726658, This one's strictly for hardcore fans. Posted by ternary_star, Mon Dec-18-17 07:25 PM
And I guess that's ok. But I can't imagine anyone who doesn't have SW in their DNA loving this. It's unabashedly cheesy and pulpy and over-indulges in the trappings of the Star Wars universe.
I had trouble connecting to any characters here. It just felt like a frantic, non-stop fetch quest from beginning to end. When characters aren't giving classic SW-style soliloquies about the force, or screaming at someone to blow something up, they're awkwardly and repeatedly spitting out clumsy exposition ("Remember, we need to find the man with the red lapel pin! If we find the man with the red lapel pin, that's the Master Code Breaker! The Master Code Breaker will allow us to sneak onto the ship and disable the tracker!"). Del Toro almost lands on an interesting, believably human performance, but decides to throw an unnecessary stutter on top of it. Like his performance, this movie is a really well-crafted chocolate cake covered in chocolate syrup, chocolate ice cream, chocolate sprinkles and a pound of Hershey Kisses. Just give me the cake.
There's something really nice in the "telepathy" scenes between Kylo and Rey, mostly because the movie takes a minute to breathe and enjoy a meaningful moment between two characters. I just wish there were more character moments like that.
There are also truly masterful images to be found: Leia being sucked out of the ship, the Star Destroyer fleet being sliced in half, Luke staring down a group of giant walkers. But I just had zero interest in the outcome of the intervening scenes.
Some other stuff that bugged me:
- Porgs are cute, but we really couldn't find *one* plot-driven justification for their screen time (i.e. the crystal foxes leading the way out of the mine)? - The "Day in the Life of Luke" montage was so. fucking. weird. What was the point of it? Why did he pole vault to the rock wall when he could have spear fished from the cliff side? Why did we need to focus on the Cronenberg-esque shot of Luke squeezing Gatorade out of an alien's tits? - None of Finn's comedy works. He really is Jar Jar 2.0. Him falling off the hospital bed is cringe-worthy unfunny. - Don't necessarily mind the idea of Leia using the force to return to the ship, but the visual execution was rough. She looked like a Cinderella fairy floating back and it got chuckles from my crowd. - The scene of Finn's attempted kamikaze mission on the Rebel base is a mess. Walkers that have laid waste to the rest of the rebels have suddenly stopped shooting as he's flying in a straight line for the cannon. His jalopy speeder is literally melting, but he only has a light sweat. He and Rose are allowed an elongated romantic discussion on a battlefield which is littered with the smoldering corpses of their comrades (again, why the fuck aren't they being shot at?). One dude apparently drags Rose a few miles on a makeshift sled back to base, again completely ignored by the enemy. - Snoke is terrible. He feels like a C-list Marvel villain. Generically evil "do my bidding" yadda yadda dialogue. Uninteresting physical design. An effortless master of the force, yet unable to sense the threat from the second light saber. Cool death, but a completely redundant throwaway otherwise. - I see the operatic look he was going for in Snoke's throne room, but it just felt too over-indulgent. Too on-the-nose dramatic. And the fights between the red guards and Rey and Kylo felt slow and overly-choreographed. - Overall, just WAY too much sub-par CGI. The standout criminal in this area is the casino scene. Love the idea of a high-end Star Wars universe casino (we've really only seen shithole dive bars before), but when you fill it with cheap-looking CGI gremlins, how can I possible care about what happens? Finn and Rose on the back of that CGI horse thing...my god, that looked horrendous. Like prequel-level bad. - The slave kids in the casino stables are confusingly terrible. Why do they look perfectly clean and healthy aside from a few selectively placed smears of shoe polish? And we end the movie with one of these Little Rascals? Awful.
I've loved Rian Johnson's other work and was excited to see what he did with this, but it feels like he tried to fit every Star Wars fan fiction idea he's ever had into one film. I hope, given that he's in charge of an entire new trilogy, that he allows the characters in those films room to breathe and actually give us emotional hooks to connect with.
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