Ok, I think enough people now have seen this to start a discussion now.
Warning: I’ll post spoilers. I’m not kidding. Really, I’ll do it.
Ok, so I really wasn’t a fan of the movie. I was disappointed by the glossed over part that Snoke played, throughly disliked the throwaway explanation of Rey’s parents, and wasn’t a fan of the plot line that seemed to be a rehash of the BSG episode “33 Minutes.”
And don’t even get me started on the Canto Bight part.
It was ok, as in good fun. It certainly poked at its predecessors a bit more than I expected (Luke shoulder flick etc). Random thoughts:
As a nerd, I wasn’t really ready for the new plot altering Jedi Telepresence Trick. It was pivotal to the movie (Snoke with his Rey/Kylo chatline, Luke with his ‘You can’t touch me!’) and felt odd.
Hux was a cartoon character this time around.
I want a Snoke Gold dressing robe for Xmas. So fly.
Kylo isn’t really a scary bad guy, he’s more a scared bad guy. I’m struggling to think how the 3rd movie makes him seem like a threat like Vadar felt like. Adam Driver is a good actor, but there’s a lot of Incredible Sulk going on there.
Mark Hamill was great, Carrier Fisher kind of at the limits of her acting, and the new characters good enough.
It felt a bit more Rogue One than Force Awakens in terms of bodycounts.
JJ will retcon the Rey parents bit in the next film. It’s too much of a trope to resist in SW land.
The Slow Chase Scene of ‘33 minutes’ was an odd move. The Laura Dern character was at least not as single dimensional as these throwaway characters sometimes are. That lightspeed explosion was nice.
Canto Bight was curious, in that it was one of those things that if was cut out would not really have made any impact to the 3rd act. I guess it was all about giving Rose something to do as a character intro and giving Finn some growth arc.
So, yeah, I enjoyed it enough. With ‘Solo’ up next it will be interesting to see if the steam starts to wheeze out a bit of the SW machine.
It was all deliberate.
Snoke didn’t matter, he was there just to assist KR’s rise to power.
Her parents didn’t matter, it was all about how she was a no one who came from nothing, like Luke was originally thought to be until the prequels showed he was destined from birth to be a legend. Not that it can’t be changed in the next film with a “KR lied!” moment, which if you recall many people thought was the case with Vader’s claim in ESB until Obi Wan and Yoda confirmed it 3 years later.
As for the hyperspace tracking bit, that was set up in Rogue One although the destruction of Sarif and the Empire’s defeat led to it taking decades to finalize the tech.
Canto Bight was another cantina sequence and let us meet DJ, a character who showed us what would’ve happened had Solo and Calrissian stuck to their “I’m in it for me” path and not joined up. It was also an interesting idea that both sides are being used by the military-industrial complex to enrich themselves while the rest of the galaxy suffers endless war.
I’ve spent several days going back and forth on whether I liked it or not. It didn’t resonate with me like Rogue One did, but in retrospect Rogue One was a battle from the X-Wing games in UHD spliced with scenes from Space Tarawa with an overly long expository section stapled on the front. That’s the sort of crowd pleasing that’s tough to follow.
Overall I liked it. I thought each individual scene and spectacle was well executed. The initial space B-17 run over the dreadnaught (Seriously, some one remake ■■■■■■■ X-Wing), the splendor and depravity of Cantor Bight, the battle on the salt flat, Captain Breine and Finn’s hanger fight. The Rey/Ren battle royale with the crimson curtains burning down to reveal windows was especially amazeballs.
I also enjoyed that the ForceTime conversations actually portrayed a much more seductive dark side (and I don’t just mean the shirtless scene 
).
I think what bugs me the most is while I understand and actually kind of dig Johnson’s purposeful and deliberate efforts to torch the established cycle of things, I felt a great deal of what was destroyed was so underdeveloped to lose meaning. For a force that got it’s teeth kicked in forty years ago, how is the First Order able to magically poop out enough Star Destroyers to occupy the entire galaxy in what was like, two weeks tops. Who is Snoke? Why is he so powerful? How did he become the ruler of a hyper Flanders-ized rump state of an extremely xenophobic fascist regime? Why should I care that he possibly got bisected? (maybe). If he exists to show be fodder for Kylo’s rise to power, why not just replace him with a stuffy Englishman in an SS Uniform? Call him Piet Jr.? This goes ditto for Phasma. What was the point of these characters if they were going to die in the middle movie? What does this entail for the last movie?
I guess what I’m getting at here is I’m not mad the mystery box got crushed, I’m more annoyed the mystery box existed in the first place.
Other than that my complaints are mostly nit picks. 2/3s of the resistance would still be alive if Holdo and Poe hadn’t been tossing the idiot ball between each other. I don’t get why they had Luke use his force projection powers to mind screw Ren if he was just going to die anyways. Also why were turbo-laser bolts arc as if effected by gravity… in space? Was there a massive stellar object underneath the fleet just out of view?
Overall it’s growing on me again. It was a bold path to take in a series as up it’s own butt as Star Wars. I was afraid it was just going to be a remake of Empire and it was anything but that. If anything I’m more excited to see what Johnson’s going to do with his own trilogy.
I just saw it last night and I’m still in the fence. I felt that there was a lot of fat that could have been left on the cutting room floor and it would have had a better pacing (Luke milking those creatures for instance). I’m agree with nearblind about the characters set up in the first film just to die. Overall I like what the movie was trying to do I just felt that some aspacts were underdeveloped and that they were trying to cram too much into the film.
Also the Leah in space part sits unwell with me.
Big picture though, any Star Wars movie that didn’t mention Midichloreans is pretty much an upgrade.
