So I'm gonna do this in a drunken rambling style of review, because I thought that would be fun. I also thought it might be fun to put a comedic spin to my typically dry dissection of film and novels, so... Here you go. Enjoy. Or, like, don't, I'm not your dad.
Also, like, my review is
super duper critical of the movie, because that is my thing with reviewing stuff, so... Don't read this if you're easily offended. You've been warned... Here we go...
I expected to anger at least one person, sorry to that person.
What did you think of Leia's in-space resurrection?
Bad. Very bad.
How did you react to seeing Yoda?
Confirmed Rei's Mary Sue status for me, so... Thanks you little green goblin.
How do you feel about Kylo Ren?
One of the only interesting parts of the film, let down by a climax that backpeddles on every risk it took with him.
What do you think about the new girl, Rose?
Self-insert fantasy fan character that can do no wrong in spite of making the most idiotic decisions
imaginable. (You're gonna save Finn by ramming your dumb ass into him at high speed and possibly murdering you both? Why?!... To fight for the things you love?! Well, isn't Finn dying to save the things he loves? YOUR LOGIC IS BAD. FEEL BAD.)
Tell me everything you think I just wanna talk about this movie! >:0
tl;dr: The movie's a solid 4/10. I don't even mean that offensively, or to belittle the film, or to be some edgetastic shitlord who OCD's over every Star Wars release. Personally I'm of the crowd that thinks that Star Wars ended back in 1983. Everybody's entitled to enjoy the things they enjoy and this is just my opinion on it, so if you think it's 11/10 worthy be my guest. You're allowed to feel that way, and you aren't wrong subjectively.
Objectively, though, you are very wrong.
Opinion: This film is basically Empire, but with a couple of plot twists that they renege on almost immediately, and to massive detriment. So I'll number list what I think of the film I guess, because I'm
lazy organized.
#1: The plot is dumb.
Everything about the plot makes no sense, and feels like a bunch of incoherent side plots inadequately woven together in an inordinately overcomplicated way. Which is hilarious, because the charm of Star Wars was that they were actually super simple stories about space knights rescuing space princesses from space
towers balls, in space. Woo.
You could literally delete the entire Casino sequence--which was about 40 minutes of my life I can't get back, by the way--and lose nothing of value to the plot outside of Rose's shoved in introduction. (We'll get to her later.) No, really, think about it: The entire point of going there was to get a codebreaker so they could infiltrate the giant murder triangle. Alright, cool. So they get the codebreaker by accident (thank god they wound up in the same cell, amirite?) and manage to escape to infiltrate the ship. Then they immediately fail anyway, rendering the entire subplot worthless.
Gee, thanks.
Well, what about Rei?
She goes to a planet to get trained. Luke's scenes are...
Largely wasted, not entirely. The scenes needed to happen but because Rei literally can't do wrong, or have wrongthink, Yoda pops in by the end of this subplot to tell Luke that truly
she was the one to teach
him things. Yeah, really selling the idea that this character isn't cavity-inducingly perfect. Thanks. Also, the idea that Luke--the guy who literally nearly sacrificed himself at the end of Return of the Jedi to try and save a the soul of an irredeemable motherfucker who cut off his
haaaaand and murdered scores of his brothers in arms in the rebellion--would
seriously consider murdering the
literal progeny of the sister he loves is beyond fucked up. It's taking the one core aspect of Luke Skywalker that made him admirable (being the moralistic determinator) and rips it out of him so that Rei can have it instead. Because if Luke had it, Rei might have actually had to learn something from him. We can't have that. It's 2017.
Woo.
Then the film almost gets better. The entire throne room scene where Snoke gets his ranting ass cut in half is great. The fight scene after is okay, it does the job better than the prequels ever did.
And then they do the dumbest thing imaginable.
Instead of actually advancing Star Wars for the first time in like... 30 fucking years... By moving on past depictions of good and evil, and allowing this weird relationship to advance, they have Kylo Murderface propose that the only way to move on properly is to murder
fucking everyone. Yeah, awesome... Why? You rejected Snookie (that's what I call Snoke at this point) and Luke, and so has Rei largely, so... Why? Why are you suddenly so stup-- oh right, so we can go back to people hitting each other with laser swords over good and evil, and giant doom lasers, and... Oh god, I'm too old for this.
