Movies 2: Electric Boogaloo

The 'lack of connection' between the cast is the point of the whole piece: they are all at least passing acquaintances, if not intimately connected... but they can't act that way, or the conspiracy could be discovered. More easily, anyway - you should never bet against yer man Poirot.

I know that won't matter a jot to cinema audiences, but long-time Poirot fans get it.

TLJ brings up two questions:

Snoke clearly knows about the Skywalkers and wants to end them, yet who is Snoke and why?

Is Rey parents really nobodies? Sure there doesn't have to be a linage to be a Jedi, just seems off that she's so powerful yet had very little training and going into 9th film there isn't much left of the Skywalker clan that this all saga centres around.

One of the whole points of the film is that those questions don't matter. Snoke, Rey's parents, Han and Luke and Leia, they're the past and need to be let go.

Yoda's return I liked, and the loss of Luke Skywalker hit me surprisingly hard. I liked Rose. A great deal. This may be helped by the fact that her actress got very giddy at the premiere.

The opening sequence with the hopeless battle against the First Order, like TFA they absolutely nailed opening the movie in a way that immediately gets you into things and makes the resistance feel like they're just a shade away from being swept under.  Luke not turning out to be a flawless saint.  Rey's struggles with the darkness, and another hint that she is a bit too prone to going to the dark side (like she was clearly doing during her duel with Ren in TFA).  Actual Yoda, and not the lame CGI stuck up abomination we saw in the prequels, no, actual lovable Yoda!  The entire third act, literally the entire act.  The throne room scene(s), the fight with Phasma, the last stand, everything.  

1.) The Empire Strikes Back
2.) The Return of the Jedi
3.) The Last Jedi
4.) A New Hope
5.) The Force Awakens
6.) The Prequels

Yoda.
This one actually feels like the same character from Empire and Return, unlike the prequels version.

The Rey/Luke/Kylo dynamic was incredible. Easily the best part of the film - Kylo is a refreshingly flawed villain compared to the normal menacing Sith from the other film (Vader aside, natch) and how he interacts with both Rey and Luke is brilliant to watch. Props to Adam Driver for an excellent performance.

On a similar note, Rey really came on as a character in TLJ - she felt like a bit of a Mary Sue at points in TFA but her portrayal in Episode VIII calmed those concerns and then some. She feels like her own character now rather than Rule 63 Luke. She's headstrong and even a little bit rash, but she doesn't have that whole "chosen one" aspect like Anakin and Luke to a certain extent. I was initially a bit disappointed that her parentage was revealed to be not a big deal, but after thinking about it I liked it a lot. She's her own person - she's not going to be next Obi-Wan or the next Luke and that plays perfectly into contrasting with Kylo who wants so desperately to be the next Vader.

The other big shock of the film - Snoke's death - didn't need me to think about it like I had to with Rey's parentage. That was just some brilliant subversion of expectations and sat right with me from the moment I saw it in the cinema. Kylo's the real antagonist, and that's how it should be. Plus, it allowed for that incredible throne room battle which is up there with the series' best action set-pieces.

Poe's story-line aboard the cruiser worked really well - I like him a lot as a character and much like Rey/Luke/Kylo's storyline, Poe's fate felt like it had real stakes unlike...

...Finn's storyline. This is the part that I most want to rewatch to affirm my opinion on it. On my initial viewing, this part felt like the worst parts of the prequels pervading into the sequel trilogy. It felt disconnected from the main plot and felt like it existed solely to create a couple of action sequences and pad out the film's already overlong run-time. I must admit, it did feel like it needed half an hour chopped from its run-time. It felt like they were just finding something for Finn to do.

Let me give you an example - the end battle of Episode I has like four different set-pieces running tandem to one another. You've got the scrap with Darth Maul, you've got the Naboo trying to get to the throne room, you've got the battle in space with Anakin and you've got the Gungans battling the droids. It's much too busy and you really find yourself only caring about the Jedi and Anakin. Obviously, Episode VIII is much much better than Episode I, but it was a similar feeling here. They thought "hmmm, Padme and Jar-Jar aren't up to much here, let's get them involved" and that came across to me like what they were trying to do with Finn.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't hate this part of the film. It was fun, but I think it hurt the overall pace of the film and didn't really accomplish anything. I've had folks say to me that it existed to show that Finn was no longer selfish and was working for the Resistance now, but I feel like they could have done it in an entirely different way. Maybe have Rose be the codebreaker they were looking for and skip the stuff on the casino city - the visual similarities to the prequels didn't help my feelings here - and jump right to the star destroyer. You can still have Poe carry out his story, you could maybe have spent more time with Hux or Phasma and it would have helped the film's pace considerably. That's just me spitballing ideas - I might redact all of this after rewatching it.

Something I know a rewatch won't change my mind about is the tone. There were a few too many times where I felt the film was trying to be too funny and a lot of it fell flat. The key moment for me was that opening transmission between Hux and Poe - I think they were trying to emulate Han on the Death Star, but after recently rewatching Episode IV I can say that not only was the joke delivered better by Harrison Ford and it was delivered more succinctly. The Poe scene in question felt overlong and felt like something out of a sitcom. Again, that's an editing and pacing problem.

Empire
A New Hope
The Force Awakens
Return of the Jedi
The Last Jedi
Rogue One
Revenge of the Sith
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones

Instead of having him gallivant off to the casino for half an hour perhaps they should have had that runtime spent on him slowly infiltrating the ship using his old knowledge as a Stormtrooper, it would've played better with the tone of the movie and could have led to some meaty character development.  Would've probably made the confrontation with Phasma at the end have more weight too.  

the entire thing blew up in Finn and Poe's faces when the cracker double-crossed them, played nicely into Poe's arc.  I also appreciate that they didn't have the guy pull a Han Solo at the end, he wasn't openly betraying them so he could pull a double-agent twist save at the end, he just straight up backstabbed them.  For a series that often likes to pull the former twist it was another great subversion in a film with loads of them.  

...they had the AT-ST firing at the Stormtroopers and you were expecting it to reveal the code breaker but it was BB-8! Great stuff.