Spoiler Alert: proceed at your own caution. Discussion involves major characters and plot elements that could ruin your movie-going experience if you haven’t seen this film yet.
So, I saw the move and will admit, some of my predictions were off. However, I did hit the nail on the head as for the main plot. I predicted that Luke would be absent most of the movie and his fate would be in doubt. I predicted the movie would be a search for Luke them for he would be greatly needed to defeat the Empire, or The First Order as it is now called. I was right and wrong on a few other minor points. Here are a few beefs I had with the film in no certain order.
One, General Leia as she is now called, seems to have no real authority in the Resistance. She has the title of general but when the resistance is making plans on their next move, she is completely out of the picture. There seems to be no real leader. Leia is just there for Han Solo to meet and reminisce with. The film would have made more sense if they would have shown her in a leadership role of some sort instead of just standing off the to side while everyone else made the decisions in the planning room without consulting her authority.
Kylo Ren was supposed to be this big bad evil dude with incredible powers in the Force. However, he can’t even defeat a girl who has just had her initial Force experiences. Now I am not complaining about Adam Driver’s performance. He was a good choice and played the part well. The thing that I am disappointed in is the fight scene between Kylo Ren and Rey. As long as the fight took before they were separated by the catastrophe seemed very unrealistic with all things considered. Perhaps it was because he was injured in the leg by a blaster shot earlier and had to keep pounding his thigh but I was a bit disappointed in how easily he was fended off with just a light saber in untrained hands. I think the scene could have used Rey in more of harms way and with a little more luck to supplement her amateur use of the Force.
Others include the Millennium Falcon which has not flown in years sitting on a desert planet fires right up and is able to outmaneuver First Order Tie Fighters at low altitude with no aerodynamic qualities while in the hands of an inexperienced pilot. I also thought the scenes on Takodana where they met Maz Kanata and Rey finds the light saber were a little rushed and hard to follow with the illusions and such. I just thought the whole scene was to abrupt and couldn’t figure out why she went into that area in the first place or why all that was there. Also, Captain Phasma didn’t really make many appearances for how unique the character was. These just made me feel they really had a lot of ideas that were cut out of the final release.
All in all, I thought it was a good movie. The acting was mostly good. The scenes with Kylo Ren were well played until the final fight scene. Snoke was an imposing figure. Rey and Finn I thought were likable characters for being played by relatively unknown actors. Carrie Fiscer just seemed to be there for just a little more than a cameo. Harrison Ford did a pretty good job in spite of his age. The new character Poe actually did justice to the X-wing pilots who in the past were portrayed as a bunch of goofballs.
I also think that they did a good job with the alien characters as they were all minor figures in this movie. No dumb Jar Jar Binks types flopping around. The humor that was in the movie was well placed and timed for relief but not to be over the top silliness like we’ve seen in some of the previous episodes.
Other good things I saw, I liked the close-ups of the X-wing and Tie Fighters. With new technology, the realistic closeups were a good thing to see. The large crashed ships on the desert planet from the past episodes were really cool to see. The dog fights were impressive as well.
I think the 8.9 rating I see on IMDB right now is a little generous.The finale didn’t really have a big setback to the plot. The Planet Destroyer (new version of the Deathstar) was pretty simple to defeat and the end was a little rushed. I’d give it a solid 8.0 with the flaws it had and would recommend it as a vast improvement over the last three installments.
What did you think?
J. Wade Harrell Fantasy World 