Sorry if I’m REALLY late to the party. I just now (finally) saw TLJ. (I’ve been sick since it came out, and only now felt spry enough to go to the theater).

Hmmm.
For some perspective, I REALLY liked both TFA and RO, a lot, and I thought they were both much better than the prequels.

But TLJ. Hmmm. I thought the first half of the movie was really terrible. It was rambling, depressing, gratuitous… basically a mess. I nearly lost it during the casino scene, and even moreso during the Yoda scene. Seriously even CPY was better. And that locksmith guy they picked? C’mon!! I found myself, while watching the film, trying to decide if it was as bad as the prequels, and pretty much thinking it might be. And I thought Kelly Marie Tran’s role was weak, really weak.

But it started getting decent during the Ren/Rey/Snoke showdown. (Although that did seem an awful lot like the RTJ showdown with the Emperor.) The “dark side” struggle that Rey was going through was way WAY better done than Anakin’s was in the prequels… I could have believed her turning to the dark side had it happened.

And then, I have to admit that the last half hour of the film was pretty amazing. Mark Hamill’s role in the climactic scene was really wonderful, much better than I had imagined it would be. It was truly some inspirational film-making, in my opinion.

So how could a movie have such extremes? From almost-walk-out-of-the-theater bad, to that-was-amazing good? This is one film that could benefit from a judicious fan edit. I saw TFA and RO each three times in the theater, but I doubt I’ll see this in the theater a second time. The thought of sitting through that first half is just not appealing.