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Dissatisfaction with Episode VIII
TL DR; The story has some incredibly incredibly strong things to say, and in ever case they pull dilute, confuse, and soften anything which would make those story elements really strong.
My biggest dissatisfaction is that the ending is a huge downer. The spark that lights the fire that burns the First Order down should be a few hundred Resistance fighters, scattered about the galaxy and on a handful of aging ships, rather than the equivalent of a large house party hanging out on the Millenium Falcon and somehow being absurdly okay with dead friends (given the scale of human loss in Ep VIII, it's safe to assume that everyone standing at the end of the movie has lost friends and relatives) and a galaxy of people who won't answer their distress signal. How can you reasonably expect the good guys to eventually pull off any sort of victory with that as their starting point?
Any punch this might have had has been cushioned and toned down.
I figure that all three primary characters are supposed to get a story arc, and those arcs are kinda there, which would be a good parallel to Empire Strikes Back (Han, Luke, Leia and even Lando all have personal growth, which is part of why the downer ending isn't such a downer; our heroes won, but they didn't succeed).
But the movie winds up really confusing those things and getting them lost.
Poe goes from being a brash, impulsive pilot to being an actual Resistance leader, willing to conserve men and materiel and run.
But that requires Holdo as a foil, apparently antiheroic for damping Poe's fire, then in the end turning out to be the true hero, sacrificing herself with the main cruiser so most of her troops can escape; and when most of her troops don't escape, when Holdo sacrifices herself instead taking out the flagship, that kinda dampens that point. Then, on Crait, Poe's holding action doesn't really read as an intermediate step towards leadership; engaging the First Order in decrepit speeders with troops manning the trenches doesn't really seem that thoughtful, especially because most of the pilots and nearly all the ground troops die before Poe calls off the attack. Theoretically managing a retreat would come across as wise leadership, but that's diffused; he isn't actually planning out anything beyond follow alien foxes, and then being lucky enough to have Rey and the Falcon around, and he doesn't manage to save much of the Resistance.
Finn goes from being non-partisan, concerned largely about his friends, to understanding that there's big stuff going on in the galaxy and choosing a side.
But that requires really jamming home the idea that Finn's mostly there for his friends rather than any rebellion - and that's not terribly clear. DJ, the thief, comes across as so completely unsavory that his cynicism about sides and choosing them doesn't really scan, and then of course his betrayal just really undercuts any appeal there might have been to not choosing a side and going with your friends - because he doesn't really have any friends. So he's not an effective foil to Finn. Finn's choice to actively present as a Resistance fighter doesn't really come across very clearly, and then his willingness to die for the cause gets undercut by the way Rose prevents him from doing just that.
Rey goes from being a powerful but unrefined Force user with a lot of her own issues to truly being the spiritual heir to Luke Skywalker.
I feel like this arc read more clearly than the other two, though it gets confused by Luke's story (his fall from grace and redemption are really powerful) and diluted by the way she really isn't connected to Luke towards the end of the movie. Luke implies that he knows Rey survived trying to turn Kylo Ren back to the light, but he never straight up says it. There's no resolution in which Luke was wrong about Kylo, or admits that Rey was right and he was wrong.
TL DR; The story has some incredibly incredibly strong things to say, and in ever case they pull dilute, confuse, and soften anything which would make those story elements really strong.
My biggest dissatisfaction is that the ending is a huge downer. The spark that lights the fire that burns the First Order down should be a few hundred Resistance fighters, scattered about the galaxy and on a handful of aging ships, rather than the equivalent of a large house party hanging out on the Millenium Falcon and somehow being absurdly okay with dead friends (given the scale of human loss in Ep VIII, it's safe to assume that everyone standing at the end of the movie has lost friends and relatives) and a galaxy of people who won't answer their distress signal. How can you reasonably expect the good guys to eventually pull off any sort of victory with that as their starting point?
Any punch this might have had has been cushioned and toned down.
I figure that all three primary characters are supposed to get a story arc, and those arcs are kinda there, which would be a good parallel to Empire Strikes Back (Han, Luke, Leia and even Lando all have personal growth, which is part of why the downer ending isn't such a downer; our heroes won, but they didn't succeed).
But the movie winds up really confusing those things and getting them lost.
Poe goes from being a brash, impulsive pilot to being an actual Resistance leader, willing to conserve men and materiel and run.
But that requires Holdo as a foil, apparently antiheroic for damping Poe's fire, then in the end turning out to be the true hero, sacrificing herself with the main cruiser so most of her troops can escape; and when most of her troops don't escape, when Holdo sacrifices herself instead taking out the flagship, that kinda dampens that point. Then, on Crait, Poe's holding action doesn't really read as an intermediate step towards leadership; engaging the First Order in decrepit speeders with troops manning the trenches doesn't really seem that thoughtful, especially because most of the pilots and nearly all the ground troops die before Poe calls off the attack. Theoretically managing a retreat would come across as wise leadership, but that's diffused; he isn't actually planning out anything beyond follow alien foxes, and then being lucky enough to have Rey and the Falcon around, and he doesn't manage to save much of the Resistance.
Finn goes from being non-partisan, concerned largely about his friends, to understanding that there's big stuff going on in the galaxy and choosing a side.
But that requires really jamming home the idea that Finn's mostly there for his friends rather than any rebellion - and that's not terribly clear. DJ, the thief, comes across as so completely unsavory that his cynicism about sides and choosing them doesn't really scan, and then of course his betrayal just really undercuts any appeal there might have been to not choosing a side and going with your friends - because he doesn't really have any friends. So he's not an effective foil to Finn. Finn's choice to actively present as a Resistance fighter doesn't really come across very clearly, and then his willingness to die for the cause gets undercut by the way Rose prevents him from doing just that.
Rey goes from being a powerful but unrefined Force user with a lot of her own issues to truly being the spiritual heir to Luke Skywalker.
I feel like this arc read more clearly than the other two, though it gets confused by Luke's story (his fall from grace and redemption are really powerful) and diluted by the way she really isn't connected to Luke towards the end of the movie. Luke implies that he knows Rey survived trying to turn Kylo Ren back to the light, but he never straight up says it. There's no resolution in which Luke was wrong about Kylo, or admits that Rey was right and he was wrong.