Dune (2021) Review

Dune: Part One is a failure, but an honest one I think.

TL:DR review - Visually interesting with some good performance, this movie wastes the audience’s time and only dedicated fans of the book or previous movies will be able to follow what is happening and why.

The first real challenge in reviewing this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is to decide if I compare it to the novel or if I compare it to the previous movie and mini-series adaptations.  I may reference the novel here and there but I think we can get a more useful review if I compare this film version verses the 1984 David Lynch adaptation. A novel is not a movie, books and movies have different needs, and a mini-series like the 2000 has more time (nearly 5 hours) to tell its story (*1).  So the best comparison I think is to go head to head: 2021 vs 1984.

A quick word on my background with Dune, since it might be relevant. I have read the full series...once. And I’ve read Dune and Children of Dune repeatedly. I think Dune might be one of the best science fiction (though it’s almost more fantasy) novels ever written. In addition, I went very, very carefully through Dune on two occasions: one, in college for a research paper for one of my English classes, the second time with an eye towards writing a paper and pen role playing game for myself and my friends to play..as there never really has been a good Dune role playing game.  I have literally gone line by line through Dune looking for information as well as for the sheer pleasure of it, though admittedly, that was a few years ago.  I’m also a big fan of the 1984 version, I find it endlessly quotable and it was a frequent group watch for me and my circle of friends (hence me drafting a role playing game for it). I’ve also seen the 2000 mini series and found it to be very good for what it is (lower budgeted for one and awkwardly acted for another) that actually manages to handle the book plot better than the 1984 version. Heck, at least they tried to put Count Fenring and his wife into the story.

Denis Villeneuve clearly cares about visuals and it seems like he is familiar with the novel, he just cares more about the visuals and about Paul’s story than about the story as a whole. The majority of the runtime is focused on Paul Atredies (played here with angsty teenager energy by Timothee Chalamet), other characters are given much less time and development, to the point where Pieter De Vries isn’t even named on screen, let alone given motivation and character. 

Other names and words you won’t hear are: Mentat, Master of Assassins, Imperial Conditioning, you have a traitor among you, Feyd(...yes, that’s right...Denis didn’t introduce or reference Feyd Rautha, the Baron Harkonen’s heir, let alone Count Fenring), folding space, travel without moving, Princess Irulan, witch, dinner party, twisted mentat, Muad'dib (*2), Jihad.

This movie has been slashed to the bone narratively and it still feels bloated and boring because the director spent their time filming landscapes instead of people. Character motivations, like the betrayal by Doctor Yueh, are either announced just before their death or sometimes not mentioned at all. The director has made a creative choice on what he wants to focus on. I think it means he failed as a storyteller but did so as a result of conscious choice as opposed to incompetence or malicious intent.

Let’s go over the plot, then we can discuss what worked, what didn’t work, a comparison verses the 1984 David Lynch version and then final thoughts or how I would have fixed the failures.

Plot:
The year is 10,191. Humanity has spread to the stars and is ruled by an Imperium balanced by an association of rival Great Houses that rule various planets as feifs. These planetary grants can be given or taken away by the Emperor. The most important planet in the universe is Arrakis, also known as Dune, which is the sole source of the Spice. Spice is required for space travel, it has mind altering effects and also brings long life to its users.

Two rival houses, House Harkonen and House Atreides, are trading control over Arrakis. The Harkonen, cruel and debauched, have become very wealthy by it’s control over spice production. The Atreides are popular with the other houses for their honesty and nobility. The Emperor is jealous and fearful of this popularity and has decided to aid the Harkonen in destroying the Atreides by laying a trap for them in giving them Arrakis.

The Atreides are aware of the trap but think they might be able to survive it or even reverse it and reveal the truth of the Emperor’s treachery. Duke Leto Atreides is wise, moral and brave, he’s aided by competent subordiances include Thufir Hawat, Duncan Idaho, Gurney Hallack and the treacherous Doctor Yueh.

