Everyone who knows me asks about my opinions about Star Wars stuff.   If nothing more valuable than my personal opinion isn’t meaningful to you, then these aren’t the droids you are looking for… move along… move along.

These movies were super important to me as a kid for so many reasons.  Here is a very quick first glace look at my thoughts after watching Ep 9. It is just not possible for me to treat Star Wars movies as “just a movie.”  I totally understand why it is just a movie for a whole generation, because it honestly isn’t all that special anymore.  I don’t begrudge that for most people younger than me it isn’t special… because since the 1980’s it really hasn’t been.

By the way, be aware – there are spoilers here.  If you don’t want spoilers, don’t read. 

Background

I despised Ep’s 1-3. They were so poorly done in every aspect of movie making.  The overall plot was nonsensical; any sense of cool mystery that could be discovered from the originals was dug up and stripped of mystery.  Though there were a few very cool characters (Darth Maul) and a few very nice scenes (Bubbles/Darth Plagueis scene), the overall was destructive to the value of Star Wars.  Their connections to the original was so bad (timetables all wrong, details ignored, that it made it possible to pretend like they weren’t even really Star Wars.

I was dubious when 7 was coming out, but Abrams had done such a great jobw with Star Trek, that I was torn.  Lucas was out.  This gave me hope.  Even Disney didn’t worry me.  They had spent more than most countries’ GDP and I had to assume they were being careful with that investment.

Then I scheduled to watch 7 three times just to decide with the first watching – did I hate it like I had hated 1-3?

Generally, I did not love 7 – I agreed with the main criticisms.  So many unanswered questions, so many new characters, an entire new Empire with no back story, a super-powered heroine with no back story, a super powered bad guy (Snoke) with no backstory… and all of this was supposed to have come into existence in two short decades after Episode 6.   I couldn’t see how any of this could work.

However, after Episode 7, I was more (hopeful is too strong a word)… “tolerant” of the situation because I was a fan of LOST and am a fan of Abrams.  I know of his tendency to create a situation with positives and negatives, but via the storyline is able to bring pieces together into something that works.  So, in my particular mind, I was willing to wait until Episode 8 and 9 to make up my mind. So, I waited for Ep 8 to decide.

Proof that I could like a modern SW movie, I liked Rogue One.  I consider it close in excellence and enjoyment to Ep 6.  At first blush, I kind of enjoyed Solo, but it didn’t wear well. Thinking about it reduced its value to me – though I enjoyed some aspect, the need to make everything a thing got old – especially when I revisited the movie.  I think I could tell it was made by fans, but perhaps overzealous ones.

Then Episode 8 came out.

Episode 8 was a total train wreck.  It effectively ended the Star Wars Universe.  Anything the prequels left alive, Ep 8 snuffed.  The actual rules created in the Star Wars universe no longer applied.  It was an entire other reality jammed into the Star Wars universe. 7 was reduced to meaninglessness.  Because it was after, the original magic of Star Wars had now been bracketed with nonsense.

So, Ep 9 had no chance. Might it rescue some things? Perhaps… but without beginning with Ep 8 being a bad dream that Luke was waking from, too much had been damaged.

 

I went to 9 without any hope… I really only went to go with the family and to hear the score (John Williams very last movie).

Not surprisingly, I hated some aspects.

Shockingly, I liked some things.

Most impressive in my mind was that Abrams was able to rescue a couple of things from way back in 7.  After one watching, I am intrigued that this may be the best Star Wars movie (not including Rogue One)  

Now on to Ep 9.

What I hated:

The Emperor has had built and staffed a (conservatively) thousand Star Destroyers with planet killing tech on a hidden planet that no one can find… that the high-up “spy” in the First Order knew nothing about and for which only two maps were in existence.  According to Wookipedia, a Star Destroyer has a complement of about 50,000.  So somehow the Emperor snuck 5 million or more people just to staff the ships, much less the thousands of others to build them. No amount of contortions can make this make sense.

Chewie has been wasted in all three of these movies.  In this movie, his capture is as irritating as almost anything except the true universe destroying changes.  Was it too much for them to at least show the devastation of the capture of Chewie? Those arresting him weren’t even dirty. At minimum, if you aren’t going to show something that we have all wanted to see for 8 movies – Chewie + rage + storm troopers (think the end of Rogue One and Vader), then at least show the carnage arresting him created.  I hate Chewie getting arrested like some kind of Lois Lane character in need of superman.

I would list Rey’s continued unearned god-like powers here but am actually moving it to the last section. Abrams kind of almost pulled this out of the pit of despair.

I am not a fan of mere size and scope escalation in remakes and sequels.  The Terminator movies had this issue.  Motocycle, Truck, Semi, Dry Ice truck, whole herd of mind-controlled trucks of all kinds… More doesn’t mean better.  The idea that a Death Star Planet that destroys multiple planets from a total other System in seconds (Ep 7)  is not an improvement on a Death Star (Ep 4 & 6).  It just insults the intelligence of the audience.  A dozen Star Destroyers defeated by a few dozen rebel ships (Ep 6) is not improved upon by a thousand Star Destroyers defeated by a thousand rebel ships.  Honestly, there was some of this in the Star Trek remakes, too.

