MightyPDK

The movie's pretty fantastic. So gory and disgusting. Just what the doctor ordered. There are some cheesy practical effects (*cough* deer) and sub-par CG in places, but it doesn't really hurt the movie. The characters are pretty good. The only one who really overdoes it is the actor who played the mayor (though I'm pretty sure he did it on purpose and with the full support of the director). Everyone else is reasonably believable. What would have probably failed as a plain old zombie movie, succeeds as an alien parasite movie. Well done, sirs and madams. If you don't like horror or gore, then seek your entertainment elsewhere. Movie magic.

I enjoyed myself. The movie was competent, by today's standards, if a little tone-deaf and riddled with plot holes (albeit mostly forgivable ones). The creators appear not to have understood why the Empire was menacing in the original trilogy. It was a subtle, bureaucratic evil, teetering on the edge of total control. There's nothing subtle about the First Order. They're just evil and stupid because it's convenient for the plot. You get no sense that they are in charge, as the Empire was. They just go murder stuff until their short-term goal-of-the-day is achieved, then fly back to base and watch some more **** propaganda films. The film makes little effort to humanize anyone on the bad guys' team. The best we get is "I'm not going to listen to you anymore, because I don't want to die." I guess the dehumanization is convenient, since it would be uncomfortable for the audience to have to think about how a bunch of brainwashed children and young adults get massacred. The faceless, impenetrable, inexplicable evil of the antagonists greatly weakens the movie. I thought the new cast members were great, and I look forward to seeing them in the next ones. Their inexperience shows, but most actors need time to develop. Good things should be in store here. The script could have used a few extra days of brainstorming and focus groups before they started writing. The central McGuffin, the map, makes no sense whatsoever. You can't make a map to a person. People move. Everybody and his dog has access to a spaceship in the Star Wars universe. It's essentially a super-high-budget fan film. Good, but not great. Maybe cutting George out of the planning stage wasn't such a splendid idea after all... He seemed to have a pretty good sense of what feels Star Wars-y. You just need to keep him out of the director's chair and far, far away from the script's dialogue. Then make sure everyone on the planning team knows they are allowed, nay, encouraged, to disagree with him when he's excited about a bad idea. Bam! George Lucas gold. Let's bring him back for at least one or two of the follow-ups. I bet he could elevate their game.

It's beautiful, with great costumes and sets. The musical score was good. It's always nice to have a break from pop, and a specially-composed soundtrack is indicative of a work of love. Interesting camera work, too, though pacing suffers in a few spots due to overly ambitious shots (patience being a lost knack, and all). This maybe could have been fiddled with a little more in editing, but nothing worth complaining about. Top points on aesthetics. The storytelling is a bit of a mess, however. Taken individually, a few of the subplots might have made interesting short films, but shoehorning them all together like this didn't really work for me. Many of the characters are royalty, and I constantly felt myself asking, "Doesn't he/she have someone else who would be better suited for this task?" I am pretty sure that there are servants/soldiers/anybody else who would be more effective and more appropriately dressed for some of this stuff. That can likely be attributed to the source material, and maybe a little to the fantastic costumes. Ladies, I don't know how you ever got around in those outfits. I think you just earned a physical education credit from wherever you went to school. Call the dean and check. Tell her an anonymous stranger from the Internet sent you. We go way back. Performances occasionally felt quite wooden. At times, it was like watching a marionette show rather than actual people. Impressive when you can plunge the audience into the uncanny valley with real, live actors. That wasn't constant, though. Characters do bizarre, uncomfortable and impossible things, so it's not as though we're thoroughly committed to reality in the first place. If you enjoy films for the sake of art, or have an interest in folk legends, go for it. If you're looking for a fantastic popcorn adventure, you should maybe look elsewhere. The role of "protagonist" is spread a bit too thin across so many (effectively) unrelated characters. I didn't really get to know any of them in detail and so didn't get emotionally invested. Throw some money at the people who made this film. Artistic vision means too little these days, and this movie had it by the bushel. Remaking older movies is lazy, and usually unnecessary. The artists here took something they knew and loved from their own cultural experience, and shared it with us. My number score is not fully reflective of how I feel about this movie. If we're being honest with ourselves, this number stuff is all nonsense, anyhow. The score isn't indicative of quality until years after the marketing efforts end, and even then, each "critic" has his/her/its own scoring philosophy. "10" ratings and "0" ratings can be fully disregarded. Those are only worth reading if they are less than a full line long, and only because you read them by accident, anyway, as you scrolled past. "0" means there was no movie. Some dude just loaded a blank VHS tape in a VCR, hit play in a room full of confused art house movie patrons, and walked off to go have a smoke and a bit of a laugh. (They pretentiously discussed his "art" with him at the wine and cheese thing after.) "10" means that it was perfect. The universe held still in its course at the moment of the cut on the final take, an in-drawn breath, before drifting regretfully back into unstoppable inertia, forever thereafter. If that movie exists, I haven't seen it yet. Maybe it was Pluto Nash... I guess I'll never know. (It was Pluto Nash, wasn't it?) My 5 means that the combination of flaws dragged on enjoyment, but didn't stop things dead. I don't regret having spent the time. About half of the movies that I have seen are better, and about half are worse. Fair? (Just kidding. I don't care whether you think so, and you absolutely shouldn't care that I don't care. Go spam a few more 9 and 10 scores from your alt accounts, and it'll be like I never even voted *wink*.) I would see more. The Internet cries out for more! What shall this crew bring for us next?

Worse than its two predecessors in almost every way. The music is the same, so it didn't really lose anything there. The villain has no personality or motivation. Deus Ex Machina as far as the eye can see. I bet the producers' arms are sore from high-fiving each other after hearing how happy the Chinese government censors were after seeing this movie. Skip it, if you still can. Go watch 1 or 2 again instead. It's a little hyperbolic to say they're infinitely better, but only a little.