Conner Arelson

This was an excellent movie.....but different in a lot of ways from most Star Wars movies. To me at least, this movie didn't feel like an epic struggle between good and evil. Oh there was a clear evil villain to be sure, but the tone of the movie felt like it was more about the interpersonal conflict between characters rather than about the characters on the "good team" banding together to beat the snot out of the characters on the "bad team." Some people, like me, really liked that. I thought it added a certain depth and intrigue to the story, but I imagine that a LOT of other people really hated it and wished they kept it as a visual representation of a cosmic struggle between good and evil. (Which is, I feel, how a lot of people think of star wars.) The director also seemed to put a lot of faith in the audience's ability to "fill in the blanks". For example (pseudo spoiler ahead:) you'll get a certain character's origin story, but when that origin is given it won't really make a whole lot of sense unless you saw something in a previous scene and can piece together it's connection to what the origin-giver is talking about. It's not a hard connection to make at all......but it is interesting that the responsibility is placed on the viewer to make that connection for themselves rather than having it directly spelled out. And that's...a lot of things in this movie I felt like. You weren't necessarily told a lot of things, but it was expected that you would pretty easily figure out those things anyway. And you do, it's really not all that hard it's just quite a bit less straight forward than maybe we're used to. I will say that the "villains layer", if you will, seems like it was created for the specific purpose of terrifying youngsters. So be forewarned to that end....if you're like five. I do think as well that the main plot for the majority of the movie was pretty standard and unsurprising. There was (again, psudeo-spoilers) a certain object that they were supposed to find. At no moment did I really think they were going to encounter an obstacle that was just TOO MUCH and they were going to just give up. You could generally tell where things were heading as far as the bare-bones basic plot was concerned, but that's the bare-bones basic plot not the many reveals and details filling it in.... and even then I felt that the third act had a definite sense of unpredictability. (At least for me.) I felt the way the plot was executed and the reveals contained in it were more than enough to make the otherwise standard plot intriguing and sort of complex feeling. In conclusion I felt it was a different kind of Star Wars movie, but well-executed, very layered and enjoyable.