Although they begged me to attend the Star Wars premiere today (I think they wanted glamour on the red carpet) I'll go tomorrow and will give you my review then.

Skywalker***

Oh God it's awful! I'm so glad I didn't go to the premiere. In fact I left after an hour of cliches, old lines, too fast cutting, no plot, no characterisation, far too much CGT resembling old 80s video games. A truly awful film. One line is "I've never seen anything like this". I wish we could say the same.

Do you play video games?

I used to love Tetris! But not since then; I loved Tron in 1982 - far more original and clever than this load of old tosh. I thought Tron was a bit of a break through then; it deserves to be re-evaluated (got mixed reviews then).

JK2006 wrote:
Oh God it's awful! I'm so glad I didn't go to the premiere. In fact I left after an hour of cliches, old lines, too fast cutting, no plot, no characterisation, far too much CGT resembling old 80s video games. A truly awful film. One line is "I've never seen anything like this". I wish we could say the same.

Went to see it yesterday and I see what you mean about the cutting, especially in the first few minutes of pre-exposition. My head was spinning, but the editing seemed to calm down once the film got going.

Well-established and intriguing newer characters alike were wasted. Seemed like a rush to kill off as many as possible. Terrible script with some lines that even Olivier couldn't deliver without sounding like a dick. Is this really the best that Hollywood screenwriters can come up with these days? I thought it might have been fun to switch Kylo to the light side as the last Skywalker, while Rey becomes Sith Empress. It felt like it was considered, but Disney played it safe instead of doing the audacious plot twist sequel set-up.

On the plus side, I though SFX post production looked really nice, and John Williams did his usual excellent job with his (final) score.

I think the main problem with the Disney films is that they tried to fit in the old Star Wars favourites AND a new generation of characters too. The original cast represented clearly defined archetypes. Duplicating them with a new generation of romantic lead, trusty sidekick, comic relief, mysterious mentor etc interferes with how they carry the narrative.

Worth a tenner on a rainy Sunday, though.

JK2006 wrote:
I used to love Tetris! But not since then; I loved Tron in 1982 - far more original and clever than this load of old tosh. I thought Tron was a bit of a break through then; it deserves to be re-evaluated (got mixed reviews then).

So there's no Atari 2600 or NES in your loft then?