The movie was alright, better than Rogue One but not as enjoyable as TFA. Rian Johnson made some clever choices when disregarding all of the stupid fan-theories and mysteries that TFA had set up but sometimes it seemed too deliberate or ham-fisted rather than being used to improve upon the overarching story. The movie started off terrible, the entire first sequence was annoying, unfunny, and way too cheesy for my taste (save for the last part where the girl blows up the ship, that was cool). I found the part where Leia gets sucked out into space really odd and I felt like it doesn’t really fit her character to have force powers like that, although it did put her in a coma, but I dunno. Luke and Rey’s first scene was okay, the way he threw the lightsaber so nonchalantly was kinda jarring, I would’ve preferred to see him throwing it in anger or something but whatever. I had no issue with the characterization of Luke, he did the exact same thing that Obi-Wan and Yoda did when things went wrong but he was much more self-aware and cynical which I liked, his arc was pretty much non-existent but it rather felt like he just randomly decided to help them out. Kylo Ren was really great, Hux was the same as last time, Snoke was the same as last time and I loved his death scene!! Other than that, EVERY character was underwritten and forgettable.
The #1 thing that bugs me in movies is when pointless scenes and subplots show up and don’t service the story at all, so naturally, I had a huge problem with the fact that 2 characters had an arc and the rest of them could’ve been cut out! Finn did nothing at all, if you cut him out of the movie entirely, there would be no difference to the story. Same goes for Rose, Leia, Chewbacca, Captain Phasma (why bother even bringing her back just to kill her again!?), DJ, Maz Kanata, Hux, C3P0, R2D2, BB-8, and that cartoon First Order General at the beginning. NONE of the characters I just mentioned had any effect on the story, I’m not saying that every character has to have a direct or major impact on the story, but it’s annoying to see characters that have been established as important in this trilogy become less important than a five minute Yoda cameo (which was pretty sweet btw) or the annoying purple haired lady sacrificing herself. Speaking of sacrificing characters, I’m glad Finn didn’t die because he should die in a movie where he’s actually written properly. Rian Johnson needs to learn how to write characters and then he needs to learn to kill characters with some actual meaning rather than for some shock value.
The pacing was pretty insane as well, felt like a 2-act film with really stretched out second and third acts rather than a proper 3-act film. The editing was super off, jumping between scenes at inappropriate times and way too frequently, it came off as deliberate and annoying rather than for suspense purposes. Also, the casino planet didn’t bother me too much, I just hated the super preachy horse race subplot and the whole weapons dealers lesson, get that political agenda out of my god damn star wars movie!
Overall it was decent though, I enjoyed quite a bit of it. 6.5/10