At the same time, Duke Atreides’ son, Paul, is growing to be a man and attracts the attention of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. Paul is the result of a very long breeding experiment, though he was not supposed to be born to the Duke, a daughter was commanded of the Duke’s concubine, Jessica. Her disobedience has resulted in a potentially powerful psychic of sorts.

On Arrakis, Paul’s family and house is destroyed and he is forced to flee into the desert to take shelter among the natives, called the Fremen, who have long held a prophesy that a man would come from the ‘outer world’ to lead them to paradise. Paul is fitting into those prophecies, in part due to his unpredictable ability to dream of the future accurately. 

And that’s as far as this movie goes, stopping with Paul arriving among the Fremen, fighting to keep him and his mother there, and leaving with them.

What worked

I think even the worst enemy of the movie would concede that the movie looks great, visually. The desert landscapes, interior sets, costumes and props all look great.  It gives a great illusion of being sci-fi.

I particularly love watching the Ornithopters...though with their dragonfly design perhaps they should be called Odonata-thopters, the glow spheres and miscellaneous tech trinkets.

Some of the cast does very well, I couldn’t ask for a better Duke Leto Atreides than Oscar Isaac. Josh Brolin has the one memorable line of the whole movie as Gurney Hallack. Jason Momoa plays Duncan Idaho as a bit of a dude bro but he has genuine charisma and is the only actor Timmy Chalmet shows any spark or life around. Stellan Skarsgard plays Baron Harkonen as a more subdued plotter and schemer. Javier Bardem plays a perfect Stilgar.

The Fremen feel true to life and the book.  The Sardaukar depiction might be the best yet.

I liked the sign language used by the Atreides. 

The final fight verses Jamis is fairly well done, though it has some more awkward cuts and the framing of the fight as usual doesn’t show the actor’s full bodies.

There is, overall, a great deal of craft and skill in this. Dune is a movie and it plays well on a big screen. There are some scenes taken from the book that are adapted well: Duncan Idaho’s departure and his mission, Lady Jessica’s discussion with the Shadout Mapes, the date trees, the spice mining, discussing how Duncan and Gurney have trained the Atredies army to be a very serious skill level, the sandworms themselves look less like giant penises.
However, despite being a real movie, it isn’t a successful movie and not a better movie than David Lynch’s version. This next section might go long, fair warning.

What didn’t work
First and most worrisome, I’m honestly not sure any audience member who isn’t very familiar with Dune (in novel or movie form) will be able to follow what’s happening and why. We are not shown very much and sometimes only a single line of dialog will cover what should be critical plot points. It’s like Denis has forgotten all about setup and payoff or he’s just cut so much of the film out in favor of dream sequences and stupid teenage longing ala the Last Jedi. I’m almost tempted just to do a bullet point list, so let’s try that out!

• We never see the Emperor
• We never see any of the Spacing Guild
• We never get told what a Mentat is
• We gloss over Spice being used for life extension by all the nobility
• We never even get Piter named, let alone his role in the plot
• We never see Harkonen terrorist attacks and sabotage
• The Shadout Mapes never warns of a traitor among the Atreides
• We see no tension around Lady Jessica and her role
• No mention of computers being banned
• No mention of atomics being banned
• No mentions of technology in general
• We get no information about the Bene Gesserit, their role and goals
• We get no insight into how the attempt on Paul’s life derails Leto’s ability to focus and plan
• We have few scenes seeing Leto and his staff interacting and showing their mutual loyalty and devotion
• Nothing discussed or shown about the local nobility and social activities, of course including the excellent dinner party scene (also left out of the 1984 version, to be fair)
• Paul’s unusual skill and perception is not shown much or commented upon
• The Imperial Conditioning for Suk doctors, and why it's important is never mentioned
• We never see the Guild’s flexing its political muscles
• We have no mention of Feyd at all, let alone the Baron’s plan for using Rabban as the stick and Feyd as the ‘savior’ of the people of Dune
• We actually see very little of the Harkonen plots and schemes or desires even
• Paul’s piloting ability is never mentioned or shown...until he's suddenly able to pilot through a Coriolis storm with 600km/hr winds
• No mention of the dangers of lasers and shields interacting
• Lady Jessica’s Bene Gesserit talents and her overall competence are shown only once or twice, most of the time she’s crying or shaking or just standing around with a dumb look on her face

That’s a good list of what was left out, verses the David Lynch version, let alone the book but let’s talk about what was in the movie but still didn’t work and let’s start with Chani.

