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After a second viewing, my problems with the movies are as follows:
To quote DrDre:
"Rey’s fast progression from junk dealer to Jedi is not a matter of originality, but consistency. There can’t be more than a few days to a few weeks between the start of TFA and the ending of TLJ. As a matter of fact TLJ takes place over a matter of hours, considering the whole out of fuel plot. In that time Rey is given a highly condensed version of Luke’s arc over two films, starting on a backwater planet to learn the ways of the Force, and ending up in the big bad’s throne room, and finally as the last Jedi. The problem here of course is, that she hardly recieves any training, and ultimately isn’t really tested or suffers any serious setbacks. She crawls through a river of **** and comes out clean at the end, apparently greater and wiser than Luke Skywalker himself, making the old Jedi Master redundant to the point, that he can die at peace mirroring Yoda’s death in ROTJ.
While Snoke’s death was shocking, and overall reasonably well executed, he’s reduced to a plot device, because his character hasn’t been properly set up, or his history and motivations explained. His function seems merely to prop up Kylo Ren, who after being deflated at the end of TFA, now is reinvented as the big bad of the ST, but without the necessary development and character growth. This criticism again is not a matter of originality, but story and character development.
The criticism against the representation of Luke Skywalker is also one of consistency, particulary the idea that Luke would contemplate the murder of his nephew. This 180 degree turn in his character is severely underdeveloped, and only explained in a single scene in which he reads his nephew’s mind realizing Snoke had already won Ben’s heart. This also comes back to the complete lack of developement of Snoke, and the history between Snoke and Kylo. We’re now supposed to believe, that Luke who refused to kill his father and accept he was lost to the dark side, knowing all the terrible things his father had done under the guise of Darth Vader, now gives up on his young nephew based on a vision of the future, a future he knows to allways be in motion. This scene might have worked, if we had learned a bit more about Luke’s psychological state post-ROTJ. He could have told Rey, that his father’s death, and learning about the true magnitude of Vader’s crimes had left him emotionally scarred, and he grew obsessed with preventing the birth of another Darth Vader. He’d found the strength to forgive his father, but the price of his father’s redemption had been too great for the galaxy. If the whole Jedi order couldn’t prevent his father’s turn, how could he by himself create a new and stable Jedi order? So, against Yoda’s council, for years he had refused to train a new generation of Jedi, to pass on what he had learned, until young Ben was born, and against his better judgement decided to mentor Ben and a few other students. He wasn’t ready to be a teacher, and young Ben sensed Luke’s trepidation, blaming himself. Snoke ceased the opportunity to corrupt the insecure and impressionable Ben, leading to the scene in the film."
The flow of scenes in the first act felt weird because of the multiple plots going on at the same time. IMO they should have focused on one of them for more time than they did, without just going back and forth, killing the pace and tone of the movie. A restructure of the first act and half of the second would improve the movie immensely.
The excessive jokes, like in The Force Awakens were just not funny and distracting to me. I love jokes in movies, and I loved them in this movie when they worked, like most of the funny stuff with Luke. However, the amount of jokes every two scenes made the tone of the movie inconsistent, and that’s just bad. The first scene is a clear example of that, with Poe just toying with General Stupid, and 2 minutes after that Paige (Rose’s sister) sacrifices herself. So because of things like that, the tone throughout the movie was all over the place. I’m not even going to talk about BB-8 in this movie because that was just ridiculous. I didn’t laugh at one scene with him, and man o man were they bad. This also include Maz’s scene.
The way General Hux went from an ok character to the stupidest person in the galaxy. I think it speaks for itself: the character went to comic relief, just like Snoke went to plot device, how R2 was plot device in TFA, etc.
Canto Bight in general. I’m not going to beat a dead horse here; like darthrush said in the TLJ FanEdit thread, everything in between the moment they leave prison to when they’re on the ship felt awful, boring, pace killing and out of place.
I felt like it was a pretty weak plot upon first viewing. Now, after watching the movie a second time, I thought it was much better than what I originally thought, but still far from a good one. I don’t know how to justify this, I just didn’t really like it.
Finally, I think Adam Driver did a much better job this time than in The Force Awakens. I felt like Daisy Ridley was better in TFA, just like John Boyega. Loved Oscar Isaac. Loved Andy Serkis as Snoke, Laura Dern as Holdo and Benicio Del Toro as DJ. Wasn’t a fan of Kelly Marie Tran as Rose. And man, I truly hope Hamill gets an Academy Award nomination for this one. He literally stole the show.
I personally felt like there were some moments where the dialogue was pretty bad, with the delivery just as bad, particularly by Ridley and Boyega.
And that’s it, I guess.
About the Luke stuff: even though I agree with pretty much everything DrDre said about how it was extremely out of character for Luke to do basically everything that he did, I think the way they executed and most importantly the way that Hamill acted it sold the character to me and made me love it. Because of my complaints about the jokes, I must add that even though Luke was never a Joker in the OT, it honestly made sense for the Luke we got to be funny.
If Rey wasn’t as unbelievable, I would love the sequel trilogy, and I’d have loved this movie despite the rest of its flaws. I loved the Kylo/Rey/Luke/Leia stuff, and I loved Poe. I loved how there was no lightsaber fight and how it breaks with the rest of the saga, but I think it went a bit too far with including flashbacks. Consistency, y’know.
Overall, after second viewing, I’d give it a 7.5/10, with 3/10 and 10/10 moments.