That didn’t actually bug me so much. She’s just as sensitive to force as Luke. All she did was force push herself back into the bridge.
Ok here’s my take on it, in short notes:
Dammit the forums glitched out on me… standby…
Leia’s force scene… looked a bit strange.
I liked the space chase setting although the space fan in me has a serious headache. Distances, speeds and physics just make no sense at all in Star Wars.
I liked that Poe got some more screen time and thus got more depth
Finn and Rose were OK but I am sad Finn didn’t get more meaningful stuff to do and shine. I really like the character
I liked Luke’s attitude. He seemed really bored and fed up with Rey. His look at her during the milking scene and some others was just great. He was the grumpy old guy from Gran Torino. 
Mark Hamill isn’t exactly a great actor (only Star Wars and Wing Commander fans believe that.) but he did it well.
Admiral Ackbar is dead. Nooooooo!
the purple haired lady was quite cool. Very serious. Epic end.
Carrie Fisher wasn’t too great, but better than in Ep7. Not cringe worthy this time.
they didn’t do the obvious stuff, which I liked. I had feared we would see a rehash of Ep5 but we didn’t. And all the annoying “we already know everything” fan theory guys were wrong. Loved it. They took it badly though and now run around telling everybody EP8 is crap. Sore losers.
I LOVE that Rey’s parents are nobodies. There is no need for everybody being a Skywalker or Kenobi or related to some other famous person. Sometimes people are just people doing their own stuff independently from their parents. I like that message. I fear that Kylo Ren lied though and it will be revealed that actually they were important people.
Yoda was cool.
Rey saved the boring books!
some people actually missed the boy in the end was using the force. I didn’t.
disappointed by Phasma’s end. I expected more.
Hux was too much of a clown. There is no Tarkin-like character at the moment, I hope we get one. Maybe a blue skinned grand admiral…
I had hoped Luke would have a badass moment knocking all those walkers around like dominos or so. The force projection thing was cool but I had hoped for something different.
Luke’s death scene has two suns like his famous scene in Ep4
Porgs were funny. I still think Chewie should have eaten his meal. He already killed the bird anyway.
Finally boobs in Star Wars! (LoL)
did you see the electronics in the X Wing? Holy crap that thing looks like 1970s tech inside! 
Luke’s door is made of an X Wing part!
I liked the telepathic link thing although the “put some clothes on” part was over the top and broke the tension too much for me. It was funny though.
I like how Kylo tricked Snoke so he could betray him. I liked him a lot in that movie. Still kind of a waste since Snoke was a cool character and I would have loved to see that character fleshed out a bit more.
I think there was a bit too much humor in the movie. It didn’t ruin the movie but in some of those situations the humor was a bit distracting for me.
There were SO many Easter eggs in there. I am sure I missed a lot of them. It still wasn’t as full with blatant fan service as the last one which overdid it.
disliked the nuns a bit.
Yep. I hated it. I didn’t even like the whole part with Rey doing it on the island. Felt like a waste of time.
I hated the beginning…all the stupid comedy between Hux and Poe. It was funny, but didn’t really fit.
Yeah. I thought the blood explosion of one of those red guards thingy guys was a bit too much. They should have left that out. I’m already on the fence with letting Kai watch these movies, and that part wasn’t great (as a parent) (but I get the hypocrisy of my stance on that).
That part was the most epic part of the movie for me (see above hypocrisy statement…LOL). I mean, the way they did the editing and sound for that was just stunning.
Rogue One is still the best Star Wars movie in the series (even though it is an offshoot and is way darker).
Canto Bight was horrible…as was the relationship between Finn and that gal.
I didn’t like the bird things either. Felt Jim Henson.
Overall…it was good…but not great.
I could watch a whole movie that focuses on DJ though. I thought his “Lord of War” position on things was very interesting (and is a bit of a commentary on real life now isn’t it?)…
Yep. I thought the bridge explosion thing was the end of her character…and it would have fit well. I found the “Mary Poppins” scene (as it has been described) as a bit unusual.
And we also need a movie that features 98% Imperial Walkers. Because those things are bad-ass.
The way Maz was hyping him, I was really, REALLY hoping for Lando, or at least Talon Karrde.
Though the latter could have been the one with the flower lapel, for all we know.
Porgs, Porgs, Porgs!!!
I hated that part, and I think looking back, set up the overall theme of “let’s kill as many rebels as possible in completely unnecessary blunders that no halfway competent military Commander would ever even think of in their worst nightmares because all those lives have been wasted in vain.”
It’s ambiguous if @near_blind either (i) likes Porgs, (ii) didn’t like the affront to Jim Henson or (iii) took exception to ‘Felt Jim Henson’ as if @BeachAV8R was implying a Jim Henson made out of felt. I enjoy the ambiguity tbh.
I kinda liked the theme of the bomber attack but the way it was carried out was just poor.
Also, shielded ships.
Did everybody in that galaxy far, far away suddenly lose the technology for shielded ships, until it was needed as MacGuffin for the BSG-inspired main plotline? I mean, in EVERY OTHER Star Wars film featuring starships, it was established that the ships had shields that had to be penetrated before the hulls or weapons emplacements could be damaged.
I DID like the new A-wings, but I have to ask, the Rebellion, er, Resistance has new X-wing and A-wing models, why don’t they have new B-wing models that are faster, less vulnerable, and still hit hard? Also, free-fall bombs in space? Seriously?? And don’t even get me started on the, “the only way to release the bombs is via a remote control unit that can get dropped, lost, damaged, or otherwise rendered useless before the payload can be delivered” bit.
/rant.
Next movie is going to have a CCRP LOFT delivery on that B-Wing and the First Order are going to be in dead trouble.
Seeing them move so slowly…I was reminded of…
