Now that is how you make a movie!

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2017)

So, that happened.
I don't usually wright reviews, but this film has left so many fans feeling controversial about the future of the Star Wars universe, I feel I need to put in my two cents.
First off. I am not a "die-hard" star wars fan. I liked the originals and what they created and what they changed about our society and pop culture. I laughed at Jar Jar when the prequels came around, but that was all I liked about it. I was still a kid at heart back then. I missed The Clone Wars, but saw Revenge of the Sith with my cousin and afterwards thought to myself 'so Anni became Vader because of poor decisions'. And that is why THIS film is so good. It makes note of THOSE poor choices of the Skywalker family, and then uses these new characters to boldly go where no Star Wars film has gone before - some where that doesn't involve the Skywalker family - Hooray!
So from the beginning.
After the opening crawl, which basically retells TFA, we have the rebellion who are on the BRINK of annihilation! How can that not be an exciting story? If you are not convinced, try and look at it like this:
Your race is being overwhelmed, they are being hunted by a more powerful group of people and they are hunting you for sport! The are so close to bringing your people to extinction. What do you do? You would be desperate to save your family and friends no matter what. You may even make some mistakes, which our main characters do...
I agree with some people that the space chase could have been better written, but it created a great suspense for the film. These people are being eradicated! In one film they go from being thousands on a giant spaceship, to a dozen in the millennium falcon.
Leia - OK, it was great to see Carrie Fisher again in a more central role, and very strange to realise that this is a post death film for her. I liked how after the opening scene we see her in a dilemma at how many people have died, practically on a suicide mission, to bomb what is essentially a B52 version of an Empirical spaceship. Poe calls the people who died heroes, but she is correct in calling them "dead ones". Which makes a good point: you can't win a rebellion without soldiers, or weapons, which I'll come back to later.
Luke - As at the closing shot of Force Awakens, the second scene of the film has Rey giving Luke HIS original lightsaber. Now remember, this is the lightsaber he battled Vader with. The lightsaber he lost the battle with, including his hand, and it reminds him of the time he learnt the truth about who his father was and a whole lot of s#!+ that came after which he would probably like to forget. Luke even says when he shows Rey the famous books of the Jedi, "I came to this island to die...It's time for the Jedi to end." So of course he's going to throw that lightsaber away. Who would want a weapon that reminds them of the worst point in their life? Imagine if I gave you a weapon that your father used to chop your hand off! Would you keep it!? Luke is perfectly justified to feel resentful in this film.
Kilo Ren - There was so much miss direction with this character in the trailers. He is still as conflicted as he was in The Force Awakens: Unsure if he can kill his mother, still needing to prove himself to Snoke, all the while dealing with the immature General Hux. Rey even reiterates Luke's speech to Vader - "I feel the conflict within you" she even refers to him as Ben, in an attempt to convince him to turn to the light side. A good element to their relationship is when he and Rey discover they have a psychic link to each other and use it like a secret phone line, a forbidden relationship, that neither can speak of.
Leia's Death - So as we saw in the trailers, Kilo is flying around shooting some space stuff, Star Warsing about, :) sorry, I will come back to the jokes later. Anyway, Kilo blows up Poe's ship in the hanger, Poe and BB8 are thrown back. I thought for a moment that BB8 was dead when his head rolled off. I could just imagine my ex grabbing my arm and whining "NO!" but he is run by magnets, so all good.
After this Kilo flies towards the bridge, where Leia is sat, he is ready to shoot his torpedoes at the bridge...but doesn't. Instead some rookie next to him does it and everyone on the bridge is sucked into outer space...
Then Leia FLIES back towards the ship. This is the point where "the force" for me, becomes ridiculous, I wanted to shout BullS#++!, it would have made sense to let her die here, but apparently she has more to do in episode 9. My opinion is "lets pretend that part didn't happen" and move on.
Rey - so Luke eventually teaches Rey some elements of how the force works. Again we see in the trailers she can levitate stones and rocks when she reaches out to the force. But What we learn in this movie is that she is more powerful than Luke! maybe Kilo, but 2nd only to Snoke. This is evident when she sees something on the island that is very dark and is dragging her into it. Luke is scared and tells her no, don't go in. But she does anyway, both physically and in spirit, and she comes back out again and still remains true to the light side. That is not just strong force power, that is strong will power! You can evidence this further when she goes on to Snoke's ship and meets with Kilo, again we saw it in the trailers, he offers her his hand to join the dark side, and she rejects it, but maybe not him...
Snoke - We have no idea who this person is. Is that really a bad thing? We don't really know who Yoda is or where he comes from, and the fans have appeared to be happy with that for the past 30 years, why the obsession with Snoke?
So Rey is taken before Snoke by Kilo, and it is almost shot for shot like RotJ. Rey attempts to fend off his tricks and she even attempts to summon the lightsaber, like Luke did with the emperor, but Snoke makes it fly around the room, hit Rey in the head and return to his side. He is one powerful being whoever he is.
I didn't see the lightsaber trick coming, but I did let out a laugh when Kilo split Snoke in two with Luke's Lightsaber. I think this is what makes this film great, as now the saga can go into completely new territory, which is intended with Kilo, as he makes himself the new supreme leader, and even suggests to Rey that they can now turn the First Order into whatever they want. (To be honest, wouldn't you if you'd just taken Hitler's place?)
There hasn't been a death of a main character like this since Hitchcock's Psycho.
Fin meets Rose - Kind of a separate story going on here, as they ended up going on a side mission that could have fitted into a spin off episode of it's own. Regardless, it created a new love interest for Fin (I don't know if he and Rey will/were to become an item) but it will be interesting to see how Rose affects the dynamic of these new characters as they come together in episode 9. Also that planet they visit, which is essentially Vegas, reminded me a lot of the Hunger Games for some reason - The rich thriving off the suffering of others. Those scenes did help to expand the cannon and the universe though, as it shows one question we have never thought to look for in star wars...Where does everyone get all of their equipment from? And who pays for it? I understand no one wanted to know this, but now we do.
DJ - So this guy was supposed to replace Lando, I can see that, but all he really did was provide a solution for Fin and Rose to escape.
Also the original coder they they were originally on that planet to find was still at the casino. This again makes the story so interesting for me, because Fin and Rose mess up. They get caught and drag this "other coder" to Snoke's ship, because they now have no alternative. So who was the original coder they were supposed to bring?
Black BB8 - wasted. Either have him fight BB8, or cut him out all together.
Now the jokes and quips - I can agree that there were one too many in each scene, but this to me reeks of Disney. As we know they predominantly make kids films and they want kids to see Star Wars so they can sell more merch, therefore they had to make each scene comical, because you can't traumatise a kid with an emotional scene about making mistakes and living with those choices...urgh,
I will conclude here, because I could go on for ages, but Rian Johnson made one hell of a movie. He was up against it, what with all of the fan theories that have been plastered over the internet about the characters and who's-who for the past two years. What he has done is blown all of that up in your faces and made something that can start another "New Hope" or New New Hope, for another generation and another potential trilogy. And if you are one of the fans who now wants to abandon this franchise, well that's fine because I'm sure it's gained some new ones such as myself.
The truth is, you wouldn't have wanted to see YOUR fan-made movie, because it would have been predictable, and boring. Johnson flipped the stakes of each scene to the opposing side each time so that we would then be watching something unpredictable and that's what made it a good film for me.