This is quite a hard movie to describe - it's certainly the strangest SW movie so far - it avoids the excessive adherence to previous episodes that caused problems in TFA, but it also goes a bit too far in the other direction at times, and leaps right into dubious/semi-deranged fan-fiction territory.
It's entertaining, pretty well-acted and the dialogue is good for an SW movie - but it's also definitely not a movie that George Lucas would have made - at any point in his career.
I saw it last night, and I agree! Lucas made those movies for kids, in the style of a Saturday movie serial that you could see in theaters up until the 1950's when he was a little kid. Now, we've got the fans making it who were kids when the originals came out, but now they are making them for the adult fans. More polished stories and more adult kind of themes. I read a review from
vox.com that seemed more like a dissertation on the subtext of some of the reveals we get on Rey. A little
to cerebral for Star Wars IMHO.
Like TFA and Rogue One, it's slick and well produced, but it's also lacking some of the roughness and quirkiness of the first 6 episodes, which could be seen as both a good and a bad thing.
Maybe I'm too nit picky, but it didn't seem like there were soft wipes like in all the other movies. Did I miss them? It was all fast cuts. I am planning on going back to see it again to get more details on it. Anyone else notice? I could also be a little too nerdy on this, I admit. To me, that roughness was what made the movies honestly. If I can't get newer movies with that kind of style in it, I think I am going to be disappointed. OK, now I know I am over top on this point.
It's also quite decisively moving SW into a new place, not just story wise, but also in style and feel, and it'll be interesting to see how they develop it in IX - and it'll also be interesting to see how the box office performs - it's naturally going to open to a vast amount, but without the special build-up to the start of a new trilogy that TFA had, along with the somewhat noticeable difference between TLJ and previous episodes, the number of repeat viewings could be down a bit.
It's a double edged lightsaber with Disney buying Lucasfilm. We're going to get all kids of Star Wars stuff, but my concern it'll be over done and come to pa point that they'll just crank it out to make more and more money. Well, yeah, that is Disney's MO, as compared to Lucas who was very deliberate on what he did. I think that was a better formula as he was/is very detailed and had a hand in all aspects of it. Which means we got a more moderate amount of story as compared to a new movie every year that we're getting now. (OK, yeah, lightsabers don't have sides, but you get my analogy, right?
) But I saw TFA a few times, and I've come to the opinion that JJ just wasn't the right fit for the style of a movies that Sar Wars is. A modern director for a story that has always been told in an older style, it just didn't work for me. Whenever you watch an interview that Lucas does, and they ask him about style or format or some other technical aspect of film making, he references the classic way of story telling. And that is kind of how he's done that is just about all his movies. It's even kind of bled over to Spielberg when he did Indiana Jones. Classic serial story movie style. OK, I'm old... I get it now...
MTFBWY...