So yeah, we've made a family tradition of watching current Star Wars movies on Christmas. Never my mom's first choice, but it beats our previous tradition of dark musicals in my book.
Picking up right where Episode VII left off, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has found the hiding place of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and wants him to train her so she can contribute better to the war. But Luke has grown bitter and disenchanted with Jedi ways and dreads the possibility of creating another Vader-esque Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who has some Force-related connection to Rey. Meanwhile, despite its previous victory, the Resistance is weakening and struggles to retreat from a First Order bent on eradicating it.
Pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) gets considerably more screen time than before, slightly eclipsing his popular pet droid, BB-8, for a change. Now I have a better sense of his personality: rash and unruly — the closest thing to a new Han Solo. Sometimes he locks horns with ever-sassy Leia (the late Carrie Fisher), but more often it's Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), who hesitates too much for his forbearance.
Finn (John Boyega) is also back in business, doing more groundwork than flight. If you were "shipping" him with Rey, be warned that he gets a canonical love interest this time: an engineer called Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). It's a little rushed, but with hero worship, common nerdy expertise, and an adventurous covert mission together, the pairing is far more credible than Anakin and Padme.
Other returning characters? Well, we finally get to see Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) outside of a holograph, and no, he's not that big. General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) continues to have fairly amusing difficulties in serving his superior. Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), while no Boba Fett, offers a little more reason to bother remembering her name. Among the good guys, Yoda (Frank Oz) makes a probably final ghostly appearance. Maz (Lupita Nyong'o) manages to fight and talk via holograph at the same time. Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo, no longer Peter Mayhew) flies in style while, er, solo. R2-D2 (Jimmy Vee) may do the most to dig up 40-year-old cultural memories; alas, he still doesn't share a scene with C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), who remains endearingly feckless as usual...and no longer has a red arm, for no stated reason.
That last point is worth bringing up because it points to a key difference in direction between J.J. Abrams (now just a producer) and Rian Johnson. Where Abrams sowed the seeds for future revelations, Johnson seems uninterested in half of them. And while he maintains some of the formulaic trilogy nature with moments mirroring Episode V and, to a lesser extent, VI, it's less of a fanfic retread.
Results are alternately predictable and unpredictable, neither of which is always good or always bad. Sometimes I questioned the idea of a given character performing a given action, but on further reflection, it made a kind of sense. Some moments that didn't really bother me when I watched appeared more unintentionally ridiculous later, but that's par for the course.
The biggest problem to my mind is the pacing. Long quiet scenes and frantic action scenes are not well balanced, making the third act feel unduly packed. I dare say I got mildly bored a few times, more so than in any SW outing since the prequel trilogy.
Nevertheless, for every element that's worse than in VII, I can think of at least one that's better. At several points, especially toward the end, I smiled at a rebel victory. Action scenes are cool without getting notably dizzying or exhausting. Rey is less reminiscent of a Mary Sue. Kylo Ren is less of a mess. Finn has more charm and perhaps more prowess. There are at least four new species; my family couldn't decide which was #1. And the most major good guy to pass on does so with more dignity than the one in VII.
People made it sound as if this were a radical turnaround for SW, but it's pretty much the same to me. No darker or more brooding than its immediate predecessors, it continues to convey the greatest central theme of the series: hope. And I have my hopes for Episode IX.
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