogy - but that'd actually be a film with a plot, script, sensible scale and human drama, and much less good at selling "crystal critters" to 5 year olds.
tưởng phải có quy ước gì mới được xưng emperor, mấy cái empire trước đó cũng chỉ cao nhất là sith lord....
