Yeah, TLJ is totally the best-made movie of the three, but after letting it settle for a few years, I think that kind of failing to move the plot forward (especially for Rey and Finn) was a miss for the trilogy.

This was such a great interview. Very excited to see what Headland brings to the franchise/high republic era.

It’s “yikes” because it’s a lot of mostly white people here having a knee-jerk reaction where they need to tell John Boyega that what he perceives as his experience with race and this franchise is actually wrong.

He’s taking a sizable career risk and talking publicly about issues of race in Star Wars that haven’t been aired before and people — a lot of whom probably aren’t black — are “well actually”-ing what he’s trying to telling us was his lived experience. It’s not great.

+1. I know TLJ online discourse is still broken but it’s... pretty bad to see those starred comments above telling Boyega why he’s just wrong about TLJ not being a good Finn movie. Yikes.

I believe he said in an interview in the last year or two that a lot of the heavy lifting he did on the script was for the first hour or so, because that part was in dire shape.

News cycles make more sense once you realize they’re determined by what conservatives are fake mad about.

Freed might be the best writer doing Star Wars stuff right now give or take a Claudia Gray... very much looking forward to this.

I’m more positive than most about the new stuff... but what the hell is going on at Lucasfilm?

Have to agree — it was fun talking about these movies for a couple of years after the new ones started, but people have lost their minds.

This sounds horrible — we find out Ben killed Rey’s parents and then he dies?

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+1 — it’s fairly obvious that this one was supposed to be about Leia turning her son, and it’s weird to see so much speculation about how much this director hated that director, rather than the actual factor that might have been a large reason this movie is all over the place!

It seemed common to talk about how TLJ felt like an ending two years ago, and I do think a lot of its power came from moving like a finale.

Agree with all of this, except for the fact that the kiss was good. Search your feelings...

Gonna just +1 this whole comment. The plot is a mess but the script does well by Rey and Kylo, who are what made me invested in the franchise again after the bleakness of the prequel era.

This review seems totally fair and I’m sure I’ll agree with it but it falls into the weird trap I’m seeing of assigning EVERY choice to be a reaction to Johnson’s entry.

This might end up being my takeaway from the beginning of the Disney era.

Similar thoughts here... I mostly like the movie and only have some tonal issues in that it’s kind of miserable and the memorable moments mostly involve people dying.

Generally liked the movie, but it’s telling that the same people praising it as a bold, new take on the franchise are disappointed when anyone offers a whiff of criticism and dismiss most of it as bad-faith trolling.