It took me forever to get to this, but I did finally see it a few weeks ago. I heard a lot of hype about how it was supposed to "recapture the magic of
Star Wars," and how true fans were made believers again after seeing it. Viewed through that lens, I don't think it lives up to the hype. It was a fun big-budget sci-fi action film, but not much more than that, especially considering how many plot points are either borrowed whole-cloth from the previous movies, contrived coincidences, or both.
It had its moments, though. Four really great individual beats stood out for me:
1.) Rey flying the Millennium Falcon upside-down to give Finn a clear shot with his broken turret.
2.) That scene where Kylo Ren tries reading Rey's mind, but inadvertently teaches her how to use The Force, and she ends up reading him instead.
3.) Han's death.
4.) Rey Force-grabbing the lightsaber away from Kylo Ren. (Predictable, but highly satisfying.)
Things I took issue with, sometimes
major issue:
1.) How did Han Solo just happen to find the Millennium Falcon
the moment it leaves Jakku? Was he already hanging out in orbit around Jakku waiting for somebody to hotwire his ship?
2.) Like Sam, I'm quite dissatisfied with the provided in-universe explanation for why Finn defected. If this is the sort of thing that
can happen to Storm Troopers, then it should be happening a lot more often. I could believe a whole battalion of defectors, and I could believe none at all, but for it to be just one,
ever, strained my willing suspension of disbelief.
3.) Speaking of things that strain my suspension of disbelief - of all the gin joints in the all the galaxy, they just happen to take safe harbor in the
one where Luke's lightsaber is? C'mon. This is even worse if it turns out that Rey is Luke's daughter, which the film heavy-handedly implies, but stops short of saying outright.
4.) There's a lot of strained dialogue in which characters specifically avoid referring to Han Solo as Kylo Ren's father or Kylo Ren as Han's son. This isn't like the Vader-is-Luke's-father twist in
Empire Strikes Back, because Vader was the only living person who knew that particular secret. Here, everyone pertinent to the plot (except for Rey and Finn) already knows the secret, but they engage in some awkward talking-around-it dialogue for the sake of keeping it a surprise for the audience. I think this is disingenuous, and that Kylo Ren's parentage did not need to be a secret or a twist.
5.) The whole business with BB-8 being drawn to R2D2, as if he knows that he's the spiritual successor to that character... blatant fan-service, and just bad. Also, the plot that R2 is so "dejected" that Luke went away that he just shuts down for years? Also bad. And then he randomly powers back up when it's convenient for the plot? We're close to Jar-Jar levels of awfulness in this sector of the movie.
6.) Who the heck is Snoke? I found it really distracting that we don't know anything about how he learned to use the Force, where he gets his authority in the First Order, and the nature of his relationship to Kylo Ren. Episodes VIII and IX, but it's important for a movie, even if the writers and audience know that it's part of a series, to also work as a standalone. Missing this information and being told to come back and pay more money in two years to find it out, that's annoying.
7.) Starkiller Base. Ugh, Starkiller Base. Why have this giant thing whose entire purpose is to be "even scarier than the Death Star," and then barely show the effort it takes to destroy it? It's like the screenwriters just assume that, since we've already killed two Death Stars, we should know the drill by now. But we don't - or at least, I don't. The movie never really bothers to explain how the Resistance destroyed Starkiller, how they found out its weakness, how difficult it was for them, or even why it was important to do so (okay, they showed the base destroying five whole planets to establish the stakes, but that whole scene was a mess - which planets? Who's on them? Why should we care about these planets? How does this change the
Star Wars universe, outside of providing some abstract motivation to our main characters?).
Finally, just so this post doesn't make me sound like a
total crankypants, I'll happily join the chorus of people who really like Kylo Ren as a villain. I think he's really engaging and compelling. He's moody, arrogant, and petulant. He has an inferiority complex because of his grandfather, whom he idolizes for what seems like all the wrong reasons. And though all these qualities make him a somewhat ineffective leader, they also make him a
very compelling character, and I really like Adam Driver's acting during the scenes when the mask comes off - especially Han's death scene, which I already pointed out as a highlight of the movie for me. If the new trilogy is building up to an epic confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren, I'd be okay with that. (But c'mon... they don't have to be cousins for the story to work!)