10 Likes/10 Dislikes from TROS

10 Likes:
1. Ben Solo (Bendemption)!
2. All the Reylo scenes. (Reylo Kiss and Ben Solo smiling for the first time.)
3. C-3P0 and Poe dynamic
4. Finn Force Sensitive
5. Master (Jedi) Leia
6. Chewbacca's reaction to to Leia's death
7. The legacy characters (Luke, Lando and Han Solo) giving the new generation characters (Rey, Ben, Poe) the inspirational, reassuring and supporting Pep talk to get them back into the fight and to face their fear.
9. I liked Jannah and her storm trooper back story.
10. Babu Frick

Dislikes
1. Not enough Ben Solo (his death should had brought me sincere sorrow because he is the last living Skywalker \Solo and he seemed so cool like his Father and grandfather (Anakin). I felt frustrated and empty by his death. I get they wanted to go for the Hero sacrifice, the Romeo\Juliet ending, but we didn't get enough time of light side Ben. His last words were "Ow" as funny as that was.
2. Rey Palpatine makes me feel like the Emperor won at the very end. Because she is the last Jedi. I know in reality that Skywalker's won at the end because they flipped the script and their influence kept Rey (his blood descendent) in the light and become the Jedi that ultimately defeated him. It's payback for all the years of Darth Sidious trying to seduce and keep the Skywalker blood line in the dark.
3. Rey taking the Skywalker name. I love the character of Rey, it just doesn't feel right. I get what J.J. Was going for. It just that fell flat. Maybe it would have worked if they showed her more emotional when she watched Ben die. The family she found and loves are now all gone, so that when Luke, Leia and BEN's force ghost appear, Rey is at peace knowing that they will be with her always. A call back to the "Be With Me".
4. Pacing, too fast. I totally missed Hux death scene caused it happened so fast. I didn't catch that Finn was Force Sensitive the first time I saw the movie. I felt that some of the emotional scenes didn't have time to breathe and let the audience take time to sit with their feelings. The film just felt frantic.
5. The Emperor being back felt like it cheapens the sacrifice and Story of Anakin Skywalker. This sequel trilogy makes it feel like they are purposefully ignoring Anakin Skywalker and the prequel trilogy. Darth Vader existed but not Anakin.
6. You could tell that there was no thematic through line in this trilogy. No plan. If they did the Emporer's return would have been alluded to from the beginning since Force Awakens.
7. Rose Rico and LT. Connix sidelined. They should had more lines than the Merry Brandybuck, the Hobbit, in this movie.
8. Jedi conference call to Rey. I wish that they would have shown the ghosts, even if there were cloudy silhouettes of the ghosts. Movies are visual mediums. Just a glimpse of the Jedi from the past would have been awsome. Sure it would have fan service, but it would been more satisfying.
9. To much emphasis and focus on finding the wayfinders then on focusing on character development.
10. Still wanted to see some classic aliens mixed in with the resistance fighters. Throw a rodian, Twi'lek, Zabrak, Togruta, Devorian, Duros, something that is familiar. I like seeing new alien species, but I like the old ones too. The Mandalorian and the Spin off films get this part right.

 

This comment keeps cropping up, and it's false.

Finn doesn't get to tell Rey his "big secret", but JJ shows the audience what that secret is: he's Force-sensitive.

This detail couldn't be clearer short of Finn wearing a giant neon sign bearing the words "I'm Force -sensitive", so why people can't seem to figure that out really confuses me.

 

Likes
- Rey, Finn and Poe together, finally
- C3PO have something to do
- Zorii Bliss
- Soundtrack
- Jannah
- Jedi voices
- Luke in Ahcto is great
- Perhaps the deslikes, i think that it´s a good movie, not perfect of course

Deslikes
- Palpatine is back (perhaps Ian did great in this movie)
- Script is messy
- Lando it´s just there
- Leia´s death could be more emotional
- The kiss
- Rey Palpatine and also Skywalker (you want to end the skywalker saga, but putting her as a Skywalker, it open unnecessary doors for the future)

 

Likes

1. Humor was less obtrusive compared to the last two films
2. Poe became somewhat of a character, not just a name and toy
3. Lightning of the film had less extreme red/blue tints to it compared to TFA. More aligned with SW look
4. Good job with the Leia footage they had.
5. The score was pretty good in this one
6. Since they couldn't resist to bring The Emperor back, at least they gave it a bit of Sith-Heavy layer vs a political one
7. Good job by Adam Driver as usual. Only character I could really "root" for
8. Hux being killed. Annoying and useless character
9. Reduced screen time for Rose
10. Aside from the cocaine-pacing, they still found room here and there to let the audience breathe for a second.

