So my sister wanted to go so I went and watched TLJ a second time.
I thought the plot was much more coherent the second time. I think the film suffers from trying to put too much into what is already a super long time slot, because many scenes feel like they're paced too quickly. And because it's paced so quickly, it's hard to know what lines of dialogue are, in a sense, the ones that reveal the meaning of what's going on with the characters. On the second watch there were many lines which I realize now what they were trying to say, but since I was processing so much the first time I missed it.
Still not sure if I liked it. I think there's lots of stuff that has to be resolved in Episode IX, and just honestly I can't know whether I'll like it until IX comes out.
Still felt Rey is "too adept" at the force, and still feel the movie turns ESB on it's head in order to do something new, though I think it's not as contradictory as I first thought. In TLJ, after burning the books, Yoda says something like "being young and reckless is good, failure is the best teacher". I think I get now what that line means: basically, Yoda is saying that actually, Luke going to Cloud City and ****ing everything up was actually good, because it taught Luke the right things to become a master Jedi later on, so the fact that Rey is reckless and does dumb things is A-Okay, since by the natural laws of movie writing she'll come out fine. Like, I literally think that was what the message of the movie was: the main character being reckless will be great because that's how plot arcs work.
Except, I don't think that's the point of ESB at all. I really just think Luke's failure was a failure, and was not a lighthearted "lol whoops but learn from your mistakes" kind of event.
But more on that: I can't seem to peg down how the force works in Disney's Star Wars. What Rey says seems to basically be true: it allows people to move rocks and ****, lol. Because nothing any of the other characters say about it makes sense, and some of it seems contradictory to me. Other than choosing whether you're part of the Rebellion or Empire, i.e. whether you think genocide is okay and want to hang with space Nazis, TLJ doesn't have much coherent writing about what the dark side of the force is and how it matters for characters.
Like, Kylo Ren does dickish stuff. Why? We also see him do good stuff. But with Snoke dead, why does he do the dickish stuff? He never talks about the dark side of the force. He never talks about his ambitions, or what motivates him. He takes command of the space Nazis so he must be bad, but why does he do that? What's drawing him to that? I can't find a plausible motivation. In fact, I think the movie is much more compelling and interesting in all of the scenes up til just after Rey and Kylo fight side by side, since there's compelling plot, it feels like you're building to something. You understand why Kylo and Rey are doing what they do. But then after Snoke dies, they just go separate ways, and I don't get anymore why they're doing what they do. I guess Kylo wants to fulfill his spot as the next Vader? Except now he's surpassed Vader, so shouldn't he have to figure out who he is now?
****, I don't get it. Maybe there's something there, but I've slogged through the movie twice now and if I don't get something like, "why are the characters doing these things", I don't think it's my fault for not getting it.
