Welll... t'was the best of ST times, t'was the worst of ST times. I landed somewhere in the middle on this - because there's quite a bit to like but there's a LOT to chuckle/eye-roll at. Hey - it's part of the ST after all!
And... it's 5-6 days since release - are we past spoiler tags? If not lmk.
I have to agree with those who say this is the best movie of the ST - it has kinetic energy, pulp silliness and some actual fun that the other two (for me) sorely lacked, and FINALLY has an antagonistic force that I actually understand and feels like there's major stakes on (as antagonists, the first two had a "torn/confused" young man who sometimes wore a black cape/mask, and an old man/creature who I never really got was supposed to be - "Palps-lite.") I never got that in TFA or TLJ - the creepy sense of real fear of Vader, then Palps, in the OT. Like demons that wanted something. Here you get that, even if it's OT all the way.
This movie also suggested to me - due to some of it finally working dramatically in this movie - that a conflicted Kylo and Rey Sith/Jedi match-up/romance in the face of a powerful, devious puppet master (like Palps in this) could have worked. All that force texting and stuff in TFA and TLJ never really amounted to much at all for me. Here it works better.
I liked some of the adventure in this movie too - I loved that snowy HP-like planet with the stormies going door to door where they meet Zori bliss. Finally a planetary adventure in the ST that I was engaged in.
That's kinda where the positives ran out for me though - this movie is such a total jumble and blur. Way too fast, bordering on incomprehensible at times, often very awkward and cringey (hello Leia) giving way - by the final battle - to just stream-of-consciousness stuff that's at turns awe-inspiring and some of the most chuckle-inducing silliness ever committed to the screen.
While Adam Driver is on fire, really coming of age as an actor this year (and it really shows in this - Ben Solo actually felt different to Kylo and really worked,) it's almost like 3PO emerges best.And any movie that features the lead healing a random giant snake solely to set up a healing power - following the silliest quicksand plotpoint since 1950s Tarzan - you gotta do your best "watchya talkin about Willis" for.
Even though Palps' return was desperately needed by the ST and even sorta-kinda almost works (because he's a great villian and McDiarmid is a great ham) almost EVERYTHING about the Exogol sequences made little sense....
Who all the "Eyes Wide Shut" Sith people were, the test-tube Snokes (clones never feel very SW to me though,) the navigation beacon silliness, the "rules of Sith lightning" (whole other discussion) who all the people were crewing (and designing/building/"conjuring"?) all those thousands of SDs, where/how the DS cannon tech came from, why it was all sitting there "waiting" for so long (years? decades?), why he even needed Rey as a body (seemed to have no shortage,) why the SDs all stayed in formation even under attack, and what the "unknown regions" even were (what makes them different?.) etc etc.... it's a list of dozens of head-scratchers.
Then there were the "echo the OT beats" issues - I mean we already got a beat-for-beat redo of the ROTJ throne room sequence in TLJ - now we get yet another version here, complete with Palps' "come, see for yourself..." view of a rebel fleet being taken down. I mean Palps even says "strike me down" again from what I recall.And earlier Rey's on a ledge, ready to leap as she's told by a black-clad villain that she's Vader's daughter - oops, I mean Palps' granddaughter - and she seems about to yell "Nooo" and jump off when - in comes the Falcon to rescue her just like it did Luke after his own "that's not true, that's impossible" moment...
(and wow - the number of times someone "senses" something in this movie just drove me crazy.)
Even emotional pay-offs like "My name is Rey Skywalker" - while nicely evocative due to the location and a ghost of Luke/Leia - come across as odd because her parents didn't abandon/sell her, they died trying to defend her. Why disown them as her parents? And have a brother/sister as your "parents" is a bit OT Luke/Leia weird (just like that video game-ish scene of young Luke training Leia.) Was Rey's father's last name "Palpatine" (that topic alone opens up a whole host of questions....)?
And... nose-lady got JJ's much-heralded lady-kiss (and nobody noticed she takes that female pilot's hand to head off into the "forest" at the end.)
And did I laugh when Luke's X-wing rose out of the ocean at Ach-to.... fully functioning, complete with helmet! So much discussion focused on how it was clearly inoperable, thereby rendering Luke trapped on the island in TLJ and unable to get to Crait in person. It's even fueled up enough that Rey flies to Exolgol in it. Oops.
All that being said - at least this is likely a ST film that I would watch again. Can't say that about TFA and TLJ.
Pretty much agree, although I may be a little less enamored with pulpy Palps then most here in general.
Now where's punisher1974's review? tap:
He enjoyed having Maul around but then didn't want to possess Dooku because that would be another "old" body so he groomed Anakin. Then Anakin got fried and roboticized so he waited for Luke. If Luke *did* strike him down he would have possessed *him,* if Luke struck Vader down then he would have stayed in his old body a little longer until he tired of his new apprentice.
I did like some stuff tho like the Poe/Finn dynamic, and Kylo/Rey being so powerful they could grab objects through the Force. And seeing the festival - IMO that's one of the appeals for me of the Mandalorian, seeing what "ordinary folks" do, not constant rebels and soldiers.
