When Star Wars meets Disney

Rating: 5/10 (13 December 2017)

Watched the movie at midnight screening with my 13 year old daughter. The first thing the struck me was the use of humour, far beyond anything we have seen in the SW franchise before. The opening scenes with X-Wing vs Star Destroyer "being put on hold" was bordering on farce IMO. There were a few incidents like this that felt forced attempts to lighten the mood. Secondly are the Disney merch team now heavily involved? The number of new cuddly aliens introduced in this movie 3-4 at least, I can see them all appearing at Disney stores near you in the not too distant future.
The movie itself felt like a series of short stories, that didn't join up particularly well with average writing, lots of plot devices we've seen many times before. Lazy writing IMO. As has been said on other threads far too many characters introduced and expecting the audience to have immediate attachments to them just didn't work, Rose for example.
On the plus side the visual effects were stunning, as were the fight scenes and some of the acting was excellent in the scenes between Luke and Rei.
Unfortunately modern movie making appears to be formulaic and designed to appeal to the masses, which I'm sure this will. It's safe, doesn't deliver anything different and overall pretty average...I'm sure the Disney execs will be patting themselves on the back for this one - 5/10.