Hope

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2020)

Yay, an original story finally this is the best of the Disney era Star Wars films and I loved how this tied into the 1st (4th) movie perfectly with Princess Leia's "hope". Story is solid and follows a ragtag band of freedom fighters including a former soldier turned prisoner, a rebel alliance insider and a blind Jedi who work together to steal the Death Stars blueprints -and, according to the battle briefing in Star Wars we all know how well that worked out for them. Anyways this was super good, what I'd been hoping for all along with these new movies. No real review here just random thoughts.
Fun references to original trilogy throughout, the guy with the face from the bar on Tatooine that bumps into people and picks fights apparently as a hobby, Leia's father Jimmy Smits -had to wrap my brain around the timeline for his character appearance, loved the blind Jedi Samurai dude, the battle on the beach is very Pacific WW2 feeling, Darth Vader's castle and him in the healing bath, cool but they should have shown his missing limbs, the longer I'm watching and the more I get attached to the characters the worse I feel for their inevitable outcome, Diego Luna and Felicity Jones are now in a scene reminiscent of Tea Leoni & her dad in Deep Impact, Vader kicking ass at the end is awesome how I always felt he should be, powerful and super angry, blew my mind a bit actually but he says too much, Vader is better with less James Earl Jones, the ending is 10 stars, Hope line with CGI'd Carrie Fisher, sigh.