To add to the list of non-chud reasons to dislike it, the plot is driven entirely by characters doing the dumbest thing possible at every turn on all sides for little to no reason.
Someone once pointed out the First Order could have ended the movie in the first ten minutes by having their dreadnaught just shoot the Resistance's capital ship instead of the planetary (read: entirely stationary) base first, or by having the dreadnaught's fighter screen/escort ships deployed instead of just chilling and doing nothing the entire fight.
The Resistance should have had all their ships run away in different directions. Sure one of them will get chased down and blown away, but 95% escaping would have been a much better result than what they got. My headcanon is that if Leia hadn't been unconscious that's exactly what she would have done, and Holdo was at a "Civil War General" level of incompetence.
But the Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff was great. Rian Johnson actually figured out something to do with the Jedi that hadn't been done before, and killing off the bad Emperor knockoff was 100% the right call. Every character in that plot was actively making decisions that revealed their character rather than being propelled along by plot contrivance, it was great.
There's also a ton of potential in the B plot, all you have to do it rewrite it a bit. Maybe they find out that the dreadnought isn't tracking them with a new piece of technology after all, and since they can't find a tracking device they suspect there's a spy. Maybe the reason they go to the rich people planet isn't to find some macguffin guy, but to find the people funding the FO and shoot them. The Jedi plot ends with Rey deciding not to burn the Jedi's teachings - you could dramatically pair that with Finn deciding to blow up the arms dealers profiting off of endless galactic war.
the only good thing i think is killing snoke like that. subverting expectations just to subvert them isn't good, just like tropes aren't automatically bad but the snoke death added stakes to the events.
Luke's character "development" happening entirely off-screen (and throwing out better character development from decades of books) makes the flashback scene completely unbelievable. kylo is no jacen
To add to the list of non-chud reasons to dislike it, the plot is driven entirely by characters doing the dumbest thing possible at every turn on all sides for little to no reason.
Someone once pointed out the First Order could have ended the movie in the first ten minutes by having their dreadnaught just shoot the Resistance's capital ship instead of the planetary (read: entirely stationary) base first, or by having the dreadnaught's fighter screen/escort ships deployed instead of just chilling and doing nothing the entire fight.
The Resistance should have had all their ships run away in different directions. Sure one of them will get chased down and blown away, but 95% escaping would have been a much better result than what they got. My headcanon is that if Leia hadn't been unconscious that's exactly what she would have done, and Holdo was at a "Civil War General" level of incompetence.
But the Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff was great. Rian Johnson actually figured out something to do with the Jedi that hadn't been done before, and killing off the bad Emperor knockoff was 100% the right call. Every character in that plot was actively making decisions that revealed their character rather than being propelled along by plot contrivance, it was great.
There's also a ton of potential in the B plot, all you have to do it rewrite it a bit. Maybe they find out that the dreadnought isn't tracking them with a new piece of technology after all, and since they can't find a tracking device they suspect there's a spy. Maybe the reason they go to the rich people planet isn't to find some macguffin guy, but to find the people funding the FO and shoot them. The Jedi plot ends with Rey deciding not to burn the Jedi's teachings - you could dramatically pair that with Finn deciding to blow up the arms dealers profiting off of endless galactic war.
the only good thing i think is killing snoke like that. subverting expectations just to subvert them isn't good, just like tropes aren't automatically bad but the snoke death added stakes to the events.
Luke's character "development" happening entirely off-screen (and throwing out better character development from decades of books) makes the flashback scene completely unbelievable. kylo is no jacen