The parts that worked, for me, worked extremely well. But there are certainly some ugh moments. Like for so many others here, the Carrie Poppins bit. That was so poorly executed I don't know how it made through to the final edit. There are several others but like that one they tend to be moments. Some broader sorts of issues would be some of the characters, like BDT's. I didn't like his personalty quirks at all. Finn and Phasma continued on their trajectory of being oversold and underdelivered.
For the parts that worked I could write a long detailed summary but it would read an awful lot like the one
@Qhue made a few pages back. I was struck in a lot of the same ways and had a lot of similar takeaways. It stirred up a few quotes in my mind as I was watching it.
"The line separating good and evil runs through every human heart" (though in the language of Star Wars it would read "light and dark"). We saw that struck out in broad relief in a few of the characters, but especially Luke. I get that Luke fans will likely come away from this thinking it an assassination of his character but that is something I have always seen in him, just never so finely realized as here. That darkness isn't limited to just anger, hatred and fear. It also includes despair. That ended up being the part of the internal darkness that Luke fell into. Despair is what sent his father down the path that he eventually walked as well (though he did pick up anger and hatred along the way). But it didn't send Luke to anything like those same places. In that I didn't see the Luke they presented as a failure of the character. Enough of the younger Luke was still there to ultimately pull him back. (And man that scene where R2 played the old Leia message put a big fuckin' lump in my throat and got me a little misty).
Admittedly it's easy to stir LOTR to my mind: "This is the hour of the Shire folk when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great." Rey Random. I've never been invested in Rey being descended from this or that person and the question of who she is was never that alluring to me. The amount of effort and attention that some poured into the question was always more fascinating to me than the question itself. So her being a "nobody" (if indeed she is, I don't think that was definitively answered) is perfectly acceptable to me. In fact it's preferable to a convoluted contrivance to make her the daughter or granddaughter of some notable.
I'm sure I'll have more as I chew on it for a while. And likely some additional bits I don't particularly like the flavor of.