Dislikes

1. Inclusion of The Emperor
2. The Emperor becoming the Looney Tunes Coyote of Star Wars... Making the same mistakes over and over
3. Force Lightning, Death Star ruins, Chewie receiving a medal and other dumb fan service
4. Rey identifying as a Skywalker
5. Rey not dying but Ben (Would have been much more powerful imo)
6. Lando Calrissian being a bit too layed back. You don't buy anything is at stake as an audience member
7. Handling of Luke Skywalkers character was awful in this film as well. Felt more like Mark Hamill, not like Luke
8. Appearance/inclusion of Han Solo was terrible
9. Finn having nothing else to do other than to scream out loud "Rey"
10. A-Sexuality of the entire new trilogy felt here as well. No believable love angle in it at all. Felt like written by a 13 year old

 

Really.

One of the best scenes of the movie for me.

 

More power to you then.

 

I actually see the very brief explanation of Palpatine's resurrection as partially a good thing.

Palpatine's original death in ROTJ was a spectacular and seemingly final event. It's understandable that people want a more detailed explanation how this could be undone - but the way I see it, there is no explanation that could possibly make sense. If they tried to go into detail about how Palpatine resurrected himself, there would be a major risk of, well, cheesiness. You could make the case that having almost no explanation is better than having a really lame explanation.

The opening crawl all but explicitly said, "We're just bringing back Palpatine. Deal with it." I understand that that cheapens the story, although it surprises me that people didn't have objections like this to "We're just bringing back Maul" or "We're just bringing back Luke's saber." Since it was made clear ahead of time that Palpatine would be in TROS, it might be better to just accept that this was going to be a weak point no matter what and just try to move on from there.

 

Likes

1. Chewie didn't die
2. Overall the acting was good
3. C3P0 was funny
4. Leia was handled well
5. Pryde
6. Lightsabre duels
7. Luke Leia training flashback
8. Lando
9. Chewie got his medal (cheesy I know)
10. Ewoks

Dislikes

1. Palps returning
2. The Kiss
3. Pacing
4. Cinematography too dark
5. Rey becoming a Skywalker
6. Poe spice smuggler???
7. Hux the spy
8. Finn the force user
9. Force healing
10. Palps SD fleet

 

Likes:

1. John William's Soundtrack (goes without saying)
2. LIke the force skyping between Rey and Ren. (this is big for me because i couldn't stand it in TLJ) - like Rey passing the sabre to Ben..
3. How they handled Leia's arc. Well done.
4. Humour with C3PO- very good performance by Daniels
5. Lando - short part, but he was smooth and suave.
6. Little cameos by J. Williams and Wedge.
7. Luke catching that sabre.
8. Sabre fights
9 . Daisy and Adam's performances. Adam's ability to play Ben. (needed a bit more time for that to breathe)
10. Cinematography - beautiful work in the last scene.
11. Han and Ben . I cried.

Dislikes:

1. Should have extended the film. Too rushed. Needed to be close to 3 hours to allow story and character arcs to breathe. (Don't go to the bathroom. You'll blink and miss something lol)
2. Luke scene could have been a bit better.
3. Still wrapping my head around Palpatine, but it is what it is.
4. Hux being the mole - too obvious - wasted character
5. Knights of Ren where the Captain Phasmas of this film. But they looked cool.
6. Expand Zori and Jannah's characters a bit. Have some potential there.
7. Palpatine's Final Order lasts one day
8. Poor Rose was a complete background character.
9. The opening crawl; that could have been written in a better way.
10. No appearence by Anakin - at least one appearence to Rey or Ben.

 

Dislikes:
1. Narrative was really a mess
2. The movie sort of just kind of ignores the themes of the saga in general.
3. Rey using violence to kill Palpatine
4. The misuse of Adam Driver.
5. The character work for Finn and Poe felt lazy
6. The Rey Palpatine reveal was "Martha" levels of bad.
7. The Palpatine thing in general
8. Super Weapons...AGAIN
9. The lack of Ben Solo
10. Lack of agency for Characters.

Likes:
1. Carrie Fisher's footage working
2. BDW was great.
3. Keri Russell
4. Adam Driver
5. The Jedi voices
6. The new worlds/creatures
7. The other defected Troopers
8. Using the force link in key moments
9. Babu Frik
10. No Baby Yoda maguffin

 

Likes: (in no particular order)
1. C3P0
2. Lando
3. Wedge cameo
4. All three heroes together for once, good chemistry between them
5. Lightspeed skipping and Rey's response to Poe doing it with "Han's ship"
6. The music, particularly the use of the old themes.
7. Babu Frik
8. Force skype worked well for me this time
9. Zori
10. Han appearing even if it made little sense to me

Dislikes:
1. Chewbacca death undone too quickly to have any emotional gravitas.
2. Kylo did a lot of standing around watching people escape for my taste.
3. Wedge cameo too short
4. Not nearly enough Luke
5. Some Leia scenes felt jarring
6. Death Star tech on Star Destroyers wasn't necessary
7. Underwhelming Cloud City and Endor montage to insinuate galaxy wide uprising.
8. Scene between Luke and Rey was too rushed. "Can't talk long, gotta X-wing to levitate for you."
9. Pacing of the first third was frantic and downright terrible.
10. Final duel between Rey and Palps fell flat for me.

