Great film & a decent close to the saga!

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2019)

There's a lot of band wagon haters. Lots of critics just trying to second guess what audiences will think (possibly because of TLJ) instead of judging it on its merits. The film worked really hard to fix the story arc problems caused by the random subversion in the previous one and ended the 9 film (42 year) saga quite well. No film's ever going to go exactly how you want (or expect) - it's not your vision. E.g. I had hoped Ben Solo would demonstrate more power from the Skywalker lineage or even interact with Anakin (Hayden Christiansen)'s force ghost- but, guess what, it's not my vision either. It was good. It had all of the relevant Star Wars tropes, the sub-marvel comedy was scaled back and Daisy Ridley delivered a strong and believable performance as Rey struggling to contain her super charged force powers. I even welled up in the final scenes thinking about how it was the end of the pop culture phenomenon that dominated my childhood and is my earliest tv/ film memory (I was 3 when '...Jedi' was released). I get the feeling if Abrams had directed/ written all 3 of the more recent episodes (7, 8, 9) the saga may have been better as a whole as this delivered on more of the promises made by Force Awakens and could've been even better if it didn't have to spend time making sense of The Last Jedi's needless subversion. Great film. Satisfactory close to the saga.