January 26, 2020, 08:16 AM
lymanquote:
Originally posted by Hound Dog:
So, I finally saw it yesterday. I went in determined to focus on the positive, and overlook as much of the negative as possible. EVEN THEN, it was hard to enjoy. At about half way through, I just wanted it to end.
It was better than episode 8, but not by much. There were countless plot holes, plot points that they just pulled out of their butts, and several places where I just sat there all “WTH did I just see?”
Just a couple gripes. The whole “Palpatine is back” thing was just pulled out of JJ’s butt. There was no foreshadowing, no clue whatsoever that he would appear; just BOOM! opening scrawl saying he’s back, with no explanation whatsoever of how he survived Return/Jedi. There was just too much unexplained. Now, I don’t need every. single. thing. explained to me (like where Han Solo got his last name or what Boba Fett was like as a whiny brat), but there was just too much to swallow at once. So, Palpatine is hiding out in some super mystery planet. Fine. BUT, where do the hundreds of ships come from? How did he conjure up the shipyards, much less the millions of people, necessary to build and crew these ships? All the while nobody noticed? How did they recruit? Oh, and you need a Sith GPS to find the place, but there are only 2 in the entire galaxy. Then how did the millions of people who built these ships get there?
And the final act was just a bunch of stuff happening at the same time. YET AGAIN, like Ep8 (with the heroes suddenly just magically knowing how to disable the ONE tracker on Snoke’s ship), the heroes come up with a fool-proof plan to destroy the ENTIRE Final Order fleet. Like, they cannot take off without a GPS? WTH? And, there is ONE beacon that cannot be destroyed by a strafing run, but in order to give Finn something to do, needs a ‘ground assault.’ And they are in atmosphere somehow so they can run around the exterior of the ‘command ship’ that can’t take off for the entire 20 minutes this last battle took? And these state-of-the-art Star Destroyers can be ‘one-shot-killed’ by a single fighter on a single strafing run? Who the heck designed these things – Jar Jar Binks or the aliens from Independence Day? Or it was another Rogue One thing where a spy designed this flaw into the ships and nobody figured out how vulnerable they were? Bad writing.
And, once again, the bad guys have HUNDREDS of fighters, yet they launch a grand total of about 40 of them to fight off the rebel fighters. Then, all of a sudden, this massive rebel fleet just appears. After all the drama of the previous year at Crait, when NO ONE came, suddenly Lando can convince several hundred ships to just appear (maybe each ship was captained by one of his old girlfriends?). That is deus ex machina at its worst.
What else. Oh, the whole thing where Rey burns the ship and tries to take up permanent residency on Luke’s island was just lame. She burns her ship, but magically, the Sith GPS survives. Oh, and Luke pulls Red 5 out of the ocean, where it has been setting for years. Like that will fly. Submerge a BICYCLE in the ocean for 5+ years, and try to ride it when you pull it out. Bad writing, even though we are supposed to geek out “OMG RED FIVE!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH NERDGASM!!!!”
Nope.
And how did Kylo Ren get to Planet Palpatine, and where did he find a functioning TIE fighter? It could not have come from the 30-yr old wreck of the Death Star, as none of those from that era could go light speed (not gonna even ask how the Death Star 2 wreckage ended up on an ocean planet, when it was obliterated while orbiting the Endor moon – because they didn’t explain THAT one, either). Maybe he got it from the other Star Destroyer that was on the planet (the one the mutineers had)? Because reasons, I guess. Now, the fight between him and the Knights of Ren was cool, especially where Rey teleports him the light saber (and I’ll even overlook the whole ‘force teleportation’ thing).
When they were sinking in quick sand, and thought they were literally going to die, why didn’t Rey simply levitate them all? They showed her just a half hour previously levitating with a bunch of rocks, yet she forgot how to when they were all in mortal peril? And they just HAPPEN to find the dagger, and Chewie just HAPPENS to be on another shuttle. And they can fly a ship that’s been rotting in the desert for decades, and the storm troopers don’t try to capture everybody, just taking Chewie while the heroes are sitting there in the ship unaware? And they just sneak on board a Star Destroyer, shoot about 6 troopers in the hangar, and wander off without hindrance, and plutz along to the detention cell (why does this all sound familiar?) and shoot another 20 storm troopers with just a flesh wound in return (yeah, I know, they had a magic transponder, but nobody on the ship or in flight control thought to ask who was in this ship and what they were doing). And then escape really easily.
And C3PO, being his ANNOYING self, can read the ‘Sith language’ (which is a thing now?), but can’t tell anybody? If he is ‘forbidden by programming’ to translate it to anybody else, WHY is he even programmed to read it in the first place? Like they don’t have Google Translate on any of their equipment, either? I was honestly hoping C3PO would finally DIE, but they even denied me that pleasure.
Oh, and now Finn has the Force, too (he was shown ‘knowing’ when Leia died, IIRC). Hey, why not?
At least they sidelined Rose. She was almost as annoying as C3PO. And I loved the new little droid, D-O. I want one of those. The visual of the Star Destroyer rising out of the ocean was really cool.
And Leia having been trained by Luke now? How convenient. Of course, NONE of that was even hinted at earlier, but hey, why not. And terrify us with more creepy Leia CGI like in Rogue One. I literally cringed at that one when she raised her helmet visor.
And Han Solo is in this one, too, because why not at this point? (This was another WTH moment for me). I was waiting for Jar Jar and Padme to show up. It would not have surprised me much at that point.
And at the end, there were more WTH moments when (for reasons, I guess) these star destroyers were being shown crashing on Endor, Jakku, and elsewhere? I guess maybe I think the rebels were mopping up the First Order at this point, but it would have been nice to maybe explain this a bit? Oh, heck, nobody cares – just show some creepy Ewoks and the nerds will love it.
Palpatine himself was kind of neat, but they had to shoehorn him in there somehow since Ep 8 left them without a Big Bad to fight. And I guess they needed an ‘epic space battle’ to end the franchise, but I would have thought it would’ve been a bit better than what they showed. I watched Frozen 2 last week, and I have to say, it’s a pretty sad state of things when a Disney princess movie has SO MUCH BETTER WRITING than a Star Wars movie.
Now, I will buy the Blu Ray and watch it at least a dozen times next year, but that doesn’t negate the fact that Disney is treating the franchise very poorly. Yes, Ep 7 was a conservative movie basically repeating the plot to A New Hope. I really enjoyed it, and they really did a good job in writing and producing it. One gets the impression that they actually tried to make a decent movie. Not so for Eps 8 and 9. They just threw a lot of stuff together, thinking the sheeple wouldn’t care as long as it was flashy enough, and that the nerds wouldn’t care if they showed Wedge Antilles and Red 5. . .
When I leave a movie theater, I should be marveling at the story telling, the plot twists, and the drama (my wife and I still gush about Frozen 2). I should not be glad that it’s over. Now, she’s not a nerd, and she liked it. And I bet it does well in China. But, as a “Star Wars” movie, it was a big failure. Perhaps it was a case of ‘doing the best they could with what they had to work with’ after Ep 8, but they certainly could have done better. . .
skidded to a stop cause the landing gear did work??? never needed a runway before,, why not just stop, hover, and drop like always,,