 

Things in random order that come to my mind first:

Like:
- Rey passing the lightsaber to Ben through Force bond- that was such a perfect moment, which was being set up basically throughout the entire movie.
- Ben vs KoR
- Ben's scene with Han - perfection... I felt soooo rewarded, because since day one I said that if Kylo gets his redemption, it will make Han one of the biggest heroes in this trilogy, as opposed to making his death pointlessly tragic. The mirroring of their TFA scene is such a payoff.
- Ben's shrug. Channeling his inner Han Solo - I love it.
- The opening scene. Very nice visual storytelling.
- Oma Tres!
- "I am the spy!" - I love that delivery! He was so excited to finally reveal himself.
- The humor. Pretty much all of it landed, from what I remember. 3PO was great!
- I liked both Zorii and Jannah - even though they didn't have much screen time, they felt like legit, likable characters.
- Both Babu Frik and D-O were better than I expected.

Dislike:
- Luke's AWFUL hair. I mean WTF....... He looked so bad that it legitimately took me out of the movie. Looked fine during the X-wing moment, though.
- Luke's scene wasn't particularly powerful. Compared to the beautiful Yoda scene from TLJ it's like night and day. I'm a bit surprised that J.J. didn't have Luke do a bit more or at least something original, with more impact.
- Alas, the KoR were underused... Such a shame. They were basically just walking or standing. I'm kinda shocked they didn't get to do anything badass, especially since J.J. himself hyped them up in the past... Shame.
- I wish we got like 30-60 seconds more of Ben's fight with KoR... It was set up perfectly and then ends so quickly.
- I'm currently underwhelmed by the score. It'll probably grow, but still.
- No Anakin beyond his voice. And I think it would be cool if all Force ghosts that we know appeared in some capacity. Luke, Yoda, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon...
- In terms of design, Exegol is just a generic evil place, which makes it a boring setting, to be honest.
- No music during the fight in the water. I get it, there's a lot of sound effects, but I still think there could have been something. Hell, they did it with Mustafar...
- Rey's lightsaber "X" as a way to kill Palpatine was kind of... Hm... I don't know - maybe a bit corny. I think it would be cooler if she did Yoda's move from RotS, struggled and had some (alluded?) Force ghost support - like Luke and Anakin with "Force hands" briefly appearing next to her between flashes of lightning.
- I don't feel like the final battle (I mean the ships) was particularly effective in terms of the viewing experience. It didn't feel that dramatic despite how over-the-top they tried to make it. I think stuff like the battle of Scarif kept me on the edge of my seat more than this.

 

Likes:
Wedge! (and Williams getting a cameo)
Getting Harrison back for the final film
Adam Driver's performance
Kylo vs. The Knights of Ren, the shrug, the lightsaber handoff from Rey
Lando
JJ does scale well, and the Final Order fleet, the fleet of good 'people', the resistance ships on the ground, DS2 wreckage... all looked great.
Accepting that he came back, I liked the way they handled the Emporer.
The humour.
Chewies reaction to the bad news is very moving
Team Force Ghost (even if they weren't seen)
Richard E. Grant as Pryde

Dislikes:
Sand, It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
No UNLIMITED POWER meme worthy material!
Some of the dialogue was pretty terrible
The score didn't hit me as much as previous films
"Taking one last look at my friends"...
Team Force Ghost was unseen.
Poe being a spice runner.
To short for its own good, could have been 20 mins longer.
X-wing wing/door...
JJ putting his mates in films when they're not that good.

 

Why is this an issue for you?

 

I think it was an unnecessary attempt at giving Poe a backstory. I mean, I don't mind if they want to flesh the character out a bit, but he's already got some fairly well established back story in canon that they could have expanded on, instead of this new piece of info. It also felt like it was attempting to remind people that Poe is supposed to be this trilogies roguish/Han character, by giving him this bad-boy element out of nowhere... and the only pay off is to get the comedic back and forth with Zorii, Finn and Rey.

I suppose they might use it to kickstart a new run of 'young' Poe Dameron comics, about a cocky young smuggler...

 

I would recommend picking up the Visual Dictionary for TRoS because it sheds light on this bit of his history and helps clear up some misconceptions I've seen people express in regards to that bit of the story.