Zendaya has been the latest actress forced on us in an attempt to make us like her. It’s not working, at least for me. She was terrible in Spiderman and she’s not great here. She does look like a teenaged girl, that’s fine, but she also talks like one. Specifically, she talks like a California teenager of modern times.  And despite having, maybe 4 lines of dialog in the movie, which again she does a pretty lousy job delivering, Chani is all over this film. She appears in more slow motion dream sequences than ten 80’s music videos. She might appear in more dreams that Freddy Kruger does.

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica is another miss. This might be bad writing and direction though, as she spends important scenes being weepy and shaking instead of showing the iron control of a Bene Gesserit. Her attempts to say the Litany Against Fear is almost impossible to understand because she persists in weeping and shaking, but that might be the performance she was asked for. Either way, it’s a mistake. Likewise, she doesn’t feel like a mother to Paul, they have no signs of affection for each other and she does not come off as either a courtesan, or, again, a Bene Gesserit. At best, she’s more like a big sister to Paul and a little sister to Duke Leto.

The fight scenes mostly don’t work. The shields are arguably worse than the 1984 CGI blocky shields, the blue and red color coding is nice but they still make it hard to see the fighting. The camera swings around and we can’t see strikes and defends for most of the fights, the shields making everything blurry. This might be to avoid an R rating, which is another mistake I feel if another honest one, or it might be because the actors aren’t up for good fight choreography physically. And when you do have one...they have Dave Bautista in this movie as Beast Rabban and they have no fight scenes with him. Where is the thinking there?

The Testing of Paul by the Reverend Mother is also flawed. Not only are we missing the sadistic dialog in the 1984 version, Paul comes off as defiant and ‘sassy’ in his confrontation during the Gob Jabbar test.  The 1984 edition has Paul showing resistance and suffering while still enduring pain. The 1984 edition has better acting and interaction between the two in their duel, and after it.  Not a large scene, I admit, but it really didn’t work for me.

Too many dream sequences.  I hope someone out there is actually going to tote up the actual minutes of screen time wasted on images of Chani wandering around and smiling at Paul. Because that is wasted time that could have been spent on the plot or character development. Seriously, what character development is even PAUL having with these dreams? None.  And they eat up so much time and they’re almost all the same, every time. 

The dream sequences also don’t work as dreams. They are not shot in a way to make you think they are dreams or visions, apart from being in slow motion. But so many other scenes are also in slow motion elsewhere in the film that slow-mo alone isn’t a good tip off. Some of the ‘visions’ are shot flatly, like normal scenes that are just being shown out of sequence.  Somehow this visually-oriented director couldn’t think of a good way of making a dream sequence look like a dream.

We also have no sense of space here, for a sci-fi movie where space travel and the Spacing Guild are the critical reason for Spice, and Dune’s importance, we have very little in the way of space travel. We have no scenes in space or of the travel process. We have space ships that basically act like weird airplanes or flying boats almost. Odd omission.

I’m starting to get into nit picks so I’ll take a step back and talk a bit more generally. The biggest flaw of the movie is not giving us characters to care about or remember. There just isn’t enough time on screen, it’s all been spent on watching Zendaya walk around in dreams or on pictures of landscapes.

But I do want to call out one more thing before I go on to actually compare Dune 2021 to Dune 1984, and that’s Timmy’s performance as Paul. It isn’t a bad performance, he’s not terrible, he’s not incompetent, he’s not a bad casting choice. However, he’s hard to like.  This version of Paul comes off as a snotty rich kid who has a book full of the correct answers.  Pride is to be expected, all versions of Paul start out with him being proud to one extent or another. But Timmy is arrogant, he comes off as cold and disinterested in everything. The only sparks we see on screen are his scenes with Jason Momoa, he shows more affection for Duncan than for his Father or his Mother. He mocks Gurney by calling him ‘Old Man’ repeatedly. It’s fine for playing a teenager, I suppose, but it’s not great for getting an audience invested in the character.  It’s another failure and, again, I think it’s an honest one. The director and actor chose this performance, it just doesn’t work well.

