I think I enjoyed TLJ, but everytime I think about it I have different feelings on it. Overall there were some things explained in way too much detail (to the point of bordom) and then others that they completely skip (leading to why are they doing that?) which forces the audience to fill in the gaps and then comes the arguing for die hard fans. If you can just set everything aside I think it works as a film in the SW universe and does wipe the slate clean to hopefully craft some compelling original stories within the SW sandbox.
It feels like they are trying to go in a more nuanced direction where its not all good or all bad. I just hope they can drop the whole there always is a bigger weapon theme and the FATE OF THE GALAXY riding on some rag tag bunch which is already well traveled territory.
Maybe smaller scaled stories that are more fleshed out giving both sides reasons for doing what they are doing. Maybe that's the plan with the side story movies coming out or being planned (R1, Han Solo, ObiWan, etc...). Maybe we can get some side story where the main character is the darkside jedi/sith/whatever and filling in some of there perspective on this dark-v-light struggle.
EDIT: And it just dawned on me. At the end they used their last ship to lightspeed into the First Order armada. Why didnt they do that with all of the previous ships that they evacuated? The first order would have either stayed on to take the risk of having their own ships destroyed or let them escape. Some actual odds and genuine tension right there.
I liked the film but can understand why some might hate it.
It's not his fault the new commander didn't bother to tell him what the real plan was. I mean, what was the point of not bothering to telling your most important fighter that they had a good plan to escape the First Order.? Instead they made him think they were just going to wander around aimlessly until they ran out of fuel, and when they finally reveal that they'll put everyone on the escape shuttles, never bother to tell him the First Order can't track them so everyone will be safe. Instead they just let him think they'll be easy pickings, which is the final straw to cause him to mutiny, which ends up causing the shuttles to actually be easy pickings and the First Order to know the survivors are on the planet.
Yeah Poe's planned backfired but the leaders of the Resistance were at fault for not even letting him no what the real plan was, especially when Leia finally reveals it too him he's actually impressed and OK with it. Meaning if they told him it in the first place he wouldn't have done the stupid things he ended up doing.
Poe already proved he was a hot headed flyby unwilling to listen to authority - something that decimated the rebel army in both manpower and firepower - and he wasn't even remorseful about it. Dude should have been thrown in the brig. No one owes him an explanation for anything.
He was influential enough to lead a mutiny. I think someone owed him an explanation. It's bad leadership when everyone under you can be easily turned against you.
Well they were trying to play up the fact that the tracking could have been from a spy so no one could trust anyone else. Imagine Holdo told everyone the plan then the spy could report it to the First order could just jump right there and wipe them out. Granted this was not stated explicitly that they were keeping it confidential for this reason but it could be inferred. This goes back to my point about things being either over explained or not explained enough which was my main grip with this movie.