Nick Macarius

My biggest criticism is that given what they were aiming for is that they should have made this into two films (I would not have minded an Episode X to get this right). The plot of the film is so conveluted you cannot make sense of anything that is going on nor can you enjoy any moment of the story as you are literally "lightspeed skipping" from one scene to the next. Very questionable calls made by the screenwriters who bring out plot devices that are completely blindsided. It seems the the screenwriters were so afraid to be bold in their creativity that the instead decided to appeal to fan service and dive down the nostalgia well. Not sure why it was necessary to repair things from past movies (Skywalker lightsaber and Kylo Ren's mask) instead of moving onwards to embracing something new. I would not have been surprised if the screenwriters had pieced Alderaab back together, since apparently "everything can simply be undone." If I had to guess, the screenwriters looked at the comments of Reddit and wrote the story around that in order to appeal to the toxic fandom. There are good concepts in the film, but they didn't take advantage of what works. The film does feel like Star Wars and the visual effects are fantastic, but they sacrificed character development and payoffs just for the sake of exposition.