As there is now a thread for reviews and opinions, I post here my previous message from “Episode VIII Discussion SPOILER THREAD” - sorry for this double post.
After three visions, this is what I can say :
This film is, with regard to the form as the content, a rupture with the previous films:
-With regard to the contents:
o all stories tell and show that you have to be free from the past:
-Forgetting the Jedi and their order
-Questioning the authority and the established order
-Breaking what is built
O All “historical” characters are challenged
-They are turned into derisory
-They die
-Their authority is challenged
-They refuse to remain heroes and want to pass the hand, or be forgotten, or both
o The very notion of filiation is treated in this way
-The answer to the origins of Rey (who are his parents) goes in this direction
-Kylo explains his whole approach by the need to free himself from his father, and no longer seeks to be a new Vader
-With regard to the form
o all the visual and narrative codes of the “Star Wars visual grammar” are defeated or rejected
- There is no longer slide transitions between the plans (except for 2 ou 3 plans)
- There are flashbacks
- The story resumes where it had stopped (there is no longer a temporal ellipse narrated in the introductory text)
- The texts of the posters were in red
- The film is much longer than usual (152 minutes)
O Several plans are humorous (eg: close-up on a iron) or dreamlike (ex: Flying Leia, this dreamlike plan is for me the biggest failure of this film)
O Several plans contain “human” references (e.g. champagne bottles at the casino, piano music at the casino, irons)
o We multiply the plot arcs (where, previously, there were one or two stories to follow, there is now much more that intermingle)
Unfortunately, if it is good to destroy everything, then we have to propose something new. And here, in my opinion, there is a problem. The director does not innovate at all, on the contrary: he multiplies the common visual effects (eg: jumps in space of a cohort of ships that recalls Battlestar Galactica 2004, slow-accelerated in a “Matrix” way, fields-contrefields filled with Philosophical Dialogues in a “Star Trek” way, humorous shots just like “Space Balls” or punchlines similar to the “Guardians of the Galaxy”…)
But nothing new, original or proprietary in all this. We are clearly no longer in a Star Wars visual grammar, but in a good SF film fairly anonymous on the form.
There remains an interesting and well conducted story (despite a few lengths that we would gladly avoid) that shows, repeatedly during 2H32, operations that are doomed to failure. Failures whom, paradoxically, the accumulation will lead to a victory: all the acts of rebellion fail miserably one after the other (loss of the Bombers then of the entire fleet, inability to escape from the tracking, operation “find the hacker” which is sold by a fiasco, operation “hacking” in the Imperial ship that also fails, final battle on Crait which is sold by a breakaway, failing to have been able to destroy the enemy cannon …)
But the film shows that the approach of rebellion as such is more important than the result obtained. It is this approach, this mindset, that will allow to swarm with a new generation. In short: the mindset is more important than the result. We are in an anti-Sartre story: We are not the sum of our actions, but the sum of our intentions.
Finally, the interest in this film lies in the close relationship between form and substance: The director himself probably fails to propose anything new, but his approach of rupture (of rebellion) is nonetheless interesting, laudable and probably beneficial in the long term for the Star Wars franchise, just as in the story he tells us.
For the rest, I enjoyed the dialogues, the first half hour, some visually impressive shots (eg: some use of light speed at the end of the film), and the direction of actors.
In short, it is and upsetting film: neither any good, nor any bad, but disappointing in its way to destroy everything without being truly able to propose something new. I sometimes felt that the director was a little too ambitious: if Denis Villeneuve managed to reinvent Blade Runner without saying that he was, Rian Johnson fails to reinvent Star Wars while, for two and a half hours, he tells us he will do it.