Geezee wrote:Saw it last night and I have a similar reaction to the first one where I generally felt "it's really good, I just wish..."
In the first one I really I liked the characters and general set-up but disliked the fact that so many plot elements were essentially rewrites of the first movie. In this one, again I really liked alot of the characters, fight scenes and just the general flow of the movie...I loved everything about Leia in the movie, and i had tears in my eyes at the reunion with Luke. I even liked the space walking- it was such a weird, crazy scene and i liked it because of that. Like others I found the Rey-Ren interactions really very compelling, and the showdown with Snoke - or actually more accurately the showdown with the red guards - was simply beautiful.
but there were a few things that were just very weak or unnecessary, most of which has already been picked up on here. The biggest issue for me is Poe - he fcks up, completely, twice, and that is essentially his entire contribution to the movie. First, he disobeys the order from Leia and puts them in the predicament that sets up the whole movie, and then he leads a ridiculous mutiny that again undermines the whole getout plan. Hundreds or thousands of rebels are killed as a result. But Poe is just dismissed by both Leia and her second-in-command as a loveable rogue..."oh that Poe". And related to this, as others have already commented, the whole side-plot where they escaped to the gambling colony was totally unnecessary - it was a false mission, built on Poe's stupidity, and only served to bring Del Toro's betrayal, again leading to hundreds dying, to the fore.And while I really liked the Rose character, her intervention to save Finn didn't seem to make sense - she effectively destroyed what looked like a plan that would've worked to destroy that big blaster. if she had some inside knowledge that what he was about to do wouldn't work, that's fine - but her rationale of "we save the ones we love" didn't make sense.
I really loved the fact that Leia lives, i feel it was a pretty brave decision, a great tribute to her and her character - although yes god knows how they'll resolve that.
Good write up, they made a few strange decisions on character development (Snoke, BDT, Poe’s, ahem, decision making, Leia’s ‘spacewalk’) that’ll make the next instalment hard to resolve,
Anyway, I finally watched this last night and share many of the views here - it’s a good, almost great, Star Wars movie with some obvious flaws. The clanking attempts at humour at the start were a worry, albeit it was amusing to see Ade Edmondson in there, but it motored along pleasingly and I’d gladly spend time in the SW universe in a worse movie that this.