About as good as JUPITER ASCENDING

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2019)

The bad:
BIG PICTURE CONCERNS:
-The opening crawl is easily the worst-written crawl in all of Star Wars.
-How the hell is Palpatine alive? It's not that it's unbelievable, it's that good storytelling would recommend that part of the story be told. And what do you mean the Emperor's son and daughter-in-law are 'nobodies'? This is horrible storytelling.
-I did like almost everything else about Rey and Kylo Ren's stories: Rey's power to heal, her lightning power, that Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter, how Rey and Ben still have the Force connection, that they fall in love. The lightsaber switch at the end when Ben is fighting the Knights of Ren is cool. I liked that Leia gave her life to reach Ben. Ridley and Driver are fantastic in their roles.
So why is this negative? Because Palpatine didn't have to be resurrected to make any of this interesting or make it work. He undoes the entire franchise because now Anakin/Darth Vader died in vain - that's what this means.
To be honest, I never bought the storyline about Anakin being the one to bring balance to the Force. That was always an afterthought to me and never part of my experience of the original trilogy. He didn't bring balance to the Force but he did end the Empire and redeem himself. However, all the rest of the nostalgia claptrap of this new trilogy is wasted when you strip the redemption of Darth Vader of its bigger-picture significance: he didn't kill the Emperor or end the Empire. Even if I just think of Anakin's redemption as something significant for his family, in this film even that is robbed of its power because Palpatine kills off all of Anakin's progeny (literally every Skywalker dies). Then, they hand the Skywalker name to Palpatine's progeny. This is terrible storytelling!
-Speaking of adding insult to injury: they hand Chewy a medal - the one that he didn't receive in THE NEW HOPE?! Maybe instead of that (if they cared anything at all about Chewy) in TFA they could have had Leia and Chewy console each other rather than walk right past each other after Han died. But they didn't, so in this one to try to make up for it we're supposed to believe Chewy goes mad with grief when Leia dies? A little too late!
-Poe doesn't work as a Han Solo replacement and they shouldn't have tried. They even dressed him like Han and give him a shady background. It was poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly executed.
-As a character, Finn seems to be the most pointless person in the galaxy. Other than saving Poe in the first movie, his adventures are utterly useless - including his romantic adventures. What the hell happened to Rose's love for Finn? Why introduce another romantic scenario for him and why (why!) does she have to be of African origin (is it because Asians are SUPER racist against Africans - I HOPE NOT!)? Just because Rey makes it across the huge waves in a skiff means Finn and his new flame can also make it across (they just suddenly appear on the Death Star ruins and they're not even wet)? I don't even remember why they need to be there... is it completely pointless? I don't remember... Then, in the final battle why do the heroes need a landing party to blow the navigation tower when they can just shoot it? Both of those navigation towers are absolutely open to aerial attack and would have been blown up by an x-wing in any other movie... another pointless adventure for Finn.
-The final battle between Rey and Palpatine is just a copy of RETURN OF THE JEDI - so much so it almost seems like a parody. These are also the worst visuals of the movie.
-Besides the last battle, a lot of the visuals are great - but we never have time to sink into any one place. This movie is an asteroid field of locations.
NITTY GRITTY CONCERNS:
-The party that is only held once every 42 years looks like the most boring party ever. It's as awful as the casino with all the baddies in THE LAST JEDI, which was the most uninteresting place in the galaxy.
-How the hell did the bad guys fool everybody into thinking Chewy was on the transporter that Rey destroyed? They didn't have time to concoct such a plan.
-The Knights of Ren are an utter waste of time. They walk around like Frankenstein and then they get killed - that's literally all they do.
-On the planet where they go to get the Sith dagger translation from C3PO and the First Order Stormtroopers are knocking on every door and arresting all kinds of people: you mean the First Order haven't established a no-fly zone on the planet? So whatever rebels or criminals or whatever can just fly off the planet and escape and the heroes can just fly out of there and race up to the destroyer parked in orbit? And what the hell is this navigation badge thing that Zorii Bliss gives Poe? There's such a thing in the Star Wars universe that allows you to land anywhere with no questions asked - and she just hands it to him? There are so many problems with this plot device, I don't even know where to begin.
-How the hell did General Hux become a spy for the resistance? How does that even happen? (Yes, we want to know - that's what good storytelling is!)
-Nobody ever went to the ruins of the Death Star before? It's a secret that the ruins are on a moon of Endor? Nobody ever scavenged it and found the navigation pyramid thing? It's the bloody Death Star and nobody went to rob it of all its treasures - nobody even knows where it is?
-When the heroes land on the destroyer to save Chewy the first thing they do is shoot a couple of Stormtroopers, but they don't even hide the bodies?
-I'm not a fan of the score of this trilogy. It's not bad music I just find it way too abstract for STAR WARS. I hoped this one would pull itself together. Nope.
These are just the negative points I can remember after seeing it once.
The good:
BIG PICTURE good:
-As I said, I like everything about Rey and Kylo Ren's stories however Palpatine didn't have to be resurrected to make it interesting and in fact, he ruins it.
-I liked how the end of Leia's story was handled considering what happened. That Leia gives her life to reach Ben was sensible. That she had Jedi training also makes sense.
-Harrison Ford's return as Han Solo was a total surprise and well done.
-A lot of the visuals are fantastic, real accomplishments even though we never have time to sink into any one place.
NITTY GRITTY good:
-The scene where Lando offers to help Jannah find out where's she's from was touching.
-I liked when all the help arrived in the final battle, but again, we don't get to see how that happened, Lando is completely wasted in this story arc.
-I liked that there were a number of scenes with no music.
In the end, this felt like the rough draft of a move that by no means should have been the final version. A good editor would have put this on the right footing - too bad nobody saw how awful this was just from the script.
My love for Star Wars is being smothered by Disney - the flame that has been so strong in me all of my life has faded to a few small embers. I guess that's life, but it's too bad. I'll get over it, but this gets 1 star just to help offset all the 10-star reviews that I cannot agree with. Realistically this is somewhere in the 6-star range just because Daisy Ridley is perfect throughout the movie and the visuals are worth it - kind of a similar reaction I had to JUPITER ASCENDING.