Battle of the Dunes

David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune is a long story, one that David Lynch himself dislikes. He’s free to be disgruntled and free to be wrong.  The 1984 adaptation diverges from the book in one key area, the much-maligned ‘Weirding Modules’ (*3) and it omits Count Fenring and wife, but is nonetheless more faithful to the novel than Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation.  I do realize that the 2021 adaptation is just half the story, so I’ll just limit my critique and comparison to the first half of Lynch’s Dune. Let’s start with the visuals and special effects.

The 2021 movie visually looks very nice. The CGI is largely seamless and hard to pick out from ‘reality’. Architecturally, it’s bland with Gedi Prime missing the bizarre and baroque building and ship designs, likewise the Shield Wall is less interesting than the mountain wall of the 1984 edition. The body shields are a partial improvement, showing more of the actor’s body and the red vs blue light indicating a shield penetration.  However, the CGI of the 1984 edition doesn’t look that bad in comparison. The shields are blocky polygons that do block vision but that seems to fit and be appropriate somehow. The 1984 special effects include puppets and physical props, even with the more crude animation and visuals, it may not look ‘real’ but it doesn’t break my immersion or interfere with my enjoyment.  Most may find the SFX here an upgrade over the original, I agree to a point but don’t find the differences to be a deficit to my enjoyment of the 1984 version.
     The other visuals of landscapes, ships, costumes and props, I’m likewise going to call it a tie. The visuals in 2021 are ‘cleaner’ and better lit, however. Props and costumes are a little better in the 1984 edition.  They didn't manage to improve on the blue on blue eyes, strangely enough. I guess 1984 tech was fine.

Casting and performances:

• Paul Atredies - Timmy was 25ish when filming but looks younger, Kyle MacLachlan was 24ish but looked like an adult man. The performances are markedly different. Timmy is arrogant and aloof, cold and chilly.  Kyle is proud but also curious and is allowed to show insight, he’s also better at showing emotion. No question in my mind that Kyle makes a better Paul.
• Duke Leto Atreides - Jurgen Prochnow was wonderful, warm and wise. So was Oscar Isaacs. Both are amazingly good performances, Jurgen was more fortunate in his writing and dialog, though his accent does interfere in some scenes. Not enough to make a real difference for me. Tie in all the best ways.
• Lady Jessica - Rebecca Ferguson fails to act either aristocratic, as a courtesan or as a Bene Gesserit. Francesca Annis is alluring, calm and displays more emotion. Neither is prefect, frankly, but in comparison, Francesca is the better Royal Lady.
• Chani - Sean Young verses Zendaya...lol. Easy win for Sean Young.  Sean is a little too mature for the part but there's no question that she's a better actress.
• Gurney Hallack - Patrick Stewart is droll, bombastic and dangerous.  Josh Brolin is tough, grizzled, and competent.  Patrick gives a better performance overall but Josh does nothing wrong.
• Duncan Idaho - Jason Momoa is charismatic as all get out. He plays Duncan as the older brother you always wished you had. In fight scenes, he’s believable, as an actor...he’s still playing a DudeBro but it fits his character fine, good casting. Richard Jordan is honestly a better actor but his casting isn’t a perfect fit and he lacks the physicality Duncan needs. Jason is the immortal hero of the saga.
• Thufir Hawat - Freddie Jones is the definition of a yeoman performer and it shows in his acting. His way with words and presence personifies the old warhorse who is maybe missing a step but has a mind like a steel trap.  Stephen Henderson is let down by the script in his version of Dune, having little to say, little to do. He is more avuncular than a master of assassins. Neither man is physically imposing, but neither is an embarrassing. Freddie Jones’s line deliver wins it for me.
• Doctor Liet Kynes - Race and gender swapped for the 2021 movie to make her the mother of Zendaya, Sharon Duncan-Brewster is ok. Just ok. She comes off as slight and in critical moments is merely passive as opposed to commanding. Putting her in comparison to the might Max Von Sydow is unfair. But that’s what Denis did. We’re comparing movie to movie so I won’t go too far into how this is bad casting verses the book depiction though. Sharon is also not helped by changes in the dialog. In the end, Max does a better job as a grizzled ecologist in the service of the Emperor who also commands the respect of the Fremen.
• Stilgar - Everett McGill did a great job in the 1984 edition. Likewise I have nothing but praise for Jarvier Bardem, who avoids overacting this time on screen. Solid tie, no one was let down in either version.
• Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam - Charlotte Rampling is capable of more, once again the writing let her down. Her scenes are dialog are lesser compared to the 1984 edition. Sian Phillips however is uniquely creepy, imposing and powerful. I have to give the win to Sian, even with the understanding that her role was better developed by David Lynch.
• Shadout Mapes - Linda Hunt is great casting. Her unusual physicality gives her a creepy vibe perfect for the strange environment of Arrakis. She’s also given more dialog, but only slightly. Golda Rosheuvel actually might give a better performance but isn’t given enough more to work with to really compare, thanks Denis. I will give their performances a tie, each good in their own way.
• Doctor Wellington Yueh - Chen Chang is physically appropriate and his performance in early scenes are ok but he fails in his final performance verses the Baron in comparison. He is also brutally let down by his reduced role and screen time compared to Dean Stockwell.  However, Dean not only gets more time and development, his performance is simply better. With few words, he shows his feelings for his wife early on, and his breakdown in tears after betraying his Duke for the sake of his wife...or for the sake of vengeance...is heart-rending. Dean Stockwell for the easy win.
• The Beast Rabban - Paul Smith plays Rabban like a stupid, cruel thug. Which is perfect. Dave Bautista is given little to do except deliver exposition and shout a little.  A shame, Bautista can do more, he’s proven it in Spectre and The Guardians of the Galaxy series. Paul is simply given more to do in his screen time and wins nearly by default.
• Jamis - A small role that only exists to try and fail to kill Paul, for once Denis gives MORE time to a character instead of less. Babs Olusanmokun does more with his scenes than Judd Omen was given in 1984. Babs wins, at least this time.
• Piter De Vries - Fucking Dennis didn’t even NAME Baron Harkonen’s twisted mentat in his version, what a waste.  Brad Dourif gives one of his best performances ever as Piter. David Dastmalchian was never given a chance. Shame on you, Denis.
• Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV - Jose Ferrer is wonderful, aristocratic, harried but in control...even when he’s not.  Fucking Denis strikes again, mentioning the Emperor constantly but never once giving him a second of screen time, instead giving us yet another Zendaya walking dream sequence. Shame on you again, Denis.
• Feyd Rautha - Once again, Denis the Penis cuts one hell of a major character. Sting’s performance is really good, space diaper aside, even if he’s given little in 1984 to do apart from be pretty and have a great knife fight in the end. Fuck you, Denis.
• After that, we’re pretty much down to more characters Denis didn’t give names or dialog to. I will add that the 1984 edition did have un-named roles as well, of course, but there were several given useful or important dialog to further the scene or plot. Most memorably was the Third Stage Guild navigator and his main microphone lackey.

Inner dialog and narration:

Dennis chose to not use the inner dialog used controversially in 1984. Even among my friends, opinions are mixed about the usefulness of it. I did not find the inner dialog distracting and enjoyed getting inner thoughts of characters who otherwise would not be conveying information (like between Jessica and the Reverend Mother).  But I can see how it could get old after a while and it does lend itself to ‘telling’ rather than showing.

However, you DO need to show if you aren’t going to tell. Dennis fails to do that. Frequently we see actions and reactions that we as the audience cannot interpret. This is again a place where it requires knowledge of either the book or the previous movie adaptations to understand what characters are thinking or worried about.

