Bad Script and Great Visuals equals a Superficial Movie

Rating: 3/10 (19 May 2018)

This movie is beautiful to watch. The visual and sound aspects of the movie are perfect, quite frankly. The script, though, is awful. It almost seems as if it was written on the fly. They really needed a quality filmmaker like, say, Bob Zemeckis who can write a coherent script that makes sense rather than this horrifyingly bad nonsense that does great injustice to the characters who have been in the franchise since the beginning and are pivotal to the overall story. The movie seems obsessed with new characters and other fluff that has no bearing on the plot. They could have done away with all of the CGI animals and half of the cast because they had zero impact on the story.
There was no backstory on Snoke or Kylo or Rey, or Holdo. There was no connective tissue to the characters that explained what the heck they were doing there or how they connected or what led up to movie. How does Rey suddenly get jedi powers and best Luke when she had virtually no training or awareness of the Force? How did Kylo and Snoke become student and master? How does Leia suddenly develop the ability to survive a direct hit to the bridge and float her way back to the ship and get inside without depressurizing the ship? And, more importantly, how does Luke change from a Jedi master in to a wimpy, suicidal hermit who is a mere shadow of the man we saw in Return of the Jedi? And why the heck would you kill him off? And in such a nonsensical way. Are you crazy?
The movie seems obsessed with political correctness and SJW matters while it ignores the basics of what makes a great movie. I welcome seeing women in the cockpits of fighters and in other useful roles but they saturated the ranks of the extras with so many that it came across as an affectation. It was silly. I rather liked Rose but her story was inconsequential. Not because she was a woman but because the script writer(s) really didn't do a very good job. And Phasma? She was so thoroughly under-utiIized that she seemed like decoration. A two-minute decoration.
I recall JJ saying that the movie didn't do as well as it should have because of sexism. Uh, no, JJ, it's because the script was badly planned and poorly written. You ruined Star Trek and now you're ruining Star Wars because you spend too much time on superficial stuff and not enough on the script. I'm so glad that I blew off watching this movie in the theater and waited until I could get the DVD really cheap. I'm done with Disney's mishandling what George Lucas spent a lifetime building. I probably won't even bother spending money directly on any future Star Wars movies unless things change for the better script-wise. There are directors who know how to make great movies. I suggest that you find them.