Star Wars: Episode 7, 8... and BEYOND!

I'm fairly sure girl jedi and teen sith are siblings, that'll explain pretty much everything. It also means that she's not "pure"
light side and he's not "pure" dork side of ze force, so I'm expecting a lot of tension in that regard in this movie. I kinda hope that she falls to the dork side and turns things grimdark and shit, buuuut I'm pretty sure it'll be him that'll be like "oh wait" and pwn that giant disfigured wossface in the climax of the movie instead. 3rd movie, fuck knows either whatever happens. It'll probably end up just as expected and justice will triumph and shit.

That was... nearly a parody. They kept undercutting all the dramatic moments with jokes. It's okay to play tropes straight sometimes.

Also, I have a quirk where I respond badly to needless slaughter of NPCs, and good god did this film needlessly slaughter NPCs.

I find it HILARIOUS how many hard core Star Wars fans are losing their minds about how this plays against expectations, and have basically rage quit Star Wars stuff, or hate the film for not being Star Wars-y enough (which is just the knee jerk reaction to the fact that this is basically the opposite of how TFA did things).

(12 O'Clock High was still the best film to watch before this one).

I like the fact that the film plays the, "making the big showy play isn't always how you win" in spades, and works hard to fuck with expectations whenever possible.
• Poe's attack on the Juggernaut losing them a ton of ships, in exchange for a minor victory.
• Finn & Rose's excursion to get a hacker not planning out the way they planned and ultimately totally failing.
• Cloaking the ships failing to stop them being spotted and decimated.
• Rey's team up with Ren not being the path to saving him.
• Snoke being a threat, but being overcome almost instantly.
• Rey's parentage being ultimately irrelevant.
• Finn's self-sacrifice not being the key to everyone making it out of the base.
• Luke's final battle being a ruse to play into that trope in the strongest way possible.

Basically, it's all about hitting the core concepts of making the people and their fight be what mattered, rather than being mythologically indulgent to the fantasy of the Skywalker legacy by addressing that the Skywalker legacy ITSELF is a flaw in its own way (which makes me really curious what all will come of the conclusion). Especially because the lesson from this — as Yoda says — is all about learning from failure.

I did dislike the entire Casino Night Zone sidequest btw. Felt like it dragged down the movie and was ultimately pointless.

Yeah, I agree. The film left me feeling empty. Needs a final film that better have a punchline .
3/5 stars.

I spent a very large portion of the movie wondering where on earth they were going with it, and I'm still trying to decide if that's a strength or a weakness. I was surprised very often solely as a product as having no idea what to expect in the first place. It does a good job of keeping up the hopelessness, every single sequence seems utterly inescapable.

A lot of stuff seemed strangely...contemporary? The way Ren says "Yeah me neither" when Ray says she doesn't want to talk. Luke's "brush off the shoulder" thing. Poe's trolling on the radio at the beginning. I didn't necessarily dislike it, but it was surprising.

Tets, I love the calling Finn's adventure "Casino Night Zone" You're probably right that it was too long, but I was interested as it was happening. And I like Rose. As X said, it seemed to play into the defying your expectations thing. Obviously it also gave Finn something to do and time to develop Rose. But the fact that not only was their-and-Poe's plan a failure, it actively made absolutely everything worse.

When Snoke berated Ren, it's like he was reading directly off internet forums, with the "beaten by a girl who had never held a lightsaber before" There was actually a lot of that - characters acknowledging things the audience would. Like when Poe wants to find another way out of the bunker, "Hell, how did he get in?"

The scene where the admiral lady lightspeed-jumps into the imperial fleet was absolutely GORGEOUS. I did have two questions though, firstly I was surprised no one's done that before in moments of desperation, but two, why didn't she do it sooner?! But still, breathtaking shot.