Both films use narration, especially in the opening.  In fact the 1984 edition had two narrators, William Phipps giving an awkward performance and mis-pronouncing several words, while Virginia Madsen gives a glowing performance as Princess Irulan...who otherwise barely appears in the film.  The difference is in tone and purpose.  Madsen’s narration gives us worldbuilding and setting in an ‘information dump’, getting important background information out of the way and up front. It also sets a tone of wonder, prophesy and very high stakes.
     Zendaya’s narration is...frankly whiny. Complaining about oppression and wondering who her next oppressor will be. The information given is minimal, leaving future dialog to do information dumps for better or for worse.  A Freman woman should not be complaining about oppressors. The 1984 movie had a saying that God made Arrakis to train the faithful, meaning it is a hard place that produces hard people. The Zendaya version sounds like someone in their freshman year in college majoring in Grievance Studies.  My personal dislike aside, the narration in the 2021 edition doesn’t DO anything...except give more screen time to Zendaya...which is probably its real purpose, sadly.

Soundtrack:
Hans Zimmer has done some very impressive scores, like in Gladiator. But he’s also become something of a joke for his ‘French Horn Farting’ in his movie work.  Sadly again, the French Horns are still blaring and farting away jarringly, but there are quiter moments and work that reminds you that Hans is a professional composer….when he cares to e.

The 1984 edition had a soundtrack by Toto with some additions by Brian Eno. Without exaggeration, I can say it’s one of my favorite soundtracks and one worth listening to on its own.  It’s simply better. I acknowledge that I am biased but there is more care and craft and epic scope and sweep in the 1984 soundtrack.

Final thoughts or how to fix it:

Although I think it’s inferior to BOTH versions of Dune that came before, I don’t hate this movie. It’s worth seeing in theaters, maybe not worth watching on a smaller home screen. I can’t imagine it would hold anyone’s attention on a phone or laptop. It’s an honest attempt to adapt the book but it focuses too much on Zendaya and her character who have little to nothing to do with the event of this first half of the story.

That drift in focus hurts everyone else. Every minute of screen time you give one of her endless dream sequence appearance is a minute you don’t have with Baron Harkonnen, or the absent Emperor, or the other Fremen, or Duke Leto and his men or Lady Jessica or any of a dozen other characters that existed and were better developed and used by David Lynch.

This was a wasted opportunity. I suspect it will be forgotten sooner rather than later. I hope it does well enough to get a sequel made, so we can see if Dennis can end this cut down version of a great story.

To me, this is like someone doing an adaptation of Lord of the Rings but most of the screen time is spent with Arwen dream sequences, and the cast has been cut down to Sam, Frodo, Aragorn and Galadriel.

How would I fix it? Made different choices. Stop trying to make Zendaya a thing. She’s not going to be a fan favorite of anyone. Give your supporting characters meaningful things to do, there’s no shortages there in the source material. Bring the Emperor back on stage. Pick up the pace, quit trying to turn this into Lawrence of Arabia (even though Dune was basically an attempt to cash in on that and on the life of T. E. Lawrence).  

The movie simply fails in its goals to do more than be pretty.

*1 - Ironically, I think if director Denis Villeneuve had been forced to make 3 80 minute movies, he’d have done a better job with plot and characters
*2 - This, bafflingly, despite the fact that the little desert mouse is featured repeatedly in in the movie as are both moons...in fact the larger moon IS named, but no one thinks to mention the little mouse shadow on the second moon??? Baffling.
*3 - I really don’t mind the weirding modules. It is a nice shorthand way of showing why the Emperor might be afraid of and jealous of Duke Leto: new technology. It also results in very memorable visuals and dialog. I’ll take memorable and cool technology over slavish devotion, especially if the alternative is...bland filmmaking.

​

TL;DR. Bad Times at the El Royale could alternatively be titled: Drew Goddard can't write well.  This is not a bad movie. A bad movie can be fun. This is not a good movie. A good movie makes you want to see it again. This is lukewarm, a 'C', passing grade, well-executed in ways, with good moments and performances. But it isn't constructed well and won't stand the test of time.


