Finally saw the film for myself. Definitely messy. I’m glad I went in knowing not to expect anything spectacular thanks to reading spoilers ahead of time. Tempered expectations, at least.
I must say, this has to be one of the most fast, in your face, full throttle SW film to date, to the point it’s just exhausting. Ironically, this felt like it kept dragging on, especially towards the end.
What I found to be the better aspects was also similarly frustrating. Let’s talk Rey. More specifically, this, THIS Rey was the Rey I wanted in TLJ. She actually struggled and was afraid of what she could become, tip toeing the edge of the darkside without really realizing it. None of that was present in TLJ, and it absolutely should have. She was essentially a non-character that left me as a viewer not sure what to root for, for her, by the end of TLJ. It’s a very strange predicament of a trilogy. The way I see it, TROS did well to carry over story elements from TLJ. You know what it didn’t really carry well from TLJ? Characters. Why? Because there wasn’t much to carry! That was the failure of TLJ and less so TROS. This film had to dig around from TFA to establish character related connections, and in that sense, you could almost watch TROS without TLJ and you don’t really lose much of the emotion. Plot threads, yes.
I loved the mysterious and creepy sith caverns. Nailed the atmosphere. Surprisingly I wasn’t really fond of the Emperor. Not specifically the performance but more so the character… Interpretation? I get it’s been 30 years but I wasn’t sold that this Emperor is an accurate representation of the character. He’s too vain and self-absorbed to give the throne to another, even if blood related. Yeah I guess he did toy with Luke to strike him down but in a way, it was like he knew Vader would stop Luke. In ROTJ, he ultimately wanted a new servant, not exactly someone to replace him. And even if he was old and decrepit, I would find it more in his nature to seek a new servant in order to feed off the servant’s living Force essence like a parasite. This film felt not very Star Wars in this respect.
I’ll say this final thought, as there’s lot more to talk about but it’s late. They realllllyyyy beat a dead horse with the non stop C3PO jokes. Like ESB’s Han, I too wanted to switch off 3PO and relive myself of the waayyy over done gags. Few were amusing but holy shit.