And much like TLJ, I really loved everything relating to Rey and Kylo, but didn't really give a shit about the Po and Finn stuff. They're just not interesting characters. Especially Finn. He's maybe a little better here than the last movie, but yeah, I just found that any time the focus switched to him and Po I wasn't as interested.
Overall though, I think this comes under the general heading of an emotionally satisfying conclusion, even if it's not satisfying as far as narrative or structure is concerned.
There will also be some spoilers from this point onwards. I'll keep them to a minimum, but you've been warned.
Addressing the elephant in the room, the use of old footage and body doubles to make up for the fact that Carrie Fisher is no longer with us, but that Leia should have been the focus of this movie was... uneven. But I can't decide whether it was the fact that I knew what they'd done (made use of unused footage from the previous two movies) or whether it would have just felt weird and awkward anyway. The dialogue felt very much like "this is what we have, we have to make it work", and it is a shame they had intended to have her be the "previous trilogy focus" in this third one, given the circumstances.
Having said that, the way they handled it was with delicacy and it was still impactful, given her fate this time around (although that doesn't really feel like a spoiler given the fates of both Han and Luke in the previous two movies).
Except for that flashback that shows a rubber Gumby faced young Leia shoved inside a helmet that is actively horrifying... like I recoiled from the screen horrifying. Urgh. No.
There were some stupid "plot contrivance" things at the beginning of the movie that annoyed me... the fact that C3PO is unable to translate the MacGuffin because of the programming of all droids everywhere wasn't completely clear, and the "we have to wait for this arbitrary timer" for intelligence from a spy, dumb and sloppy writing. Also, later, the "oh we can't take a boat out over this very storm ocean, we'll have to wait" contrivance which very quickly turns into two different boats doing it with seemingly no problem whatsoever. Dumb.
And having a whole plot line where Finn "wants to tell Rey something", which never sets resolved... annoying as fuck. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't care what he wanted to tell her. But if felt like it was a declaration of love. Which then just made it icky for the rest of the movie, every time Finn follows Rey around like a lovesick puppy and every time it's brought up... it's very clear that she's NOT into him. Hence it just felt weird. Yeah, that was totally a part of the story that shouldn't have made it out of rewrites.
Also, shoehorning in Po Dameron's "heterosexuality" by including a character we've never met before who is in the overall movie for about fifteen seconds, which includes him asking to kiss her, not once, but twice. And doubly annoying when there are possibly two separate moments in the movie where the whole Finn/Po romance thing (which, I will say, I personally don't care about, because aforementioned lack of interest in both Finn and Po) could have been confirmed. Yeah, bad.
I also need to mention something. This is to all filmmakers everywhere. Especially large studios. Large studios with large, existing franchises. Homosexuality is not production design, it is not set dressing. Don't throw in a two second shot of two characters of the same gender (especially when you take the "safer" option of making them both female) kissing and think that you've done your bit to show that homosexuality exists in your universe. It just isn't good enough. It's tokenism at the very best, insulting at worst. Just stop doing it. Make a gay main character or secondary character or just fuck off. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Once last thing before I move on to things I actually liked. C3PO. He's annoying. He was palatable in the original trilogy because people told him to shut up or just switched him off much more frequently. He was incredibly annoying in both of the previous movies. He's irritating to the point of distraction in large chunks of this movie. No more please.
Anyway...
The strengths of this movie, beyond amazing production design, are Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver. Seriously, the whole movie hinges on their chemistry... he seduces her, she seduces him, they seduce each other... and all without being, technically, in the same room. In fact it happens so much that when they do finally confront each other in the same space, I didn't think that's what was happening for over half the sequence.
And the pay off to them setting up multiple times during the movie that items could pass between them while they communicated in "force cyberspace" was brilliant and something I totally didn't see coming.
The other thing, the "force healing", yeah that I saw coming a mile off because it was shoehorned inelegantly in.
And even if it sometimes feels likewise shoehorned in (we needed to go to how many locations?), the locations, both actual and virtual, in this movie are gorgeous. The water planet especially. But also the alien festival Burning Man planet... gorgeous. Also, Rey's lightsaber... the first ever yellow lightsaber, that looks like it was made from her staff... YES!
So, was it a fitting end to this trilogy. Absolutely. Was it the right way to end out the nine movie series. Absolutely. Were parts of it dumb. Absolutely. Did I cry or get misty a number of times at the end. Abso-fucking-lutely. Like I said at the start, it was an emotionally satisfying movie and overall conclusion. With some dumb stuff.
yani's rating: 4 hairy horses out of 5
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