Also, Rei somehow escapes again, once again completely neutering the threat of the empire, but, get on that in a bit.
They then have a second climax (because this bloated fucking movie needed another one of those for some reason), where we have a mini death star laser (no, fucking really, you couldn't go just
one film without this giant laser thing?...) and the heroes have to stop it. They then don't, but Luke saves them with force ghost... Powers. And then he just fucking disappears and Rei saves everyone again.
The end. Snookie--a guy we barely know is dead--and KyloMcMurderface is now in charge, having abandoned what little sympathetic development he had with Rei. Rei suffered no consequences, neither did Poe, in spite of both of them doing overwhelmingly dumb things throughout most of the film.
In summary: This is the plot of Empire Strikes Back, written by a 12 year old who is terrified of hurting any of the characters he actually cares about.
ALSO NOW WE CAN SELL PORGS FUCK YES MONEY
YEAAAAHHHHHHH (although not gonna lie I do think they're cute.)
#2: The characters are also dumb, and nothing of consequence is allowed to happen to them.
No, really. Think about it. Let's go over how utterly insane some of these death avoidance moments are.
- Some chick (Leia, I know, don't correct me) gets blown up on the bridge, floats out into space, hovers there for like way more time than is necessary to kill a person, and then CGI Superman floats back inside. An airlock then opens to let her onto the ship that rightfully should have sucked out everyone else with decompression, but it didn't, because the plot armour on some of these characters is unreal.
- Poe single handedly takes on a Dreadnought and takes out all of its laser cannon things without dying. He tanks a hanger explosion to the face and lives without so much as a scratch. He leads a mutiny and the reaction of the characters in charge--including the person he threatened with a fucking gun--is like "yeah nah I totes like bad boys." Are you serious? He was a deluded lunatic for half of the movie. "He was just trying to save everyone!" Right, and if I hijack a space bus of space kids, and claim I'm trying to save them all, you--not knowing the context as to why--would rightfully probably shoot me out the airlock. Yeah.
- Rose rams her ship into Finn, rightfully killing both of them as their ships explode. They're fine. She loves him tho, so this is fine.
- They literally couldn't think of how Luke could die, but they needed to kill him off because he's the new mentor, so... He just... Literally disappears in a fade shot. Oh my god that is lazy.
- They brought Rei into the throne room due to her arrogance. Finally, a character flaw--she felt she could save Kylo from himself, and gets captured and tortured. Fantastic! So what debilitating injury will she get as a result of thi-- oh fucking nothing great yeah fantastic. By the second film in the original trilogy, for comparison, Luke in his arrogance, gets toyed with by Vader, and has his hand cut off like the punk ass he is, and almost dies. Luke's actions had consequences. Rei's actions don't.
There is utterly no tension in the plot when characters are put into danger, because the plot will find some contrivance to allow them to live. Somehow. Ooh... Lordie.
I'm gonna skip evaluating every characters because, fuck that, this review is a bloated mess already (just like the movie haHaaaaaa!) but there is one character that I despise, more than anything. One character that is somehow worse, and more destructive, than Jar Jar Binks.
Rose.
They introduce this character in the second film and she completely derails every attempt that Finn has at doing anything, interesting, ever. Every single thing she does is irrational and moronic. She agrees to a pie in the sky fantasy plan to acquire a codebreaker whose existence they can only trace to a pin, on a casino world. She hates the casino world because she grew up poor and rich people are all meanies. The casino world exists solely to build up her character and romance with Finn, to which she then promptly fails at everything she does.
Then, to show how much she loves Finn, she rams her ship into Finn's ship,
killing them both horribly in a suitable explosion saving his life fucking somehow idk a space wizard did it. Then tells him that she loves him, and kisses him, and Finn has a suitably confused and stunned expression. She also passes along this nugget of insanity: "We won't win by fighting the things we hate. We'll win by saving the things we love."
Okay. Pop quiz.