Still no reference to Admiral Akbar.  What’s up with that?

Giving Chewie a medal was fine, but unnecessary – especially since he didn’t really do much extraordinary in this movie.  I know that was fan service, but Chewie was given a medal years ago, and real fans know about that.

Ghost Luke doing things. Once again, I don’t know if Abrams intended Luke to die at all in Ep 8, but he clearly needed Luke alive for this movie, so we just had force ghost Luke act as though he were alive.  The idea of force ghosts used to be a cool, mysterious thing (Obi was not allowed to help Luke?) – they seemed able to barely guide with clues and hints or to monologue a little, but that was it.

I get the connection between Ren and Rey, but I still don’t really like the ability to hand things to one another through this teleportation connection.  It is too over-powered and like Dobby, needed to die rather than be a regular plot twist

I wish we had more time to understand Hux’s motives.  I get it, but a better playing out of that would have been cool.  Not sure how I feel about his death yet.

What I liked:

Lando is a good character – he could have been better, but nice add.

I liked seeing Wedge again, if fleetingly.  Why not reference him at all?  But I guess it is better than making him Poe’s dad or something.

Finn and Poe are interesting characters again.  They were about as sophisticated as 2 stooges in 8.  They were more fun and even interesting.  There was some actual character development -and (surprise) even some character development for Rey.  5 hours of movie for some development in your main character isn’t that bad, is it?

The feel of the movie overall was better.  It even felt more like a Star Wars movie in places.  Of course, this is only after a first watching.  I really wish I didn’t have the taste of 8 in my mouth.

There was some beautiful “camera work” (of course, it is often actual green screen work)…

The score was, of course, brilliant.  Williams is still the great one.

I particularly liked the handful of times when Abrams was clearly giving Rian Johnson the finger:

The dismissal of the “Huldo maneuver” as an obvious ridiculous plot device.

Luke chastising Rey for not respecting a Jedi weapon by throwing it away.

Finn shutting Rose down when she tried to talk him out of sacrificing his life.

I liked the feel of the Sith cult – though if their ceremonies moved a little faster, they would get disrupted less often.

There may be more, but I’ve only seen it once.

What I might could have tolerated if it hadn’t been ruined, or just handled better.

1. The Emperor of alive.Ok, I had accepted that concept from various books, etc from before… but in this case, how? How did he survive the fall?  Is this one a clone – if so, why does he look so old and destroyed like the original?  I think this is supposed to be the original – paralyzed by the fall, but still alive. I don’t accept that anything about Ep 6 leaves room for the Emperor to have survived the fall – even his energy was dissipated.  There was no hint of this in 7 or 8.
2. In 9, a real effort is made to explain Rey’s power. She can fly better than a seasoned pilot, use the force better than a Jedi knight, wield a saber better than a Jedi Master, she can heal lethal wounds, she can leap tall wreckage with a single bound, she can even sail! There is nothing she cannot do.  Sadly, 9 doesn’t tone this down at all.   It is the opposite of trying to rescue the concept of Midichlorians after Ep 1 – by ignoring it.  This couldn’t be ignored.  So, instead, they try to rationalize how she is so powerful.  Apparently, Rey is so powerful for these reasons:
   1. She is the biological offspring of Palpatine. (how could her father have been a nobody if he was the son of the Emperor?  I know he “chose” to be nobody, but then the bounty hunter found them and (for some reason) used the knife to kill them.  So, they weren’t “nobody” for long.  Then who were they?  Still, ok, Rey has the inherited power of the greatest Sith Lord ever. Powerful.  Got it.
   2. The force’s tendency to create balance connected Rey and Ren somehow – so that as he grew in strength, she was sharing in that power, and it took very little effort for her to connect to that power because of that connection.  I kind of like this concept actually – it is a creative take on the whole force/balance idea.
   3. She was trained by Leia, who was trained by Luke.
   4. She has the power of other Jedi behind her.  I still don’t love that she is so over-powered, but at least it makes an actual effort at some kind of sense.  There have always been some aspects of the force that have been unclear in Star Wars, so I could work with this.  Sadly, it has so little time to be unveiled or developed well that each aspect felt rushed to me.

Conclusions:

I am even more annoyed and irritated by Ep 8.  What 9 was able to pull out of the fire might mean that this entire series might have largely, well, good, if not for Rian Johnson and Ep 8.  Maybe I am giving Abrams too much credit, but these are my initial thoughts.  How sad that after Abrams had to try to “make things right” after 1-3, he had to try it again after 8.

Overall, the stone this movie had to move was too big for any movie.  Did it rescue the universe?  It didn’t, but I don’t think that was possible.  All things being equal, this might have been a cool SW movie. All things aren’t equal.  I think I liked it; it is a shame that the cause was a hopeless one.