I saw this movie a couple days ago and just needed some place to catalog all the reasons I thought it wasn't up to quality.
Holdo withholds info, spurring Finn toward a useless expedition that gets loads of people killed.
- There's no reason Space Cadet Jane needed to be all secretive about their plans.
- Finn's entire plot during this movie was useless, and Rose felt forced as a character.
- They can't get the code breaker's contact info from Maz, or even try to look it up online? They have to physically fly to his planet (which happens to be close enough) and get him?
- The casino place, which ended up not even being used, got more exposition than any other part of the movie.
- Meeting the code breaker was garbage. There's how many jail cells, and you get put in one with a guy who happens to be able to break through First Order encryption on the fly?
- Their entire mission to save their friends is jeopardized beyond redemption, but a shot at redemption comes along and their response is, "Nope." They don't even consider it.
- BB-8 takes down a bunch of guards. Felt like it leaned too heavily on comedy and not on "this could actually happen."
- Rose taking the saddle off the fathier and saying, "Now it was worth it," is such an eye-rolling moment. For all they know, their mission was a complete failure. All their friends are going to die. But you took a saddle off one animal that's going to be rounded up in an hour, and now it's worth it?
- Phasma was built up to be this big deal, then she poofed after like a minute.
- The giant First Order ship gets destroyed by the hyperspace jump. Everbody in armor: dead. Finn and Rose: A-okay.
- Even though Finn, Rose, and Poe do a thing that gets people killed, there are no repercussions for them (admittedly they did it because of poor leadership).
- At the very least, the First Order would have been able to see the heat signal from the escape ships' exhaust (not to mention Finn and Rose's ship). They (the First Order) didn't need to make a deal with the code breaker.
- Rose crashes into Finn. I'll ignore whether or not this was a good decision plot-wise and simply ask, how in the world did she reach him? They have the exact same crappy speeders. He's going at full throttle. She turned away and has to circle back. There's no way she can catch up to him, let alone t-bone him.
- The kiss felt very "we're going to jam two mismatched puzzle pieces together." It didn't fit. There wasn't really a buildup to it. No chemistry between characters.
- How did they get back to the base? It took the cruisers quite a bit to get out there going at high speeds. Somehow Finn drags Rose back in like five minutes, and all without any enemies noticing and shooting them.
- All in all, Finn, a great character, was wasted in this film. His plotline was supposed to be about failure, but instead of him failing it was the writer(s).
- No, you dumb cow, nobody has to stay behind. This is why they invented the computer. I promise the autopilot can handle flying in a straight line. If not, I promise you can control it remotely.
- Side note: this was a problem in Rogue One, too. People not knowing how computers work. "We have to get this hard drive physically to the top of this tower in order to transfer the info." No, that is absolutely not how computers work.
- Even if somebody did have to stay behind, it shouldn't have been Holdo. Leia or Ackbar would have been better. Someone who we care about should have been the focus of the most cinematically stunning scene in the movie.
- I couldn't tell if the hyperspace thing was her plan all along, or if she just thought of it as she was watching her fellows get obliterated. Her insistence that someone (her) stay behind makes me think it was in her plan. If so, why did she wait while the others got killed?
- The hyperspace kamikaze, though extremely cool, presents the issue of, why doesn't everybody just have hyperspace missiles? Why build humongous ships when someone could just hyperspace through it and shred it?
Let's make the main conflict be a whale hunt.
- Where were the TIE fighters? They've already shown that TIE fighters can damage the rebel ships. Why did they call them back if they're so dead-set on taking their enemies down? Poe can take down a dreadnought's entire weapons systems with one X-wing, but the First Order can't spare a single TIE fighter?
- It's been pointed out to me that they knew the rebels would run out of fuel (not sure how the FO knew), so it was economically better for them to wait it out than to expend ships taking them down. We know the FO has resources though (they built a planet that could eat stars and have loads of ships and troops), so I don't wholly buy that argument. Also, they destroyed a bunch of rebel fighter ships already. My response to "we can't cover you from this distance" is, once again, computers. Self-driving ships.
- Why in the eff were lasers fired in space arcing in a parabolic trajectory? I know they do things that don't always gel with physics, but some (lightsabers) it's assumed there's a technological reason for it. The arcing lasers just felt like bad design.
- I refuse to believe they're using anything except fusion or fission to power these ships (since they have limited amounts of fuel, so they're not using radiant energy). That being said, the fuel should have lasted a lot longer.
