Mild spoilers

As a person with a lawful good D&D alignment I am expected to tell the truth and keep my word, so I will try to keep this review as unbiased as possible. That joke aside, I tried to keep an open mind while watching the film to try remove any anchoring bias. Other things I did to be as unbiased as possible, was going in without watching the trailer and the reviews as they often give you an anchoring bias of what to expect. Reading some audience reviews afterwards it is clear that some people had biases. Most of the negative reviews I’ve read hardly even reviewed the movie, you can read them yourself and you will probably see what I mean, most of the review is composed of how Disney ruined the franchise or how they changed up everything for the last movie, then the rest become a nitpick of miniscule details, which in my opinion get overwritten by every positive part of the movie. Even though they might have good points about why Disney isn’t fair, that is irrelevant to the movie itself. Not every negative review is irrelevant, however I have yet to see a single negative review that actually points out flaws that cancel out the positives of the movie. Which I find sad in my opinion because Disney really is trying to appeal to their fans after receiving backlash from The Last Jedi (2017) and they are getting backlash for fixing their mistake.

For those who haven’t watched The Force Awakens (2015) or The Last Jedi (2017), the first two movies in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, fear not because if this movie is a standalone movie in the trilogy. While some may assume since it is a standalone movie it didn’t need to have been in the trilogy in the first place, which is the same thing that has been said about The Last Jedi (2017). However, I feel as if that truly is the intention of the movies in the trilogy. Some may say that it is a blatant cash grab meant to lure nostalgic fans who want to see what good old Palpatine was up to all these years, I would agree. I agree it is a cash grab, the film however tries to lure more newer audiences in by being a standalone film. If all trilogies were to be deeply interconnected to each other that you must watch it in its sequential order to understand anything. It would be really frustrating for people who know nothing about Star Wars to watch the movie, as they probably wouldn’t know it was a trilogy that worked like that in the first place, and therefore it would be really hard for them to understand what is going on. Adding Palpatine also was a great idea, because many fans were left speculating why a random scavenger girl would have force potential in the first movie, The Force Awakens (2015). Adding him in answers a lot of the questions that fans have, such as who Rey’s parents were, why she has force powers, and what her relation to Kylo Ren was. On a side note, the Kylo Rey shippers were right all along, but contrary to what some believe as unnecessary fanfare, the ship actually makes a lot of sense now. Before the movie I was indifferent to the ship, however as the movie progresses I was literally jumping from my seat anticipating the kissing scene, luckily I had friends to stop me from imploding into myself from excitement. A few things that didn’t make sense was what Finn wanted to tell Rey, as it literally was only mentioned as a running joke throughout the movie. However this can be ignored as a flaw because in the context that Finn said it, he thought he was about to die, it is also probably something personal because he wouldn’t tell it to Poe when they were about to get executed. The first few minutes of the film had no dialogue at all and followed Kylo Ren. Some people may say that this lead to bad pacing as they explain later on what the opening scene was about, however it is better to show than tell. What actually lead to bad pacing was them adding convoluted plot points for no reason, such as the time wasted on the dagger encryption when they could have just flown off immediately, as it risked all of their lives. Also it doesn’t make sense why Chewie would take the dagger in the first place when they could have kept it in the ship, but the plot needed a way for Kylo and Rey to talk things out. Personally think that they could have written it differently to save time and to make more sense. Other than that, I came into the theaters with no hype, just to come out ecstatic at everything my eyes witnessed.