So, let's talk more in detail about the things I couldn't mention earlier. There's lot of stuff to dissect but I'll try and stick to the relevant bits. And there really is a lot to dissect, such as the slow (what happened to the Y-Wing?) bomber run at the beginning of the movie and how those bombs manage to fall in zero gravity... but I digress.
The movie opens up with the Rebels evacuating their base (from the previous movie). They eventually manage to escape but Snoke's ship has the means to track vessels through hyperspace, unbeknownst to him. Personally, I was leaning more towards the spy angle and, to be honest, it would've worked better (might not have made a lot of sense though). You could even have framed the spy as someone Finn knew from his stormtrooper days and have some firefights inside the Rebel ship (ala The Hunt for Red October). Anyway, with the Imperials tailing them anywhere they go, and the Rebels quickly running out of fuel, it's only a matter of time before Snoke's dreadnought catches up to them and destroys them... in the slowest chase in the history of movies. I mean, why not send in TIE fighters to finish the job? In any case, here's where some of the bigger problems start appearing.
Putting aside for a moment Ackbar's unceremonious death and Leia's miraculous resurrection, the movie introduces Admiral Holdo as Leia's second-in-command. From the beginning it seems her only job is to purposefully piss off Poe Dameron who keeps asking her time and again, "What's the plan? How are we getting out of this?" Unfortunately, no matter how many times Dameron confronts her, Holdo remains tight-lipped, to the point her stubborn silence sparks a mutiny onboard. Poe has a plan. Holdo has none that we know of. It stands to reason many Rebels would side with Poe on this. Even when Poe lets Holdo in on his plan, she reacts as if he committed some indescribable crime. For what? Poe is only risking two Rebel operatives (pretty disposable at that) in order to find a way to sneak into Snoke's ship and disable the tracking device, not to mention he was never made aware of Holdo's plan to begin with.
About Holdo's plan. How the fuck was nobody able to notice a big blue-green planet was right next to them? I mean, you can clearly see it's (eventually) within visual range when Poe looks at the Rebel cruiser and then back at the planet. Also, why wouldn't the Empire be able to see the fleeing Rebel transports? If Snoke had a magnifying glass at hand I'm sure there's similar tech on the bridge. And if the Rebels could secretly escape on smaller ships as shown in the movie, why the hell didn't they jump to hyperspace? Finn and Rose clearly do so earlier in the movie. If you're worried about the Empire tracking you again, then simply scatter the ships in different directions.
The worst sin about this entire plot is that the whole situation could have easily been avoided if Holdo had simply told Poe about her plan. In fact, when Leia does fill him in on the details, Poe goes, "Okay, this could work." It's a pointless diversion that serves only to waste everybody's time.
Since we're talking about diversions, let's dive into the whole Finn-Rose plot, shall we? The Empire is tracking the Rebels through hyperspace. Rose and (surprisingly) Finn figure out how they're doing it and quickly hatch a plan to get onboard the ship and disable the tracking device. All right, this is going somewhere, I thought... until they decide they first need to recruit a hacker on some distant planet in order for the plan to work. When I realized that my jaw dropped, I couldn't believe they where about to kill what little momentum and tension this chase had going for it by having two Rebels actually escape from the Empire, so they could return back and let the other Rebels escape from the Empire. I was stunned. Next I was utterly disappointed because the entire casino-planet detour was long, preachy (my god it was preachy!), boring, and ultimately pointless (a recurring theme) as that plan fails. In fact, this bit reminded me of the prequels everybody loves to hate. What was the point of all this? So Rian Johnson could set up his new trilogy with the kid at the end? So Finn would face off against Phasma who's brought back for a few minutes only to have her killed again? So the movie could lecture us on slavery and war profiteering and how they're wrong? In other news, water is wet. And don't get me started on that forced romance between Finn and Rose (though mostly Rose I think).
These two are the most egregious examples by far and getting rid of them would've freed up some 30 to 40 minutes that could've been devoted to
literally anything else.
Another thing that stuns me is how Rian Johnson simply ignored or got rid of everything that Abrams, for better or worse, set up with Force Awakens. I'm certainly not Abrams' biggest fan, and I'm not keen on how he decided to remake A New Hope, but I would've thought Johnson would work within the framework set up by his predecessor, if only out of professional courtesy. Instead he sets it all aflame. Snoke? Dead*, and in the most stupid and hilarious way possible. We'll probably never get to know who he was, where he came from, or what his agenda really was. A character who could've been a great villain ended up being little more than a cartoon. Rey's parents? Drunken louts who sold her for money, if Kylo Ren is to be believed, and given how this movie tries to drive the point home that anyone can be a Jedi (no fucking kidding) it's hard not to believe this is really the case. Also, and given Mark Hamill's own words on the subject, it seems that the idea behind Luke having even considered murdering his nephew was all Johnson's, something that doesn't really jibe with what we know of Luke. We're talking about the same guy who saw the light in Darth Vader, right? The same guy who went to the Death Star to confront Emperor Palpatine and rescue/redeem his father? We're expected to believe Luke's first reaction upon sensing his nephew might turn to the dark side is lighting up his lightsaber to kill him? His sister and best friend's (only) son? No way.
And how about Luke's death? If you're going to kill him anyway, then why the fuck wouldn't you have him actually fight Kylo? If he's to die no matter what, at the very least have him die showing off his skills as a Jedi Master in an epic duel of swordsmanship and Force powers, none of this "Kylo didn't actually hurt me but I'm too tired anyway so might as well die looking at the sun, bye!" bullshit. When they showed us his X-Wing submerged on Ahch-To I thought to myself, "Oh, so we're going to have the swamp scene from Empire remade again? Okay." Yet nothing like that happened. I kept expecting Luke to show up in his X-Wing at some point (ala Thrawn trilogy) but, no, Johnson seems to have a thing for Force projections. In fact, if anyone had to die in this movie, it should've been Leia, given that Carrie Fisher is sadly no longer with us. Heck, I would rather have had her ramming that cruiser into Snoke's dreadnought than Holdo. Say that her use of the Force to survive an explosion and the vacuum of space taxed her to the point of death anyway so she might as well go down with the ship. Ackbar could've been a good fit for this too. Never mind that the whole idea of jumping into hyperspace and blowing up a dozen ships in the process seems preposterous to begin with, or everyone and their mother would've done this years ago. Hell, Rose's sister is given a more emotional and dramatic death than Ackbar!
I didn't much mind how the movie toys with the idea of the Jedi needing to end, but I'd say it missed the mark by a wide margin. There's plenty of material in the EU that could've been used for reference (*cough*KotOR II*cough*) to build a better case that the Jedi philosophy is flawed but none of it is used. Luke's exposition on the subject is very light and quite contradictory as the film develops. Yoda's cameo added nothing to the discussion really.
And, as I've previously mentioned, Johnson managed to find a way to take us back to square one, again.
I'm too tired to even complain about Rey's surprising mastery of the Force with little to no training. Everyone seems to be pulling off miraculous displays of Force powers nowadays, when it's convenient for the plot anyways. I'll let someone else take it from here.
*There is a way to redeem Snoke but I don't know if they'll do it. Basically, you have to borrow from Dark Empire. If Snoke were to inhabit Rey's body, that would be a plus in my book.
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