So we saw the new Star Wars movie last night

Oh Gawd.

Can I say that here?

I think that, perhaps, I would like to see the 'men only' version, in the hope that it feels a little less like a re-hash of The Empire Strikes Back, right down to the love-triangle between 3 key characters and battles on a white landscape to save a base inside a mountain. And in the hope that it wouldn't just display men as trigger-happy fools who need a good slapping around by the women, who are really the only ones fit to be in charge. And yes, I recognise this is a theme from the original too, but there it was done with style and humour.

It's curious, thinking back to the film, there was SO MUCH that wasn't like TESB that the feeling I had seen all this before should not have even remotely been able to rear it's head.

It's also nice to see actors with British accents who aren't the bad guys.

We took a tub of sweets in with us, and they remained un-touched for the entire film. There was a huge amount of action, and that was good, but sometimes I was left squirming in my seat by the stupid things I saw, and a couple of times found myself actually shouting "Really. REALLY?" at the screen. There were also some scenes where the cinematography wasn't good, though as a non-movie photographer it's hard to say exactly why.

And then there were all the questions about dumb stuff we wanted answers for after leaving the cinema, (although at least this time the continuity was vastly better than the previous offering) like:

Who carried Rose out of the base?

If Snoke was in Ben Solo's head and such a great master of the force, why didn't he feel the lightsabre being moved?

Why hasn't anyone developed the FTL drive into a ballistic weapon that penetrates shields and destroys huge ships?


There's a bunch of other stuff. Sometimes actors seemed really wooden. The story and protrayal sometimes seemed almost childish. Are they trying to be Star Wars the Next Generation? (answer is yes)


There were some excellent bits too.

The stolen ship from the gambling town looked fascinating. Scenes with Rhey and Ben in contact were very well captured indeed. They did a magnificent job building tension on Snoke's ship to the point where it is destroyed (what a pity the film didn't finish there). The scene with Luke projecting himself to face Ben was also excellent, and was a very gentle and happy way to remove him from the franchise.

We caught the last showing in this area, but it may be on elsewhere still: you've not seen it, so should you go?

If you're young, feel that women are under-represented at the highest levels and that men are trigger-happy jerks then yes, go see it, especially if you didn't much like the originals - this film was made for you. If you saw the originals first time round in the cinema and recognise a bit of a send-up in a fun movie then no, don't go.

Personally I think the much maligned episodes I, II and III display a lot more creativity and thought while remaining true-ish to the originals, even though we knew the ending beforehand. And I really wanted to like this film.

*edit*
I somewhat regret posting this, because it made me think about the film more, and this morning there's a much larger stack of stuff that annoyed me in retrospect.