Jacob Tomlinson
Spoilers ahead, you have been warned!
I thoroughly enjoyed the new Star Wars. Like I assume many people did I went to the cinema with concerns that the film would not live up to expectations. However roughly around the moment where Rylo Ken trapped the blaster shot in mid air those worries went away.
Now that I can safely go back on the internet without fear of spoilers I wanted to write down a few thoughts that have been buzzing around in my head.
Rey’s powers
Rey seemed to have a lot of knowledge about the exact use of the powers that awoke in her. I have to assume that the myths about the Jedi she heard as a child included things like “mind control by giving commands in a monotone voice”, “telekenesis by holding out your hand” and “thought reading by trying to burst the vein in your forehead”.
However it would have been nice if they were presented in the film. There was a scene where Han tells her that the myths about the Jedi were true, he could’ve dropped in a joke about “even the silly mind control” which would’ve given some explaination to her using it on Daniel Craig.
Kylo Ren
I was unsure of Kylo Ren. I initially liked him and thought he made a good sith lord, however as the story unfolds and you discover he is fairly young he starts to feel a little over powered for his age.
I also found the unmasking disappointing, it felt a bit rushed and he seemed a little too normal. However I do see that it was needed for him to have an emotional confrontation with his father.
C-3PO’s red arm
I appreciate that this is a teaser for the next film but the way it was presented felt a little odd. It is there to make you think “What happened to his arm?” but at the same time I quickly forgot about it.
StarKiller base
I was a little surprised that the New Order had managed to build something so much bigger and more powerful than the Death Star. Now that the Empire has fallen it feels like the New Republic and the Resistance should be the dominant force in the galaxy and the New Order are now the bunch of rebels trying to overthrow. Yet they have managed to build something so huge and powerful without the Resistance even noticing.
Supreme Leader Snoke
I’m a big fan of Andy Serkis and his motion capture roles, however I felt that Supreme Leader Snoke seemed a little too CGI. The film as a whole was excellent in that it used lots of puppets, real sets and CGI in all the right places. However having an oversized ominous bad guy who was completely computer generated made it feel more like a Marvel film than Star Wars.
It was less of an issue due to the character only being represented by a hologram but I could imagine it getting worse in the next films when I assume he will interact with real characters.
R2-D2’s awakening
My final moment of confusion came when R2-D2 inexplicably woke up form his low power coma at the end of the film. Star Wars has always been a good mix of technology and magic but doesn’t mix the two. In this case R2 powered down when Luke left and then woke up when the battle was won, conveniently with the missing part of the map.
It is conceivable that he was remotely accessing an old Empire network (as the New Order did to get the map themselves) but it wasn’t really explained.
No Luke and Han
The biggest spoiler of all shows that Luke and Han will never be reunited. While I like the fact that the new trilogy will be more about the new characters than the old, and therefore it made sense to remove Han, I’m sad that we wont see the old gang back together.