Leia actually using the Force outside of vaguely feeling things was cool, and surprising. The fact that she was SO far away from the ship sort of...well...I want to say "strains credibility," but she was flying through space, so I guess that's moot. When I thought they had killed her there I thought, "I see, well I guess them saying she had finished filming all her scenes was a lower hurdle than I anticipated."

I also really thought they were going to kill Finn there, so, got me. One particularly eye-rolly scene was where that dude tastes the dirt to say, "Salt." Like, "See it's not Hoth, promise! It's totally not snow, see?!"

I'm glad Luke got to do something badass - very glad, in fact. And I was really really hoping they woudn't kill him, because that seems like the obvious thing to do, and so far the movie hadn't done anything obvious. And they faked me out twice thinking he'd get out of it. But alas...if it had to happen, I'm glad it happened the way it did, in such a way that no bad guys got any satisfaction or accomplishment or whatever. But still, harrumph.

I mostly liked that the movie wasn't afraid to use levity in otherwise very tense scenes, "Do you think you got him?" after shooting everything at Luke, for instance, and the opening sequence. Finn got some really lame lines, ("chrome dome?"), but I did genuinely laugh at, "They really hate that ship!" hahah.

I don't know how Ren is going to have enough respect for anyone in the military to follow him, considering how royally he screwed up.

Other little things - I liked how Luke stopped himself from hitting the ground when Rey knocked him over. I also liked the way they dispatached that last red dude, with the lightsaber instantaneously through his head. And I do think it's a good move that these movies have a dark side guy struggling with his evilness, instead of a good guy struggling with his goodness.
I suspect the fandom will still be disappointed in Phasma's role. Surprising that she actually came right out and verbalized the villain cliche - We can't just shoot them, let's waste time first, haha.

The suicide hyperspace attack while visually stunning raises a few questions. Generally I assumed flying into something while in hyperspace will just turn you to mush but have a relatively weak impact on your target. This is just a headcanon I always had to justify why they even build superweapons as opposed to using kinetic hyperspace missiles as realistically, you could probably destroy a planet by just throwing a car-sized object going at lightspeed at it.

Now that hyperdrive attacks are proven to be devastating in SW physics it makes you wonder why for example they couldn't just have a dummy X-Wing flown by an astromech hyperjump straight into Starkiller Base. Or why such a ridiculous weapon is all that necessary in the first place when you just need to strap hyperdrives to a few large asteroids and send them on their way.

Well I imagine mass plays a part. The Millennium Falcon would probably just get obliterated, that was a big cruiser. But yes, that's often a thought you have to just kinda think around in sci-fi, as the sheer kinetic damage you could do would be insane.

About Casino Night Zone, it felt like it went on a bit too long, although maybe just because I didn't know what they were doing. They didn't get the code breaker, or the backup code breaker, but they were desperately trying to escape in a extremely flashy way. But cause they busted through the town, it was worth it? I get what they were trying to do, but it felt so off handed and naive considering what they were there to do.

And yes, that light-speed attack, while raises a lot of questions as to "why not do that all the time?", was fucking beautiful. Best shot in the whole series, probably.

I'm not gonna say much, since I just got back, and I'm about 2 hours overdue for bedtime with work tonight, but I think my main issue was, I'm not sure what a lot of it had to do with the main story.
Not a whole lot happened, really. Rey took another step in her training, learned things arnt as simple as they seem, and got some new force powers.
Kylo doubled down on his whinyness, killing Snoke (wasn't expecting that), and taking control of the first order. But ultimately his character didn't really change.
Finn learned to not be a coward and stand up and fight. Also got a kiss.
Po learned it's not always about pew pew.
Luke... He gave Rey a speech or two about the force. Then died.

I dunno, nothing was really resolved, or revealed. We learned Rey's parents aren't important, and that Luke thought about killing Ben. A neat fact, but doesn't really add much other than Ben felt betrayed and that's what put him over the edge.

I enjoyed it, but I really wonder how well it'll hold up on repeat viewings, knowing where everything's going.