I went into this movie really rooting for it. My final thoughts before the movie started was a prayer or wish: please be good.  This was the first movie I'd seen trailers for that made me want to see it. By the way, whoever edited the first trailer for this movie did an awesome job. If only the movie that was teased in that trailer had show up here.  There are good things here. I want to specifically call out the work of Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, who knocked it out of the park. Jeff Bridges did yeoman work, giving his character more depth than was on the page. Chris Hemsworth has a shot at career outside of Thor and John Hamm is very solid in what he was given to work with.

What they were given to work with...sigh. That's the problem.

First a quick plot summary:
Four strangers meet at a cool 60's throwback hotel...sometime in the early 70's. (problem #1)  The hotel is wired for eavesdropping and there are two way mirrors for filming the guests, all set up by the mysterious 'Management' (problem #2).  One of the four is a singer, one is a priest, one is a salesman, one is a mouthy hippie chick.  Most of them are not what they seem: the priest is actually an ex-con looking for money hidden by his brother here, the salesman is an FBI agent here to retrieve Bureau listening devices, the hippie chick has kidnapped her younger sister and the singer is a holy and blameless paragon of all that is good and righteous (problem #3).  Add in a drug-addicted supposed ex-military desk clerk desperate to confess to a priest and then add a cult leader and his followers, come to retrieve the kidnapped girl and shake, but not well.

The specifics of the plot barely matter but here goes: the FBI agent discovers more surveillance stuff in his room than what he was set here to retrieve. This leads him to investigate, and he discovers the secret passages that show the two-way mirrors. It also shows the kidnapped girl tied up. He reports his findings to the FBI who, for plot reasons, tell him to disable all the cars and not to interfere with the kidnapping. He does the former, but doesn't do the latter. Breaking in and trying, incompetently, to rescue the kidnapped girl. The hippie chick kills him with a shotgun and the shot spray wounds the desk clerk who was behind the two way glass.  The fake priest and the singer talk some, he has memory problems, and the room he picked did not have the money hidden in it. It is instead in the singer's room.  He tries to drug the singer so he can search her room but she hits him in the head with a bottle (problem #4) and tries to run away. But can't, so she and the fake priest agree to split the money.  They get the money but before they can get away, the cult leader shows up, ties everybody up, there is speechifying, and death and the movie ends with the priest and the singer getting away to Reno.

The movie jumps around in time and space (problem #5) and the plot is not told in linear fashion. If it had, it might have been a tight 90 minutes and not a bloated 2 hours, 20 minutes (problem #6). There is a lot of potential here, a lot of teasing ideas. But this is Drew Goddard's whole career in a nutshell: good ideas poorly executed.  The guy just does not understand setup and payoff. He's half the creative staff of Cabin in the Woods, which has one of the worst endings I've ever seen in a movie. But I think what made Cabin in the Woods work was, and I hate to say this as a Joss Whedon hater, was Joss Whedon. For all my dislike of him as a person, Whedon at least understands character and setup and payoff. Drew Goddard does not.

But let's look at what worked, what didn't and how this movie COULD have been great.

What worked:

1. The support staff. Drew Goddard has writing, directing and a producing credit here.  And the production side worked well. Art direction by Michael Diner and Lisa Van Velden is wonderful, sets and costumes are great and professionally done. I want to call out Seamus McGarvey's camera work again because he almost saves this movie. Rob Fournier as the Armorer, along with James Dever and  the stunt crew, nailed the little gunplay there at the end. Take a bow, one and all, you were pros.

2. Key performances.  Jeff Bridges deserves special praise. The script didn't always support him, particularly at the end, but he gives his character humanity and depth. Jon Hamm was solid, he needs to get more lead work. Chris Hemsworth can act in addition to just being hot, good news for him.  Cynthia Erivo did very well for a first movie role. Cailee Spaeny as 'Boots' is believable as a child sexualized way too young and devoted wholeheartedly to Chris Hemsworth's Billy Lee. The rest of the cast are pretty much ok, though they aren't given much to work with, script-wise. Dakota Johnson is...pretty. Maybe she could have been better than that but she just isn't given a chance to be a good actress here. Or maybe she isn't one.

