Finding Balance Between Physics and Entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2017)

I have watched every Star Wars film ever made many times, from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray. Like Gollum's love and hatred of the One Ring, I have both loved and hated every Star Wars film, and for various reasons.
I did not like Force Awakens because I thought the First Order ridiculous, and the Star Killer weapon-planet even more ridiculous. Apart from the unbelievable speed required to build such a weapon in only 30-some years following Return of the Jedi, why would anyone expend so much effort to build a weapon that could only be fired one time? I mean, if the in-film explanation of how the weapon works remains valid, only the script could have caused the Sun to regenerate itself so that the First Order could fire the weapon a second time at the Rebel base.
In The Last Jedi I assumed the bad guys were just sore losers hellbent on seeking revenge against the Rebels for having defeated them in Return of the Jedi. By the end of the film the Rebel Alliance that had destroyed the second Death Star and brought an end to Darth Sidius' Empire was reduced to a single tiny ship. And I foolishly thought the Rebel's most desperate hour was when Princess Leia sent that "your my only hope" hologram to Obi Wan Kenobi. Well guys, you've got the good guys in a real bind now. I hope you offer a damn good explanation if those few dozen survivors turn up in the next film in the midst of a powerful rebel battle group, because you've made it very clear that no one wants to help them, the kid holding the broom handle like a light saber notwithstanding.
Apart from the apparent trajectory of a never-ending Star Wars story-line, I did not like that the rebel frigate suddenly slowed down because it ran out of fuel. Fellas, in the vacuum of space, an object in motion stays in motion unless or until some other gravitational force alters its course. Thus, the rebel ships, even after running out of fuel, would have continued on at the same rate of speed, never slowing down. I realize its a movie, not a NASA documentary, but just as you talk about that balance in the force, you need to strike a balance between the demands of movie entertainment and some laws of nature that ought not be violated. I remember Lucas' comment that some things be romantically correct while remaining technically inaccurate. But in the case of those bombers, you can't just open a bomb-bay door and watch your bombs "fall" through space no matter how big the enemy ship. There would have to be some sort of ejector mechanism to force the bombs to fly toward the enemy ship, because there is no up or down in space, there is no right-side up.
When I watched that frigate slow down because it ran out of fuel I thought, this is as ridiculous as when Enterprise suddenly and impossibly spiraled down toward Earth because its main power went offline. Given Enterprise' distance from earth, and that you don't plot a course to impact a planet but to enter orbit, that crew would have had months, if not years to repair their engines before their orbit would have degraded. But then there would have been no story. Same with The Last Jedi. You can't honor the laws of physics if you need your ships to be blown up one by one because of fuel loss. It would have been better for the story if the First Order had corralled the Rebels into a path that would have led them to a black hole. Then, without fuel, they would have found themselves racing toward the event horizon with no means of escape. That would have been a better way to eliminate the rebels without breaking the rules of nature. But it wasn't in the script.
Laying aside my technical disbelief, the story was enjoyable, at times funny, and while I left the theater thinking it had failed to evoke any sense of loss or emotional connection to the characters, it did succeed, finally, and perhaps unintentionally, to evince the thought that the struggle of good over evil is never over; we will battle evil as long as we live. So too the victory celebrated on Coruscant in Return of the Jedi was short-lived, and just has history here on earth demonstrates, except by the grace of God, the downfall of one tyrant is soon replaced by another. In this sense, I suppose Star Wars is destined to become a never-ending story, both on-screen and off.