Just came back from a screening and…
…I had a great time.
Before I go into it, I briefly summarize my feelings about the Star Wars franchise, so you can judge for yourself from where I’m coming from.
I liked TFA, but didn’t really care about TLJ. I admit that I enjoyed people ranting online about TLJ, but I myself was rather indifferent. I clearly remember walking out of the cinema feeling confused and wanting to forget what I just saw. It did what no Star Wars film ever should do: it killed my interest in the Star Wars universe. TFA on the other hand felt like a fresh restart. I get the complaints about it rehashing Star Wars end Empire, but for me it is an awesome blend of everything that makes Star Wars great and I have a blast from start to finish, every-time I revisit it. TLJ on the other hand, I’ve only seen once, which is funny, because I do consider Rian Johnson a better director than Abrams. He just wasn’t the right guy for Star Wars. Which brings me to Abrams and TROS.
The leaks are all correct as far as I can tell, because I only saw the major ones and wasn’t religiously following everything about Star Wars leading up to this movie. But the major ones that have been mentioned here are correct. Palpatine is back and all his scenes are fantasitc. It’s probably my favorite performance of him as Palpatine. The movie opens with his introduction and the way it was handled already put a big grin on my face.
Like with TFA, the movie feels like Abrams is apologizing for the sins of a different director. But this time he managed to catch the feeling of Star Wars without borrowing so many things from the movies before. The movie makes many wrongs of TLJ right again in the right way. They managed to transform Luke back into his old self with just a few lines at the right moment of the story. I was impressed how well they were able to include Leia into this movie. It’s obvious that they wrote her scenes around the lines they still had from her and feels a bit clunky at times, but it still worked for me. There’s also a great heart-warming flashback-scene with a young Luke and Leia training in the forest.
Finally the ST character trio spend enough time together for us to see them playing each other off. There are some bad jokes and most of their scenes are carried by Oscar Isaac, but their scenes are fun and lighthearted. They almost feels like an Indiana Jones movie during two sequences of the movie. Rose is reduced to a few small appearances and towards the ending we get a much better character for Fin to bond with. Rey and Kylo Ren are again the heart of this movie, but unlike TLJ they are not the only thing that is enjoyable in this movie. Adam Driver again delivers a great performance for a great character. Unfortunately, the resolution of his character is one of he few things that didn’t work for me. After he became good his character-development was done. His sacrifice not only felt stereotypical, but lacked the emotional resonance he had during the scene with his father, when he reconciled with Han.
The movie is full of heart-warming closure scenes. I left the cinema feeling like things are right again in the Star Wars universe. And while I knew what would happen, I still felt way more emotionally engaged than I did with TLJ. Not every joke landed and the horse riding in space scenes was as ridiculous as it looked like in the trailer, but it also wasn’t a woke propaganda film that some people make it out to be.
TROS is a really good closure to the Skywalker saga. It is a return to the hero’s journey without rehashing the OT. It is movie for the big screen, more so than TFA and TLJ. Some shots are truly breath-taking and it’s the visuals where this movie is the most original.
There are so many things I still want to get out, but I think I leave it at that. This movie delivered everything I wanted. It gave me closure. It made me accept TLJ. I was neutral about the leaks going in and left the cinema with this trans-formative feeling you get after watching a good hero’s jouney.
8/10