It’s a little hard to bring anything new to the discussion that hasn’t been said by a lot of other critics, but . . .

Before TLJ released, I assumed the script was in really good hands. Rian Johnson wrote Ozymandias for Breaking Bad, one of the highest rated and most praised episodes of a series in television history. People were excited that Star Wars was finally in professional hands, and we wanted to see what he could do, especially in the darker middle chapter of a trilogy.

But yikes. The story defies act structure . . . not in a Tarantino way, but in an amateurish way. There are long minutes that are superfluous and should’ve been cut. There are multiple climaxes. The rising and falling tension are more like a weird roller coaster than a satisfying build up and send off.

Kylo, Rey, and Snoke’s confrontation interspersed with the space battle should’ve been the climax, in my opinion. If you wanted to pit Luke against Kylo in a duel, all they really needed was for Luke to lift his X-Wing out of the water and fly in to join the struggle. But instead the two armies touch down on a salt planet and engage in a final showdown that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you stop and think about it.

Instead of feeling excited and anxious for the good guys to win, I was feeling impatient and rather confused in those last parts.

Anyway. That’s my big picture look at the movie.