 

No particular order

Likes
#1 Kylo Ren for the most part
#2-10 Babu Frik
Dislikes
#1 Knights of Ren weaker then Snoke's guards
#2 Snoke being a clone
#3 Crazy force powers/ logic introduced without context
#4 Rey becoming more powerful then everyone ever cuz THE JEDI ARE IN HER # GTFO
#5 Leia out dueling Luke cuz 2019
#6 Rose tossed away for female Ultraman and Finn 3rd potential girlfriend
#7 PALPATINE BACK WITHOUT CLEAR EXPLANATION LIKE HE'S PROFESSOR X COMING BACK AT THE END OF THE WOLVERINE CUZ REASONS
#8 Luke's gettho ass wig
#9 Kylo becomes good again cuz "Bennnn"# WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!!!
#10 LAST JEDI RETCONED (Rey 's a nobody...sikeeee, Kylo letting go of servitude and Vader imitation (i.e let the past due)...sike, etc

 

99.9% of TRoS is respectful towards TLJ and builds on its narrative decisions, so this idea that it retconned that film is objectively inaccurate.

 

LIKES
1) Kylo Ren/Ben Solo
Adam Driver's performance as the Prince of Alderaan is the highlight in all three movies. In TROS he was everything- intimidating, funny, emotional, physical, etc.

2) the acting
Everyone did a fine job acting wise, especially Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver.

3) the humor
With humor I mean little details like the banter between Kylo and Hux, or Kylo's "Han finger".


4) the appereance of the KOR
After two movies we finally see Kylo's knights. Unfortunately they were kinda wasted.

5) Han talking to Ben
IMO this is the best moment in the whole movie, mainly because the movie takes some time to breathe. Furthermore Harrison Ford's and Adam Driver's acting is great.

6) lightsaber action
The beginning with Kylo Ren slaughtering people on Mustafar was intense. The duel between Kylo and Rey in that white Star Destroyer room was unique. And the DS2 fight was intimate, even though I would have liked some score in that sequence. But I do like that Kylo was dominating in every fight.

7) Babu Frik
What can I say, he's C-3PO's oldest friend.

8) Chewie's reaction about Leia being dead
I think this was more emotional than Leia dying in the first place.

9) The kiss and Ben smiling

10) Ben vs the KOR
I like how differently Ben moves compared to Kylo


DISLIKES
1) the disjoined feeling to the previous movie
Just like RJ "ignored" alot of stuff of TFA, so did JJ with TLJ. A lot which was set up in TLJ was either ignored, downplayed or even changed. Yes, I'm not the biggest fan of TLJ, but IMO it would have been better to be more coherent and use the ideas of the previous movie. This whole trilogy feels like a competition.

2) fake out deaths
How many times did Kylo Ren die in this movie until he really died? I think three times.

3) Ben Solo being underused
After Kylo gets redeemed he only speaks one word => "Dad". Ben Solo's screentime was too short and then he even dies. In an official survey Kylo/Ben was ranked the most interesting character (90%), so why do you kill them?

4) the relationship between the main Trio
I don't know about you, but it didn't really feel like friendship. They were always arguing with each other. Especially Poe was a prick from time to time.

5) the pacing
This movie is fast, really fast. It's almost exhausting. In the first five minutes we visit four planets. You can really notice, that JJ wanted to tell two movies within two hours. No surprise the movie feels rushed then. You cleary notice this in the editing. TFA was edited "fast, slow, fast, slow", TROS ist edited "fast, fast, fast". The movie doesn't take its time to breathe.

6) useless new characters
I know, every movie introduces new characters. But Jannah, Zorri or Pryde aren't really needed. Zorri doesn't even have an action scene and Pryde could have easily been portrayed by Hux.

7) Hux's motive and death
I like the idea of Hux betraying Kylo, but not because he just wants him to lose. No, the Hux in my headcanon would like to betray Kylo to become Supreme Leader himself. Hux's death was also very unsatisfying.

8) wasted potential with the KOR
Since their reveal in the official trailer for TFA I was hyped about the KOR. But then they weren't used in TFA and TLJ. But I still had hopes for them in TROS. And I do like seeing them on the big screen. But they mostly just walk around. They only have one action scene. Why not let them fight with Kylo on Mustafar? They are just silent obstacles for Ben Solo.

9) the visuals/CGI
IMO this movie is the visually weakest or "ugliest" movie of the ST. TLJ was so beautiful to look at.

10) the soundtrack
It really hurts me, but this movie's score is one of the weakest in the whole saga. I don't really remember one new score. And even the old ones were kinda bland. I really hoped for a heroic Ben Solo theme.

 

The sentiments expressed in this post are not accurate.