Note: There will be major spoilers for Star Wars IX in this post.
I went to see the new Star Wars movie on New Year's Eve. Although part of me wanted to let go of critiquing and just try to enjoy the movie, a larger part of me wants to get better at critiquing stories in general, which I think will come in useful. So here are my thoughts on the movie -- at least the ones I remember at this point.
Let's start with the good.
The main thing I wanted out of this movie (other than for it to be good) was some explanation of why Rey is so incredibly strong. In the Force Awakens, she is able to beat Kylo, a master force-user, in a duel her first time using a lighstaber. She is also able to mind trick a stormtrooper on her second attempt. This is an advanced jedi technique that should take incredible amounts of training to pull off. In short, she is much stronger than she should be.
And the movie delivered on explaining this, to an extent. Rey is revealed to be the Emperor's granddaughter, and has inherited his vast force sensitivity. This is about as good of an explanation as they could have given, though I do think Rey's raw power should still have been no match for Kylo's trained power (especially considering his grandfather was also an extremely strong force user).
I also like how they juxtaposed the two families, with Kylo from the "good guy" family on the dark side, and Rey from the "bad guy" family on the light side. And at the end, when Rey is once again asked her family name, she says Skywalker, representing her ability to choose her own path.
I was also relatively happy with Kylo's story arc. As expected, he turned to the light side at the end. I thought the death of his mother in trying to reach him might not have been the strongest motive for a change of heart, since he already, you know, murdered his father in order to become more darkside anyhow. But still, I liked how he replayed the Han murder seen in his head with new context to the conversation.
And as always, the visuals and cinematography were very aesthetic. Going to the ruins of the second death star was cool.
Now, the bad.
There are some small things I can gloss over. Like why does Kylo's lightsaber keep pushing people instead of cutting through them? Why do stormtroopers wear all that armor, which doesn't even deflect blasters, literally the most common weapon they face? Why, after Poe was shot, did Finn rush into the corridor junction that was absolutely proven to be unsafe, didn't look around to clear any stormtroopers, and yet was fine?
The healing thing Rey and Kylo were doing was interesting. I'm not sure how I felt. It's probably fine. Though...what exactly did Rey die of at the end? Her life force being drained? But she was still able to fight after. Long enough to beat Palpatine, anyway. Just seems like a case of the Padmes.
Them teleporting things using the force was interesting. At first I was put off, but it was kinda cool when Vader's helmet fell to the planet below, alerting Kylo to Rey's presence on his ship. That said, it was kinda fourth wall-breaking when Luke gave Rey a second lightsaber to take to Exegol. The audience knew she would need to give it to Kylo, but Rey did not.
Moving on to bigger issues.
I rarely, if ever, enjoy the resurrection of a dead character. It removes all the stakes (more on this below). Palpatine's return was both frustrating and confusing. It just brings up more questions than answers. Is this the original Palpatine or a clone? Because Exegol was clearly doing some cloning of Snoke. But Palpatine had those extremely damaged hands, so that's probably the result of when Vader turned his lightning back on him. But then how in the galaxy did he survive the explosion of a small moon that he had just been thrown into the reactor of? But could you even clone a sith and replicate their force sensitivity? That seems like it would cause some major problems. Like why wouldn't they have made a clone army of force users back in episode II?
And where did this fleet of star destroyer/planet destroyers come from? Have they been building it on Exegol for the last 20 years? I guess so. So do they have a legion of builders to do that work? But there'd be so many people they'd have to have a whole society down there. But it seems like a pretty inhospitable planet; how do they grow food? Maybe they import it? But wouldn't that compromise the secrecy of Exegol in the first place? Also, how do they staff these hundreds or maybe thousands of star destroyers in a day's time? Is that what the child recruitment in the earlier part of the movie was about? But how do you train kids to run these things in such a short amount of time? And once again, wouldn't bringing them all to Exegol compromise its secrecy? People are going to notice if a large number of ships are heading into a nebula and vanishing. And what exactly was Palpatine planning to be emperor of once he destroys all the inhabited worlds in the galaxy?
None of it makes sense to me. It seems contrived in order to make the final battle as big as possible.
Imagine if, instead of Palpatine being alive, he returned as a force ghost. He could return specifically to torment Rey and try to make her claim her inheritance as empress. She can't shake him for the whole movie, until the very end when she refuses the throne. Or what if she had taken the throne, ostensibly as a force for good? That could have been so much more intriguing character-wise.
But the biggest disappointment in this entire movie was the moment that Rey thought her poor force control had killed Chewbacca. Actually, that part itself could have been great. Being responsible for the death of a friend could have served as an incredible character moment for Rey, and might have actually made me believe for a second that she might turn to the dark side.
However, because I knew there was no way they would kill off Chewie in that manner, I didn't believe any of it. I would have liked to be proven wrong. It would have given consequence to Rey's actions, instead of everything magically getting fixed for her.
Of course, Chewie wasn't dead, and the manner in which they kept him alive didn't even make sense! So...he wasn't on the transport that Rey destroyed. He was on a different one. So there were two transports leaving at the same time. Despite the fact that those transports were specifically chasing down Rey and her crew. One of them decided to leave without accomplishing anything. Just so that Rey could have a character moment that didn't mean anything in the end.
And it's not just Chewie. Take C-3PO. They have to destroy his memory banks just to find the location of the second Sith wayfinder. He makes this big deal about how he's taking one last look at his friends. Again, this could have been a great character moment. Except I knew that he would be good as new by the end of the film. And he was.
Oh no, new characters Zorii and Babu Frik refused to leave their planet, which was destroyed shortly after? Well, they both survived somehow, despite having given their best shot at leaving to Poe.
I can't care about the characters if I know that everything will be fine in the end. There needs to be uncertainty. There need to be stakes. I didn't expect more, but I wanted more.
Don't take this as me beating up on the franchise. I still enjoyed the movie. I still love Star Wars, and it's because I love Star Wars that I care about these problems. I just wish that a multi-billion dollar franchise would put more effort into its story and less into making an action movie that's actiony for action's sake.
