So the first 15 minutes amounts to stealing a star destroyer that supplies the resistance with more ships. It's clearly a setup for the final battle. Sounds like a fun sequence but it might be more economical and impactful when in TRoS the galaxy (inspired by Luke and shown the way by Lando) comes to the aid of the diminished resistance all on their own, rather than the resistance capturing more ships for their navy. But as far as action scenes go, I'm sure this one would have been better than that chase scene on not-tattooine that nobody cared about, so I'll give it that.
After that it's basically the same scene as Kylo's TRoS opener. He goes to mustafar to find a triangular mcguffin that tells him to go to
Exegol Remnicor to find
Palpatine 3.0 Snoke 2.0 Tor Vallum. He finds Vallum and threatens him but ultimately serves him. Same exact shit. Plus, making Sidious second fiddle to another guy the whole time who just sat back doing jack shit for decades?
Weak.
Is another unexplained Sheev stand-in really any better than Sheev himself? If you're not going Sheev after Snoke, then fully commit to
Emperor Kylo instead. In fact, that would be better. Don't gimme another Sheev knockoff to boss Ben around.
Apparently Sheev left a "
lol if i get killed vader's to-do list" plan even though selfish overconfidence was his
entire thing and his only backup plan in prior canon was "burn it all the fuck down you aint gettin shit without me."
Kylo Ren learns the force power of vampiric life sucking from
Palpatine Tor Vallum. I guess that's pretty neat. In TRoS that was reserved for the big bad. Coulda been fun to see Rey healing while Ren was out there doing the opposite at the same time.
Chancellor Hux on Coruscant sounds pretty good though. You know that weaselly little bastard would ham it up deliciously. And it would have been nice to see a brief glimpse of the First Order's actual reign over the galaxy. This is way better than him just getting shot and replaced as in TRoS. Would have loved that.
Luke is "haunting" Ben but that doesn't make sense because light side apparitions can't appear to people closed off to the light. This is how Ben could be fooled for so many years thinking he was communing with Vader's helmet without Anakin showing up to set him straight. If Luke can just show up whenever, that opens a huge plothole regarding why Anakin couldn't get off his fat fucking ghost ass. Yoda couldn't even chat with Luke in TLJ until he opened himself back up.
Rey and Ben's link manifests as
bad dreams now. Major nerf. Toning it down? TRoS ramped it the fuck up instead and that was way better.
Kylo smashes Vader's helmet because he's decided he's finally over it. I mean why not have more scenes of Kylo smashing helmets I guess.
Leia isn't up to much but it is what it is. She dies in a First Order attack instead of anything to do with her son. Her TRoS death was weird but is this really better? It's very mundane.
Finn meets some more turncoat stormtroopers like him and rallies them...that sounds familiar.
It's reiterated pretty clearly that Rey doesn't have a fantastical lineage and is something totally "new," so answering the call is up to her. That's clearly more in line with TLJ than what we got with TRoS. So there's that.
Then the group splits up. Which is the
opposite of what everyone has been hoping for this entire trilogy. Finn&Rose yet again go on their own sidemission separate from everyone else to find a macguffin, which was clearly everyone's favorite part of TLJ. Rey/Poe/Chewy are on their own macguffin quest to find
the wayfinder to Exegol the map to Mortis.
Instead of the mind boggling clue-knife, instead they visit some telepath alien who looks into Rey's mind to decide where the plot should head next. Is that...better? That seems like just as much of a total asspull to me. Maybe not as convoluted.
Kylo Ren meanwhile is hardly involved in this story if you haven't noticed. It's literally a plot point with the First Order that he's been absent. First he goes off to kiss
Snoke's Palpatine's Tor Vallum's ass and starts having cave visions. He gets to fight with Vader like Luke's vision in ESB. Which sounds pretty badass.
In this movie he finally decides to be a big boy and forget Vader... like he already did in TLJ. Like he also did earlier in this movie when he smashed the vader mask. I guess we're just doing that a second time. Or is this the third time? He also decides to pull a Snoke on Tor Vallum's ass so we're just repeating TLJ altogether now. His face also gets some new metal bits after a run in with evil lightning. This is almost the only character development he gets before he dies.
Knights of Ren? Well they have one cool fight scene as a group I guess. One of them gets to practically replace Kylo Ren in this movie for some reason since he's sitting most of it out.
Lando is contacted by the resistance to go rally some troops for them. That sounds familiar. Except in this script he refuses at first, I guess because this version is an asshole instead of a rebellion general.
Rey and Kylo are feeding off each other's force energy, binded together by it. Sounds a lot like the force dyad.
Broomboy makes his return to...exist! I'm sure everyone was pumped for the return of Temiri fuckin Blagg!
Poe doesn't feel like doing Leia's job and decides his previous arc was not his style, so he passes off those duties to Connix.
Chewy has to fly an Xwing because the Falcon was fucked earlier in the movie after the script's equivalent of the lightspeed skipping scene. It's not just on fire, it's out of commission for the rest of the entire movie.
Han Solo shows up to appeal to Ben, but in this it's yet another failed attempt like last time. Luke also fails to have any impact.
Sad trombone.
The ghosts of jedi past show up to aid Rey in her battle.
By now I'm sure it's very clear why Colin got a writing credit on TRoS.
Kylo Ren gets defeated and dies. That's the end of his participation in this movie. That was all of it. He gets whipped by another Snoke, smashes another mask, cuts another Snoke up, gets in a fight and dies. Fuck off Ben.
Meanwhile the rest of the resistance is taking on the First Order forces on Coruscant. Sounds like a pretty straightforward spaceship fight for the most part, and the First Order loses.
They try to escape but Rose fucked up their navigation systems so I guess that's a positive that she got to do something.
By the way Luke's death didn't inspire shit in this version, because toward the end of this movie it's a transmission from Rey that earns them new pilots. Nobody was going to do shit before that. Not even Lando, who explicitly refused. Dude left the resistance high and dry until Rey's message. Fuck Luke I guess.
The end?
