What worked really well for me was the Rey/Kylo/Snoke/Luke story. That's why I account it as the third best Star Wars film.
At I high level what I thought was ineffective:
A long stern chase isn't a great fit for an action movie from a pacing perspective. Martha Wells also notes that it compresses the setting in a way that fights against the nature of space opera. It breaks with the worldbuilding about space travel/battles in Star Wars, which isn't the end of the world, what is worse is that it doesn't seem to have been thought through in its own terms--the Resistance fleet's fuel issues force them into the chase, but it's really unclear why the First Order doesn't jump ships in front of the the people they are pursuing. The Canto Bight plot doesn't bear much scrutiny in it's own terms either.
Some of the dialogue is so stained and clunky you can imagine it being written by George Lucas.
Lucas at least can quickly sketch a character one can understand, but characterization is a real problem in the B plot. The film discarded all sorts of interesting potential in Finn's backstory in favor of repeating a variant of the character development from the last movie. More generally, the only characterization that occured for Finn, Poe and Rose seemed to be the minimum needed to drive them to participate in the film's thesis points. Strong acting *partially* mitigates *some* of the harm in *this* film, but I can't help but feel that we're looking at disconnected cyphers, rather than rounded characters that later filmmakers, people writing comics or novels, or kids playing with actions figures can *do* anything with.
If the film fully landed for you, or anyone else, that's great, I'm happy. But for me it's a case of taking the bad along with the good.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2020-02-17 12:15 am (UTC)At I high level what I thought was ineffective:
A long stern chase isn't a great fit for an action movie from a pacing perspective. Martha Wells also notes that it compresses the setting in a way that fights against the nature of space opera. It breaks with the worldbuilding about space travel/battles in Star Wars, which isn't the end of the world, what is worse is that it doesn't seem to have been thought through in its own terms--the Resistance fleet's fuel issues force them into the chase, but it's really unclear why the First Order doesn't jump ships in front of the the people they are pursuing. The Canto Bight plot doesn't bear much scrutiny in it's own terms either.
Some of the dialogue is so stained and clunky you can imagine it being written by George Lucas.
Lucas at least can quickly sketch a character one can understand, but characterization is a real problem in the B plot. The film discarded all sorts of interesting potential in Finn's backstory in favor of repeating a variant of the character development from the last movie. More generally, the only characterization that occured for Finn, Poe and Rose seemed to be the minimum needed to drive them to participate in the film's thesis points. Strong acting *partially* mitigates *some* of the harm in *this* film, but I can't help but feel that we're looking at disconnected cyphers, rather than rounded characters that later filmmakers, people writing comics or novels, or kids playing with actions figures can *do* anything with.
If the film fully landed for you, or anyone else, that's great, I'm happy. But for me it's a case of taking the bad along with the good.