Topic: The Movie Thread

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@LN78
Well. Chiefly the issue is that it just isn't a very good film. It isn't well written. It isn't well directed and the only real saving grace is that it's really difficult to make a film with that sort of budget and backing look bad.

Within the film itself (meaning devoid of the external context and myriad reasons to dislike Rian Johnson and his take on Star Wars) we're given a film made by someone who really just seems to not like Star Wars all that much, or at least doesn't like you for liking Star Wars. We are presented with an immediate follow up to the events of The Force Awakens, a film with plenty of its own issues, but generally it was entertaining to watch, which is an important point, since TLJ really isn't entertaining.
The first hiccup and a sure sign of things to come is the very first scene, Poe facing off in his lone X-Wing against the enormous dreadnought of the First Order. The dialogue here is atrocious. Absolutely diabolical. It wasn't even until my second watch that I noticed that Poe was actually trying to make a joke at the Expense of Hux's name! Anyway, during this rather tepid interaction, the shot is framed in a way that simply doesn't convey the power play at all; Poe's X-Wing is seen from behind and fills the frame for the most part - missing completely the supposed David and Goliath nature of the scene. There isn't a full frame dreadnought shot showing the size difference between the ships until much later, at which point expository dialogue has already robbed the scene of any impact. It is bad filmmaking, and that sort of thing continues throughout.
Then there's the bombing run - and I really don't care if the bombs are 'magnetic' somehow - this is one of the dumbest bits of space combat ever committed to film. Many years before these events, the Rebellion made use of the Y-Wing, a heavily armed, versatile fighter-bomber that could hold its own against Imperial Tie Fighters. I'm Ok with the idea that perhaps the Resistance (we're still not entirely sure why it exists) didn't have access to Y-Wings. Fine. Instead though, to use ships that are only able to function in what can only be described as kamikaze tactics due to their need to matain proximity to their target and utterly unable to fly at any pace (a recurring issue) is madness. We don't really need Star Wars to display the tech-savvy depictions of Star Trek, but when it makes so very little sense that you spend a lot of the film just thinking, "why" - it's definitely failing. Then of course, there's the tight formation they go along in, and also try to maintain despite it having all of the tactical nouse of a melted m&m!

From here, the film doesn't recover. Not once. Huge chunks of the plotting, characterisations and movivations just don't make sense.
Central characters are either sidelined and recharacterised to serve a weak plot (Poe) or regressed completely to a worse version of themselves from the previous film (Finn). I think the Finn one hurts the most. He's on a redemptive path from the first scene in TFA. He scoundrels his way to the resistance and come good in the end to the point where he faces down a sith lord on his own! But, nope - we have to be subverted, Finn has to be a coward 'saved' by Rose (both from running away, and from saving everyone!), a paint by numbers character we're almost instructed to like by her sibling's death on the kamikaze run.

We learn precious little about Rey, but at least we do get to watch yet more subversion as our childhood hero and eternal optimist Luke Skywalker is old prick now! Yay! Not only that, he's also a total failure as a jedi, also yay! And the jedi texts are so meaningless that ghost Yoda sets them on fire! Yay! 🙄

Even I've had enough of thinking about TLJ now, never mind you having to read this.

Anyway. Snoke is nobody special apparently, the worst lightsaber fight in the whole of Star Wars happens, Rey apparently excapes the First Order dreadnought and links up with Chewy 🤔
Urgh...
Look at that, I think I'm done and I even managed to not mention Canto B... Damn!

Or the dumbest part of the whole film, the very slow space chase. Which not only make no sense in Star Wars terms, was completely avoidable 🙄

Anyway, outside of the film we have Rian Johnson. As arrogant as he is belligerent. Giving him free reign to the amount that he enjoyed on TLJ was a mistake. It was a mistake to try and sell Star Wars as if you're forwarding any particular agenda, but having Johnson do it such sneering terms and let him make a film practically screems 'I'm smarter than you so you should like this, if you don't - you probably just don't understand it'.

Again, it's a film made by someone who either just doesn't really like Star Wars, or would just prefer it to be something else.

I fully expect, that in the end putting TFA and TROS together, you could miss out TLJ altogether. It did almost nothing to further the new story.