a review of 星球大战9：天行者崛起

Non-spoiler first watch review: Fresh out of the theater, I feel like a jumble of warring fan impulses that average out to "a bit better than I expected, but not quite as good as I really wanted." Overall, the pacing feels rushed even for an Abrams project, with the plot mostly serving as a MacGuffin transfer mechanism, with the characters running headlong after long, bewildering strings of clues that all spell out "DRINK MORE PALPATINE." There's a lot of good stuff sprinkled hither and yon, but we don't really get to spend time with most of them before it's off to the next intergalactic port of call. A lot of people have commented that it seems like Abrams and co. were dead-set on dismantling most of the best bits of The Last Jedi (which it must be said is a masterpiece and my third favorite of the entire saga), but I don't necessarily agree; Abrams managed to "Yes, And..." enough of Rian Johnson's concepts to feel like it's at least responding to the previous film, but at the same time this movie isn't quite smart enough to really grapple and reckon with those ideas in a meaningful way. I don't want to sound like I'm entirely down on this movie, and I think I'm going to need to see this one in a theater at least one more time and talk it over with friends and family before I'll really have a bead on how I feel. But my initial impression is a lot more mixed than I expected, even though I did have a certain amount of fun with it and encourage fans to seek it out.