Finn was about to sacrifice himself to destroy a thing he hates... To
save all the people he loves which you have just potentially fucked over now, Rose. Because remember, they don't know Luke is there. She literally just doomed
everyone to save
one guy, by nearly
murdering them both. She nearly murdered the thing she loves to save the thing she loves from the thing she hates that is now going to destroy them both.
Fucking brilliant writing, 10/10.
Then again, this character's entire purpose is to be a throwaway romance. Her name is
literally Rose. They couldn't even be more clever and come up with the name of another flower, like Chrysanthemum, no, it had to be
Rose, because she exists to be fodder for Finn.
I would literally give the third film a 10/10 if it kills off Rose for her next inevitably incredibly stupid action. Please. Please do it. I know you won't, Disney, because you don't have the balls to actually do that, but... Dear god, please. We already have one Mary Sue
please don't make it two.
Oh, yeah, and Admiral Akbar is dead. You know, that character we all knew and loved so well, for his iconic lines, like "it's a trap!" And... Um... Uh...
#3: Everything that is good in this movie, was good because OG Star Wars did it first.
- The soundtrack that everyone loves is overwhelmingly remixes of or direct rips of old songs.
- The aesthetic and visual style of the universe is owed to the original trilogy, and even a bit of the prequel trilogy, so this film gets zero points there.
- Luke is a great character, mishandled badly, and yet our nostalgia for him is what preserves him in the end.
- The throne room had a neat aesthetic. If only I hadn't seen it... Twice? Three times before now?
- A lightsaber fight in a throne room while the rebels are being picked off as their fleet is destroyed? Never seen that before.
- Desperate final stand against a bunch of AT-AT walkers with shitty craft that ultimately can't do the job? That is the most original idea I've ever seen!
The
only part of this film that is really and truly unique and original and interesting, is
Kylo Ren. And they have effectively destroyed any chance of him being interesting ever again outside of comedic interactions between him and the guy who looks like he perpetually has a pole shoved up his ass. He has failed to defeat Rei with force powers...
Twice. In The Force Awakens
and in this film. He is not a threat to her, the films have established this repeatedly. The one person who was--snookie--is dead. So... Way to go.
The only remaining tension in this film series has been utterly destroyed.
So in essence: This film is a bad Star Wars film. It is completely devoid of character consequences, and so forth.
But do I think this is the worst film ever?
No. Not by a longshot. This film has good qualities.
- The production value is top notch.
- They did try new things. It's a shame none of it worked and was reneged on almost immediately, but they tried.
- The porgs are fucking adorable and I will fight you IRL if you think they aren't.
- It's well acted. The actors are top notch in the roles. Especially Kylo Ren and Poe--holy shit no matter how dumb they are I actually enjoy watching their scenes just for the acting!
- The special effects are beautiful.
- The locations, as always, are visually interesting and a treat to behold.
- Outside of the casino scene being a slog, the rest of the film is well paced.
If you enjoy this movie,
you aren't a bad person for that. I love Independence Day, unironically. If you don't know what that movie is, then witness the glory of
Ham Smith. By all rights, ID is a shitty movie in every way, but I love it anyway.
This also isn't the worst Star Wars movie, because nothing will be worse than the Holiday Special. Nothing. Ever.
If you enjoy mindless and entertaining laser swords and explosions, this movie is for you.
If you enjoy thinking about things for more than five minutes, this is... Probably not.
Also the porgs are fucking cute. Bye.
PS: I forgot Captain Phasma was a thing already. Glad the writers took care of that for me so I don't have to remember for the third film. Thanks, Didneydoshit.
Oh, wait, shit, more questions. Okay.
How did everybody feel about Luke?
(Why would Luke ever want to murder anyone lmao)
What was the reaction to Snoke's death?
"Oh okay. I didn't know anything about you, so I don't care. Bye. Wait, does this mean that things might get complex and interesting between Kylo and Rei?! YES."
Is Rey overpowered/ a mary sue?
Yes. Oh god, yes. Snookie was the only one who could hurt her. It took a giant monster face sith lord to finally bring her down, and even
he didn't leave a lasting mark on her at all.
Fuck.