While it's fresh in my mind, here are some things I liked about TLJ:
I won't bother talking about the things I didn't like because you can get that anywhere. I don't hold out any hope that we will ever get an "awesome" star wars movie, but they're decent entertainment. I'll probably keep going yearly.
- The feeling multiple times that the rebellion was dead. And in the end they kind of were, making for an interesting set up for the next movie, without being a cliffhanger.
- I really liked Rose. For some reason she felt a lot more natural than Finn. She should have gone for the full pash on Finn though
- Yoda, very briefly, was the cheeky arsehole from the originals and not just another pompous jedi who just happens to talk funny like he was in the prequels
- Luke surviving the barrage wasn't just "Jedi's are invincible" but an actually clever idea from Luke. Kylo probably should have known what Luke was doing, but he was so clouded by rage that he didn't stop and think. They often talk about rage clouding judgement in the series, but I think this might be the best example of it actually happening, and they didn't even need to spell it out afterwards.
- I think Kylo Ren is possibly the best dark side character of the whole series. He shows his rage a lot better and you believe the inner conflict because of the strength of the acting and not just because the dialog tells you so.
- The codebreaker actually followed through on his amorality and sold out the good guys, rather than him just magically becoming a good guy because it would make us feel good
- Mutiny and conflict among the rebellion, because that would happen for sure if they had their backs to the walls, but it would be easy in the star wars universe to paint the good guys as being nice to each other 100% of the time
- Fucking lightspeed ramming collision thing wuhoo!
- The ambiguity of the luke/kylo flashback. Kylo saw rage, Luke felt shame.
- I really liked Rose. For some reason she felt a lot more natural than Finn. She should have gone for the full pash on Finn though
- Yoda, very briefly, was the cheeky arsehole from the originals and not just another pompous jedi who just happens to talk funny like he was in the prequels
- Luke surviving the barrage wasn't just "Jedi's are invincible" but an actually clever idea from Luke. Kylo probably should have known what Luke was doing, but he was so clouded by rage that he didn't stop and think. They often talk about rage clouding judgement in the series, but I think this might be the best example of it actually happening, and they didn't even need to spell it out afterwards.
- I think Kylo Ren is possibly the best dark side character of the whole series. He shows his rage a lot better and you believe the inner conflict because of the strength of the acting and not just because the dialog tells you so.
- The codebreaker actually followed through on his amorality and sold out the good guys, rather than him just magically becoming a good guy because it would make us feel good
- Mutiny and conflict among the rebellion, because that would happen for sure if they had their backs to the walls, but it would be easy in the star wars universe to paint the good guys as being nice to each other 100% of the time
- Fucking lightspeed ramming collision thing wuhoo!
- The ambiguity of the luke/kylo flashback. Kylo saw rage, Luke felt shame.
I won't bother talking about the things I didn't like because you can get that anywhere. I don't hold out any hope that we will ever get an "awesome" star wars movie, but they're decent entertainment. I'll probably keep going yearly.
