There’s still one movie to go. I think they demonstrated the potential of a lot of grey. Did you not see when Kylo and Rey worked together? Their intense connection with each other? Their desire to compromise, but to be centre-dark or centre-light? I think that’s the way to let the Sith and Jedi die, by formulating something new.
Which kind of made this movie a bit meaningless then IMO. They making moves of working together and then ended up split off, even more in their own corners at the end. If it comes to they come back again to working to make grey there was a lot of wasted time to get them to that point, I think.
I generally agree with this thread, in that I liked-it-a-lot-but-didn’t-quite-love-it, and agree with most of the praise, and agree with most of the criticism.
One thing I REALLY disliked, however, was Rose stopping Finn from sacrificing himself. Wtf? Isn’t dying in order to protect/save your comrades something that is noble? Laura Dern did it. Her sister did it. How is it suddenly different for Finn? Because he’s a main character? Or is the implication supposed to be that what he’s trying won’t possibly work?
It was frustratingly muddled.
I also don’t think the timeline of how they ended up meeting and then being betrayed by Benicio Del Toro makes any sense. Or if it did make sense, it certainly wasn’t very clear to us what was going on.
I was surprised by how unconvincing the mo-cap was on Snoke. A rare special effects miss. On the other hand, the porgs, the crystal foxes, and the weird inhabitants of Luke’s island all looked fantastic. (The horsey things were in the middle.)
Del Toro betrayed them after they were captured. He had overheard Finn talking to Poe on the communicator, telling him about the transports. He bartered that to the First Order in exchange for his freedom and several crates of cash.
Wanted to give a more detailed post. Haven’t read the thread yet so apologies if this has been said over and over:
Get the negative out of the way: the movie dragged a bit in places and probably could have been ten minutes shorter.
The theme of this movie was the young generation wiping away the old which for Star Wars is a huge change. Star Wars was always about history and dynasties. This thumbs its nose at all that and I liked that.
I absolutely LOVED that Rey’s parents were nobodies. For a story about a Galaxy, Star Wars was often silly about how small it is and the idea of the Force only being available to a select few was always unpleasant.
Luke being a grump went on a little too long but I liked his point about how the Force will be there whether there are Jedi or not. I also liked the conversation with Yoda. It made me expect this would end with something new forming but it looks like Rey will restart the Jedi after all.
I liked Laura Dern even when you weren’t supposed to and although the theme was the Young replacing the Old, that story reminded everyone that sometimes the old know what they’re doing. I have to admit having a ship do a suicide run occurred to me as soon as the chance started.
Did the base at the end show up in the show Rebels? Those crystal cats looked very familiar to me and they mentioned it was a base from the early days of the Rebellion.
It was great how Rey and Ben worked together but Ben did not turn back to the Light. Sometimes the good guys fail.
Interesting data point: my girlfriend hadn’t seen Star Wars since she was a kid. We rewatched the Original Trilogy over the weekend. She liked it but thought it was simplistic and just okay. We didn’t get a chance to see The Force Awakens but I gave her my summary of the story as went to the theater yesterday and she saw this. She liked this movie a lot.
Yeah, they really should have had Leia die in this movie, the writers and directors having known in advance that Carrie Fisher would kill herself with drugs before being able to film the next movie.
Oh, wait, they didn’t know.
The really should have called Fisher back in for reshoots of a death scene after she died in real life to give Leia’s character arc a satisfying end.
Oh, wait…
People upset you didn’t get Snoke’s backstory, I’m sure there will be trilogy of novels telling you how he ran into Chewbacca’s father and Uncle Owen on his way to becoming a Sith lord.
I loved the movie, but I have a question: Is Finn constantly getting knocked unconscious supposed to be a joke, or are the writers just returning to that well time and time again without realizing what they’re doing? Dude has been knocked unconscious, like, at least four or five times now.
Are you sure? I thought that it was implied at the time they were captured that he’d already betrayed them.
My version of Luke’s death that would have been better. Yep, prepare for hundreds of these over the next 40 years. 
Ahem.
Scene:
Yoda meets with Luke. Yoda tells him he* can* help Rey, etc. Similar to what is in the movie.
Luke does his “force projection” as filmed/seen in the movie. Audience has no idea. Same as movie.
Luke is revealed to be on the island. Same as movie.
However, at this point, we needed a mini-flashback where we see what Yoda told him. Yoda could say, “Help them you may…but it will cost you greatly. All your life force drained from you.” (better written that my crappy dialogue).
Cut back to Luke meditating. He sees ghost-Yoda, ghost-Obi-wan(old), and ghost Anakin. He disappears, having his energy drained.
[end]
Something like that would have been better. My wife and I kind of shrugged and went “huh” upon first viewing. Not the effect they wanted.
The movie was in postproduction and over a year away from release, and she’s already showed up dead in ‘Rogue One’, so there would be precedent.
Yeah, you’re totally right, there’s no way she could have possibly died in the scene where we see her unconscious body frosting over as it floated in the cold vacuum of interstellar space after being ejected from the exploding bridge by a withering barrage of blaster fire from strafing TIE fighters.
I totally said to myself that if she doesn’t fly back to sick bay like a goddamn angel, I want my money back, because anybody would totally survive that shit.
I agree, this message was pretty obvious. You fanbois got your reboot as promised, and this is your notice that there’s a new sherriff in town. And it’s probably going to be a morally ambiguous Chinese old lady.
Because there are only 4 (now 5) of them? Becoming a Force Ghost is a rare thing. You don’t see Mace Windu in the Blue Man Group, do you?
If Leia had died earlier in the movie we wouldn’t have had her reunion with Luke, which was one of the high points of the film.
Yoda could call lightning for the same reason Luke could perform astral projection - because Ach-To was a place of power, where the Force was much stronger than anywhere else. Seemed obvious to me.
That works.
I thought that you were saying that they should have rewritten the script so that Leia was the one who rammed the ship instead of Purplehair.
ETA: Rereading your message, you very much were saying that. You are totally rewriting history to claim that you really meant that she should have died in that earlier scene. Fake news!
Two Star Wars action figures I want: the big red robot seen in passing in The Force Awakens and whatever the hell that thing was that Luke milked in The Last Jedi.
Now imagine them re-writing that scene to give an epic sendoff to C-3PO. 
No he did it after they were captured to save his own skin. The dialogue says as much.