Everyone has their own tastes, of course, but trying to explain to someone why they should like this film is too reminiscent of what went on during the Prequel era.
I either like a movie or I don’t. I don’t have to analyze it to figure out “oh yeah, you’re right! This WAS a good movie!”
I like the original-original trilogy. That’s it. I’m done with anything else star wars. They’ve finally lost me. I never thought I’d say that about a star wars movie with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, but…there you go. Even they couldn’t save it this time.
Hopefully the fox/disney merger will speed along an OOT blu-ray release, but other than that you can keep IX because I’m not interested anymore. 😕
I feel the same way to a somewhat milder degree. The way I see it is this - the first time I went ‘eh?’ at a Star Wars film was in '83 with ROTJ. But I was willing to tackle the mental gymnastics required (is that cognitive dissonance?) to make it ‘fit’. With the prequels it was even harder, but I made a good go of it before plotholes and midichlorians caused me to de-canonise them in my own nerdish heart. So I was left with the unaltered OT.
TFA was cool, hit all the right notes, but again I had to mentally flex around such stupidity as the Starkiller base and a slew of outrageous coincidences. I was okay with it. Now I was ready for a great SW film.
With TLJ I find myself going ‘eh?’ once again. The space casino plot makes no sense to me. Why the hell didn’t Laura Dern just tell Poe what the damn plan was? Why did Yoda look so ridiculous (we can recreate Peter Cushing but can’t duplicate a friggin’ puppet)? Did someone actually say ‘Godspeed’ in a SW film? Did we really need the cheesy ending with the stable-boy or is Rhian setting up his next trilogy Marvel-style?
I loved the Luke stuff. I loved the resolution of Rey’s parentage, the conflict she shared with Kylo etc etc. I loved the backstory behind Luke’s shame and his viewpoint re Jedi hubris. His final showdown and death scene were wonderful. But the rest? I just don’t know. My head-canon is edging towards sticking with the unaltered OT and calling it a day.