ok i will attempt a review. It will be a review of the 3 films as a whole, both to save time, and also because they are in the end a single product.
Yes, as pointed out, there is a lot of CGI; i have found it less bad than the greenscreen boringness of E123. Too much flashy lights, too fast action (something that we can't get rid of in 2020), but imho the absolute lifelessness of the E123 CGI was worse; here in E789 they do not try as much to mix live actors (who are oblivious to what's happening in CGI) with the CGI and while the end result is still annoying AF, it's not as "bad" in the sense of "how can a filmmaker not know this" bad.
The Force is once again an energy field uniting everything including the fucking rocks, and not a microscopic population living in your blood.
Casting is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than E123. Costumes and sets are wwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better. BB8 is a decent remake of R2D2.
There is still everywhere badly time and badly place slapstick and comedy when there should be serious tones. But,
Rey and Kylo Ren are both great characters and great .. uh .. really good actors in their roles. I really really liked everything about these two guys, and if there was a 3-in-1 fanedit that removes everything else, i'd be happy to watch it.
The story of these two .. with the implied understanding that Kylo isn't wrong .. so, as i understand it, the core of the 3-film plot is that Luke says he wants the Jedi to end. Kylo says he wants to put all past behind, both the good things holding back Rey from falling to the dark side, but also the thing that so to speak, hold Kylo to the dark side. He's not totally clear about it himself, we can see. But in the end, as they unite - light and dark .. ying and yang .. the prophecy .. and all that bullshit, it kinda makes sense. It's an acceptable plot that i approve of in my super-strict "way that you are allowed to write a film in" book of rules.
E7 is .. it's hard to say which film is the best and which is the worst. They all 3 have some things which are atrocious, and in no way do i mean to compare these films to a GOOD, WELL MADE FILM, say, Roger Rabbit, Rear Window, Aliens, Back To The Future, pick a film. The same "i want everything of everything 10 times louder" attitude that was present in E123 is alive and well here; shots are too fast, the pacing is fucked, there is no human realism that helps you connect with the characters.
Despite that, when the film pauses for a second to focus on Rey's face or Kylo, it starts to become a good film - almost as if these bits where teh core of the screenplay, but for some fucked up reason the writers also had to shovel fanboy-appeasing shit in it that's too much shit volume for the empty space left.
E7 is the story of Rey, and of Finn. Minor characterPoe disappears almost immediately. He also has a punchable face so i'm glad he does. Finn is supposed to be a tragic character, but we do not go in depth there, instead he quickly changes into a "i just want to get out of here" secondary character. He does yell and scream a lot, but since the film disdains creating a character arc for him, why would we care? And, his screaming and yelling is mostly there to explain that Rey is really the hero.
Kylo Ren plays the new Vader and he's really good. Did i say he's really good? A Vader that isn't cool in his rage, he is instead nearly driven mad by the dark side, and while this is no moustache-twirling villain, he's a proper anti-hero. While Kylo *could* be the antagonist, he seems to have an antagonist himself. The problem with humanizing the villain is that you lose its token as "the thing the hero (you) will defeat", and this detracts from the hero's journey, sort of a conservation of ninjutsu of film goodness.
So Rey must do-something which is escape; escape the bad guys with the map(tm).
Han Solo is reintroduced briefly; they add a scene with some ethnically-challenged pirates to show that Han hasn't changed, and it boils down to a CGI explosion fest that ends without consequence. There is NO explanation why Han is without Leya. And, i really should mention, there is no explanation why the ... entire setting exists.
So brief pause to discuss this.
At the end of Jedi, Luke has Won(tm). He has destroyed the Emperor and the Empire is no more. The force runs strong in him and the rebellion is now legitimized back into the old republic. Stability has been brough back to the galaxy once and for all.
HOW THE FUCK did it go from the one state of events to the current state of events
Anyway, Han discloses that this film isn't a Neo-European story, with separate characters, but actually Asian-inspired, where every character is directly related to another character, to put Tekken to shame. Yes, Vader is luke & leya's father, Rey is probably the daughter of someone here, Kylo is Han's son and Vader's grandson, every major character is blood related. Obviously.
So Han shows up, does his buy this film routine, and is killed. The acting is atrocious throughout, on the levels of Crystal Skull. Kylo Ren still kills it though.