- Why couldn't the First Order have called in more ships? I'm sure you could have some hyperspace in ahead of the rebels and come at them the opposite way.
Snoke? Snoke who?
- Here's an incredibly strong force user that's been around since the Empire. How did he rise to power? Where was he during Palpatine's reign? Response: Lol, why would anyone want to know that?
- Luke says that Snoke already had too strong a hold on Ben Solo. How did they come in contact? Internet chat room?
- Snoke, who can arrange force Skype sessions for other people, who can levitate other force users, who can read minds, etc. etc., doesn't notice that Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber is being turned through the force four inches away from him? Not believable.
- How are we supposed to care that Kylo took him out if we don't even know anything about him?
The Amazing Flying Leia!
- What on earth was that?
- You go unconscious pretty fast in space. Not to mention she was already unconscious from the blast (but she wasn't really hurt?). But somehow she came out of that and was able to use the force to fly back to the ship? Not believable.
- We've known she's force sensitive, but she's never actually used the force before in her life. Now that she's unconscious in the cruel vacuum of space, she can suddenly use it.
- Also, how did they get her back in the ship? When they opened that latch, it would have sucked them out into space, not to mention their oxygen.
- I wish there would have been some follow-up to her suddenly using the force. They completely ignore that it happened.
Luke.
- I feel like they weren't really true to his character. I know it's been a long time and things happen, but still. He's always been the guy who defends others and jumps in to help where he can. Why would he run away from Ben Solo alone when he had all these other apprentices?
- We never get to see his reaction to Han dying. It just cut away from that. Obviously not as important as drinking green milk from tumid space teats.
- He's cut himself off to the force for how long, and as soon as he opens himself up to it again he can do amazing feats like astral project into the physical plane across bazillions of miles?
- There was no reason for him to die. "Oh boy, what a hard day's work. Guess I'll die." The logic behind it is very shaky.
- So he's lost his hope. Okay. His turnaround for regaining hope seemed kind of quick.
- When he saw Leia, I really wanted him to say, "Wanna make out again?"
Force power creep.
- I'm a little iffy on the power creep we've seen going on with the force. The limits keep getting blurred (not that they were crazy well defined to begin with, but it was never so grand).
- Being able to force two other people into a distance-disregarding face-to-face talk is pretty big. Being able to astral project and talk and give dice is big.
- When is it going to stop? How preternatural are force wielders going to get by the end?
- Some foreshadowing for new abilities would be nice, at the very least. I guess Yoda hit Luke with his cane, maybe showing that force ghosts can interact with the physical plane.
We need more humor!
- Star Wars has always had humor, but it feels out of place in this movie. Big explosion, lost a lot of people and equipment, Poe flies back, BB-8 flies by with a comedic scream (of course neither of them got injured when everyone else did).
- Maybe they're going to merge Marvel and Star Wars at some point, so they're prepping audiences by duplicating the humor.
How do I Reyact to this?
- I did like Rey better in this movie. She was much less of an I-can-do-everything type.
- Her training . . . was essentially no training. It was Luke proving that he can complain about things. And that's it.
- Didn't like how they built up this "darkness under the island," then when she goes down there it's a mirror that shows . . . a reflection of her. Wow. So amaze. Dark side so mystery.
- I reeaally wanted her to join Kylo Ren. I guess it's okay that she didn't, but can you imagine?
- How did she get off the ship and back to the Falcon? Do none of these ships have cameras?
Kylo Ren is good.
- He's my favorite character. Great performance by Adam. Great conflict and weaknesses.
- He was really the only one in the movie that acknowledged that Han Solo had died. Kind of disappointing.
- Where are the other apprentices Kylo took with him?
- There were no lightsaber duels in this movie. Almost one between Kylo and Luke. Almost one between Kylo and Rey. But no. This was the least lightsaber-intensive Star Wars movie ever.
- He doesn't notice that Luke is holding Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, which was just destroyed by Kylo and Rey. I can write this off as him being blinded by rage, but still.
- He says that Rey killed Snoke. Once again, are there no cameras!?
I think that about wraps it up, though I'm sure there were more things (like them saying godspeed). My question is, what happened? Did Rian Johnson and everyone at Disney start taking stupid pills? Sure, there are plenty of things that you could argue are stylistic choices, but there are lots of things that are just straight up defects. Can Episode IX save this trilogy? Yes. Will it? I doubt it.
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