Eden (Star)

Full disclosure, my company took us all to the movie for free and I did not pay for a ticket. That being said, I have never described any movie in my life as "choppy" before, it's a surreal experience. It seems like half of the scenes were cut out of the movie and what we got left with is a mostly coherent, but wholly terrible series of action scenes one after the other with constant nostalgic cameos and throwbacks that beg the viewer to like the movie while completely missing what made the original trilogy great to begin with. The fact that the main character (played by the incredibly untalented Daisy Ridley) cannot evoke even a simulacrum of emotion at any point in her own story arc makes her completely unrelatable, this is not a problem with this movie but with the entire new trilogy. Sadly, even the good actors in the movie are directed terribly and become out of place and completely empty. The visual effects and computer-generated scenes are beautiful, but that is a result of the amount of money put into them, rather than the director's vision. The practical effects however are so horrible looking they look worse than some used in A New Hope, and that's saying something. If any of you hear "spoilers" for this movie, keep in mind that most of them are in the opening crawl. Literally. I'm not even joking. The opening crawl was so ridiculous it made people laugh out loud. The first 20 minutes of the movie feel like we're watching someone skip cutscenes in a video game. A lot of it was obviously cut out. In true JJ fashion, more questions are asked than answered and the ones that are answered, are not answered in a way that makes sense, but rather with a throwaway line or a visual gag. I feel really bad for Carrie Fisher, the way they used her footage was jarring and depressing she had practically no lines and some scenes literally had her say one word and then just stare at the air (not at the person she's talking to, of course) like a zombie, which is ironic because that's exactly what Disney did to her, raise her from the grave to be in this horrible flick. I don't recommend anyone watch this movie, even the people who liked the new trilogy didn't enjoy it, even the children didn't enjoy it, as a big fan of the franchise, I definitely didn't enjoy it and couldn't wait for it to just end. There is no substance to this film, it tries to evoke sympathy from the viewer with the dirtiest tricks in the book, mainly nostalgia. I wasn't disappointed with this movie, I was disgusted. My sympathies go out to the main cast of this who must really hate Disney right now and can't say a word. Please don't give them money for this, don't teach them they can get away with so little effort and that throwing money at something doesn't make it good.