Anyway, out heroes escape, meet some CGI funny characters that look out of a Pixar movie, there is a comical co-antagonist in Hux, there is some guy called Snoke - which is a ridiculouse name, nearly as bad as GENERAL GREVIOUS lolol - who .. we're just supposed to assume he's bad? and eventually the polt unfolds that the prize for the hero's escape is the Map To Skywalker.
Heroes meet Skywalker and the film ends.
It's not horrible, but it's a weak plot. And while it's not entirely broken, and it does have some good acting alongside some horrible acting, the mistakes here are all in the same "have you never hear of filmmaking school?" camp; let the film breathe, pace story, dialogue and action at a human level, have less things, progress them clearly, and milk the important bits, do all these and it would have worked.
Oh and they blow up the really bigg deathstar mk3. They even make a joke about it being the same thing but biggah.
E8 i WANT to say that has the best parts in it, but i'm not so sure; the plot is that Rey changes character from "survive the bad guy to win" to "destroy the bad guy to win". We like this because people like to feel empowered through identifying with a protagonist who defeats the symbolic bad guy. LIKE IN EVERY OTHER FILM EVER.
Rey's character is however still reluctant in her need to confront the bad guy for her arc to complete, which imo works at the detriment of the film, and here we can again see how the writers have no intention of making each film a self-contained story, but rather just a chunk of a 3-film "must be consumed wholly" product.
There is a bit of backstory to Kylo Ren, and i like the 3-interpretations thing; i would say "it's taken from Rashomon", but i doubt any of the people who worked on E8 have ever seen rashomon. It gives *some* depth to Kylo, and allows for the possibility that he may either turn good, or that some other change in character from "is the dark side" can lead to an ending that's not just "good guy kills bad guy".
There is a whooooole bunch of film that echoes the E6 destroy the shield on Endor thing, which is completely unnecessary, as the escape from the First Order attack isn not the Goal(tm) of the Hero, the goal of the hero is to confront Kylo - not, as in E6, where the goal was the destruction of the Death Star mk2. It's true that this was Han's goal, but Han can be considered a main character, which Poe is not. Also, some unseless side character are betrayed is *not* comparable to Lando Calrissian betraying Han and Leya on Bespin.
Then there is a showdown between Luke and Kylo. Adam Driver once again kills it with his seething rage, but the whole "it was just a ploy to delay the enemy" leaves me unsatisfied.
Oh yeah at some point Kylo kills Snoke, and while i'm ok with that, the timing is fucking off by a mile? Could they not have simply done that Snoke insults Kylo and - because he's not completely comtrolled by the dark side - he rebels?
E9 is a big mess of Kylo and Rey fighting everything that can be fought because in the end this is now a superhero movie, with big shootly laz0rs from fingertips kinda thing. Smashing stone, flying, resisting deadly damage, we're no longer in Indiana Jones territory, but rather something out of The Avengers.
Kylo is now the supreme leader so he can do whatever he pleases, and he's off to find the Emperor; and he does so with confounding speed. A troupe of goons(tm) is introduced, The Knights Who Say Ren, more sentimentalisms with C3P0, then we have a very, very long static confrontation with the Emperor.
Given that he's mostly GCI, why could they not change actor, or have someone else who hasn't gotten fat with age? No disrespect, uh?
The Emperor does not challenge Rey, mind you, he wants to be killed. Which is .. very anticlimactic. A similar conondrum was posed during E6, which is then resolved by having Vader, who is Bad(tm), kill him - this showcases the advantage of being Bad(tm), which makes us very fond of this character's arc. No such thing here.
Anyway, Kylo and Rey do a lot of stunt fighting, the Knights Who Say Ren are introduced and then killed a'la Chekhov's Gun, and then there is an overabundance of force lightning that is frankly ridiculous, and Rey uses TWO LIGHTSAB0RZ ! to kill him, so he is double dead.
So, i've hated it, i've hated everything, EXCEPT the story; the main plot of Kylo vs Rey and Kylo somehow becoming both good and bad at the same time, which, is good. These three fucking films actually have something good in the, which E123 do not, and it's a shame that there wasn't a competent project leader who could have turned them into something positive. Because, it's true that a movie is the ensemble of all the little things that you add to a plot - also the reason why plots work better when they are *not* intricate - but it's nice when a good plot is written, a classic good vs evil with the added twist of evil being good. Give life to the anti-hero n' all that. E123 have none of this, they are almost comical in their badness, while E789 are nowhere near as bad, and unfortunately these are such culturally important films, that we will have to live with their mistakes for generations to come, but i hope that one day justice can be done and we'll have the courage to point the finger of blame where it belongs.
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