Okay. My first comments on this forum about this (and yeah, I saw it on the Thursday way back when, when it opened?), since I have gone for some months.
I hated it when I saw it in the theater. Like, I walked out of the theater all pissed off about it, and I even felt shame for trusting Rian Johnson enough to talk him up to people who didn't know who he was -- I felt rather betrayed by what we got. It's the only thing he's directed that I've really disliked. Everything else -- Brothers Bloom, Looper, Brick, TV episodes he's done -- I at least enjoyed and even really got into.
This film? Gawd.
It wasn't because of any stupid political stuff either. I don't care whether there's a black person or a woman in charge, I don't care if he made white-guy Luke into a kind of cantankerous "get off my lawn" guy, all i care about is the story and whether it makes sense and whether it generates coherent emotion and engagement. This film wasn't it for me.
There were a bunch of really LAME jokes that I felt broke tone / trivialized the characters. They were jokes of the variety that you make sitting around with friends in a bar, just for laughs, but you would never actually DO in a REAL movie... except Johnson for some reason did. (Case in point -- the lawyer joke sequence, or milking large rubbery teats in a Star Wars film, or just a bunch of similar trite crap.)
Some of the character acted like idiots. For example, Poe acted like a disgruntled tween. Laura Dern's character was a presumptuous (read:Terrible) leader. Leia did force shit that there has been no HINT of her doing in the past (well, unless we find out she died in this film and was a force ghost all along), when considering Fisher is now gone would have been a convenient way to write her out.
The plot just felt so contrived -- both the rebels' neverending escape along with Rose and Finn's side mission (which I still kind of don't get -- the rebels are being chased, but everyone's flying off to god knows what planet and asteroid and then coming back in the middle of the ongoing chase). There's a huge scope problem, kind of like the same problem TWD has with firing endless rounds of bullets in a world where bullets should be priceless but they never seen to run out -- here, it's played up like some epic end-all battle between the alliance and the First Order, but the First Order seems pretty small at this point and the alliance seems almost gone too, so who cares? It was kind of established that the Empire at least was enmeshed in thousands of planets (because we got to see that in the Senate) -- here, it just seems like one small battle among many varieties of battles around the cosmos if it matters at all... Like maybe on one planet, there would be smugglers taking over and the local military would be fighting them, and on another planet a different battle for power is accruing... but I never get the sense that the First Order is really that big or the Alliance this small.
and so on. Even the soundtrack felt like a compilation / phoned in by Williams.
We find out nothing about Phasma. We find out nothing about Snoke. Apparently neither character mattered except as a plot device. Thanks, guys. In fact, pretty much everything that TFA set up, this film said, "Hell, screw it all." Did Johnson even WATCh the first film? Has he watched any Star Wars films at all? It wasn't apparent that he did. He's not much of a team player from a writer's POV; I have written collaborative stories before and this is NOT how to do it.
In fact, the ONE thing I liked was the interplay between Ben and Rey. That was all cool, typically -- the concept and the execution. Intriguing. I love it because they're enemies, yet akin to each other, simultaneously. They are connected for good or ill. But once again, apparently no one can make anything interesting in Star wars except for Force users.
BUT...
I try hard to be fair. So the film released this week on home video and I rewatched it tonight to give it a fair shake.
Much of my earlier objections still stand. I still think a lot of the film is contrived and dumb. However, I could now pick up larger currents and feel that I have a better sense of what Johnson was trying to do. I still think it failed in the sense of making an entertaining and meaningful film, but from an intellectual POV there's a lot of structure in this movie as a standalone. For example, Finn's trying to leave (even if just to find Rey), he's got an issue with running, and Rose stopping him .... played against the end where Finn decides to suicide into the cannon (thus, he's NOT running, he's the only one NOT running) and Rose SAVES him this time. It doesn't feel coherent to Rose's character, but from a script POV I can see Johnson was spinning it around. Same way with Luke announcing earlier in the film that what's Rey expect him to do, show up and defeat the entire army with a lightsaber? Well, the ending kinda seems like it could go that way... although it has a nice balance to it in how it plays out. And both Ben and Rey choosing to meet Snoke because both have foreseen what's going to happen -- and it turns out they were both correct in seeing what they saw, they just both interpreted it INCORRECTLY. (As a side note, it still did feel a bit dumb because in the first viewing I'm still not sure how Snoke didn't see what was happening when it was really obvious to me what Ben was going to do.... but I guess even Snoke had gotten in the habit of seeing things the way he wanted to see them. Whatever.)
This film was made up of a number of powerful "moments" that I don't feel were supported well by the rest of the film connecting them, unfortunately. Or there were concepts that are interesting in themselves but just not executed in the most meaningful well. I like films that I want to actually rewatch because they have power; I don't feel like this film has much power, it's rather flat. The whole subplot with Benicio, I'm not sure what they're trying to say aside from both sides are fighting and it's kind of dumb (because "good and evil" don't matter), so maybe they'll stop? But then Rey and Ben will seemingly represent the Jedi and well, whatever Ben is, anyway, so...? Or the film suggests the Jedi books can be discarded and are seemingly destroyed... but then it turns out Rey actually still has them, so... what lesson did we learn?
I DO actually really liked the revelation about Rey's parents, and how basically she has the past that Ben wished HE had -- he's spent all this time destroying his past so he can be free to be what he wants for himself, whereas Rey has nothing to tie her to anything, so she is entirely free to be what she wants... yet feels compelled to use the Force in a particular and heroic way. Both of them experience freedom differently ... Ben has to kill everything that tries to influence him so he can feel free (because his ego is actually weak), Rey is weak too in that she looks outside herself to be defined by others and doesn't know what to do in the face of having nothing there to show her what to be.
But then there are other moments, like Rey in the dark cave. Still not sure what I'm supposed to get out of that. Maybe the equitable scene in The Empire Strikes Back was more on the nose, but at least it was coherent. This was imagery without purpose, unless (as I just said above) it was just to suggest that Rey was free to define herself rather than be defined by the reflections of others. I dunno. Again, the experience of watching this movie was either flat or confusing, which makes it hard to feel a lot during it.
Long story short, I'd bump up my score to maybe a 3/5 on it. But I didn't buy a copy of the film, and I don't know if I'll watch it again.
