The one movie I changed my opinion on, over the years, was TLJ. Still, it wasn’t a drastic change, it’s mostly that when it came out, it almost left a sweet taste in my mouth. Almost. I didn’t hate it, I thought it was very middle of the road due to very high highs but mostly average moments and very low lows. I thought the editing was subpar at times, with the movie being way too long (I really felt the runtime) and some very unfortunate 2010s “Joss Whedon” humor, which has no place in Star Wars and made me feel like I was watching a parody sometimes. I seemed to be alone in neither hating nor loving it though, it seemed like it was either one or the other.

Then came the TLJ debates. They were endless, and talking about the movie eventually swung me to the “hate” side, because the people on that side were, in the end, saying lots of things I agreed with. I hate the setting of the Sequel Trilogy, the reset in the status quo for nothing, just because they needed to make a soft reboot of the original movie for nostalgia reasons. I can’t bring myself not to hate TFA. I hate it on principle, and that barrier is seemingly never going to come down. TFA has no heart, no soul, and that unfortunately bled over to TLJ. So I can never fully love TLJ due to the context it’s in, due to how everything around the movie is, due to being a sequel to TFA.

Luckily for me, TLJ is not really about that. In fact almost nothing “story-wise” happened, as in, not a lot you’d put on history books. It’s almost all character stuff, even the big moments. So slowly, over the years, I’ve been softening up on the movie. I eventually came back to my original opinion that it’s okay, and now I love it. It’s not on par with top-tier SW, but it’s pretty damn close, and I’m happy I appreciate it. There’s still stuff it does I don’t like, obviously, but I like almost all of it.