Things I liked about the movie:
This was a movie about failure, and how on occasion failure is needed to keep them alive.
Rey went to recruit Luke and failed. She left without him. In the end, though, she got in his head enough that he was able to turn up and make just enough difference to keep the rebellion alive. Just. And Luke paid with his life to keep a mere 30 people alive.
Poe failed so many times it was nearly impossible to count. He ordered a strike against the dreadnought which was a massive failure that caused him to be shut out - it was a terrible military decision, but it ended up being critical to their survival. He then ignored the chain of command and rebelled against Holdo in order to stop the tracking beacon, only for that plan to fail too, and not only fail, but also allow DJ to sell out the rebels to the First Order and get a lot more of them killed. This one didn't so much have a redeeming feature - it was a flat out failure.
Finn and Rose went to Canto Bight to get a codecracker and failed. They ended up recruiting a criminal and getting lots of their friends killed, and got caught cracking the code in the process.
Snoke set up a mental connection between Kylo Ren and Rey that drew them together. He did it with the intent of ending Rey and the rebellion, but instead it caused Kylo to believe Rey might turn which led him to kill Snoke. Another failure.
Holdo chose to withhold her plans from Poe. In theory that should have been the right thing to do, given he'd just caused the death of so many members of the resistance. Instead, it just caused the death of more through Poe's subordination.
Kylo Ren killed Snoke because he believed he could get Rey to join him on the, I guess, 'grey side'. He failed, but at that point he'd already killed Snoke. He then failed in his attempts to kill 'Luke' as well. Not to mention Hux's failures.
Rey went searching for her parentage. She didn't find it (and Kylo only told her of what he had seen in visions caused by Snoke, so his view isn't particularly reliable either).
To me, this continued theme of failure was entirely new to Star Wars, and was executed really well. We're expecting to see our heroes succeed and in this movie they essentially failed at every juncture.
It takes the ending of the Empire Strikes Back, I suppose, but to the extreme.
I also thought it was the right kind of funny. The humour was to me reminiscent of the original series (something that TFA did to some extent, and the prequels failed at completely). A highlight was the landing of an iron... where you were supposed to think 'that spaceship looks like an iron' and then it turned out to be an iron.
The Rey/Kylo fight against the Praetorian Guards has in all probability bested the Darth Maul scene for the best lightsabre battle in Star Wars. Actually, the cinematography and choreography were both superb throughout.
It actually gave so many characters more depth. Hux, Kylo, Finn and Poe were all realistically shells of characters without depth in TFA. Here all four of them were given genuine personality and depth.
So was Rose.
What I think people criticise wrongly:
"Holdo should have told Poe the plan" - nah, not after he got so many people killed. When she actually did tell him the plan, he went and told Finn which DJ overheard and it led straight to a bundle more resistance people getting killed. Like, seriously, keep all information out of Poe's hands! Not telling him was completely the right move, and while I understand why people hated Holdo in watching the movie -
that's exactly what you were supposed to feel. You were supposed to be on Poe's side. You weren't supposed to realise that she was right and Poe was wrong until you reflected on things later, because the movie is told from the perspective of our heroes. Holdo will hold up as a character in the longer term.
"Too much politics" - uh oh. But also, nah. This is only even raised because people are sensitive to politics at the moment. Animal cruelty and capitalism might be today's political issues, but in the 70s oppressive government was still a key political issue. The Empire might have been an analogue for the Third Reich, but it had just as many ripples into anti-communism and anti-war sentiments that America was grappling with. There is nothing about this movie that is any more political than the others (and in any even, it's hard to have a war that is absent of politics).
"Snoke and Phasma were too one note" - The Emperor? Boba Fett? There's nothing wrong with one note villains. I don't need to know every detail about the backstory of cool looking characters - sometimes it's simply fine that they look awesome and feel menacing. In particular, Snoke dying the way he did without ever getting to explain his motivations was in my opinion a masterstroke. If we really need it,
it can be done in another movie that's all about him.
"It's too irreverent to classic Star Wars" - this one I dismiss with a
but it is essentially what the bulk of criticism comes down to. I see it as kind of whiny entitled bull. So no one has ever astral projected with the force before? Get over it - there are plenty of force things that weren't done until they were. Luke tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder was the ultimate insult to some people. Look, I'm a Star Wars fanboy, but I can't stand the entitlement complex some people have. Sometimes it feels like it's considered a bad movie just because it's not what people have decided they wanted it to be.
"People are too good at the force without training" - I've always seen the force as essentially a faith-based mechanism. That's what Yoda was trying to teach Luke, right? Clear your mind of the belief that you can't do it, and just focus on doing it. Luke could dodge bullets with a helmet on within a few minutes. If there's one thing we know about Rey, it's that she is one of the most faith-filled characters we have ever seen on the show, she has a strong will and strong beliefs, and I have no issue with this manifesting itself by force talent (and lets be fair, it's not that well controlled). She's pretty much a prodigy -
something we've accepted in the past.
What I think people criticise correctly/is legitimately bad
The timeframes were terrible. Mind you, so were TESB time frames (sometimes they feel even more egregious because the Millenium Falcon stuff feels like it's happening within a day while the Luke stuff feels like it's happening over months). Here it feels like you get two full Ahch-To days to only 16 hours elsewhere, which just feels wrong. But then, perhaps that's because of how we're tracking the story. When did the evacuation of the base commence? Is it possible RTey got at least one full day on Ahch-To before the opening events of the movie took place, and we are just getting it out of sequence? It is definitely a little "GOT7". It wouldn't have been that hard to say that they only had 48 hours worth of fuel - that would have upped the psychological pressure (need of sleep, etc), and allowed the time for the rest of stuff to happen.
Canto Bight was also a mess, although I think that's simply because everything there moved far too quickly, and the 'parking on the beach' mechanism for leaving Finn and Rose in jail was contrived. I disagree with the assessment that the whole plot was pointless (see my comments on failure). But it without a doubt felt very prequel-esque. But, it also gave rise to some of John Williams best work - the way the score ran into the 'on-screen band' was very clever.
Admiral Ackbar's cursory death. Come on, you could do better than that! I just said that Holdo was a justified character that will stand up, but it's possible you could have given this entire arc to Ackbar and it could have been amazing.
Overall, my assessment was that this movie rivalled TESB - and whats more, the feeling I got was that if Star Wars was a new think that debuted in 2015 and we only got TESB for the first time in 2018, the reaction would have been similarly reactionary and negative. The criticism seems to me to be fundamentally hypocritical.