3. The tease.  This is what we can give Drew Goddard credit for. Him and whoever cut that first trailer.  There are promising ideas here: Who is recording the guests? Why? What does the cult leader want? (problem #7) Who is on the film? Who was the money stolen from and is anyone else looking for it? Why is the FBI interested in this hotel? You've got the hooks to tell many interesting stories here. Sadly, most of them are unexplored or answered badly. (problem #8)

4. The music. If you like soul music, this is your movie. And if Cynthia Erivo is actually singing in this movie, she's a good singer. (not good enough to be magic, though. Problem #9)  I like Deep Purple quite a bit so 'Hush' showing up with it's guitar work was quite a contrast to the harmony and vocals of the rest of the soundtrack. It's all very much like a Quentin Tarantino movie.  But here's the problem there: Drew Goddard wants to be Quentin Tarantino in this movie. But he doesn't have the chops and doesn't understand what QT does well: scenes and character and doesn't understand what QT doesn't do well, namely tying scenes together to tell a complete story.  So let's talk about what didn't work and we'll start with the problems one by one.

What didn't work:
Problem #1: This isn't grounded in a specific time. This is a problem because the movie jumps around in time a lot and because it's unwilling to put a specific day and year on it, the audience is confused and adrift. The El Royale used to be a big spot back in the 60's. So we apparently AREN'T still in the 60's, but everyone dresses like they are. J.Edgar Hoover is alive, Nixon is President, Vietnam is still going on but Watergate isn't in the news, so it has to be 1969-1972. There's some live TV with Nixon talking about how cease-fires doesn't work vs insurgencies (which is accurate, by the way), so if someone is really up on their game, maybe they can pinpoint the date from there. But the audience shouldn't have to work this hard. And, yes, the date matters. You can't just set stories in 'the past', if you want the audience to buy into it. Without that grounding, you are stacking the deck against yourself.

Problem #2: The Management is handled badly.  Here we have a mysterious 'management' that has all the rooms wired for eavesdropping (11 pieces of equipment alone in one visually-memorable early scene), it has two way mirrors, secret passageways. Who are they? What do they want? Why was the hotel set up this way? What are the consequences of discovery of the Management's actions?  NONE of this is answered or paid off. What we get is a handwave of 'What is this, a pervert hotel? Yeah, pretty much.'  That's it. Nothing deeper. Just some P.O. Box where the desk clerk mails film. How does Management know who to film?  No idea. It's a cool idea that Drew Goddard fucked up. (See Lost, which Goddard worked on)

Problem #3: Darlene Sweet has no dark secret and thus doesn't make sense.  I'm putting aside the actress and her performance, which was fine, and I just want to talk about the character. Everyone else in here, from the kidnapped girl to the priest to the desk clerk is not what they appear. All except Darlene. She is just what she appears to be: a singer down on her luck.    She also clocks the fake priest with a wine bottle, before she could reasonably know or before she's shown to be suspicious of him. She steals the FBI agent's gun. She doesn't try to call the cops from the pay phone. She does demand half the stolen money.  She, in short, does not act like a normal woman. It seems like she, too, might have a secret dark side. But no. She is the holy and blameless paragon, bordering on the 'Magical Negro' trope. But that's not all, she's also the mouthpiece for Drew Goddard, who decides to have his #MeToo moment in a speech that brings the movie to a screeching halt. She gets to lecture all the men in the world and then gets to use some weird reverse psychology on the desk clerk to get him to shoot the bad guys. And in the end, she gets her money, gets her job in Reno and everything is happy even though she's not wearing her fake hair anymore. (By the way, she looked better with the wig on and with the long dress.) This is another missed opportunity to either treat her as a true innocent or to give her the same dark motivation everyone else seems to have. This leads into the next problem.

Problem #4: Darlene somehow figures out the priest isn't on the up and up and clocks him with a wine bottle.  First and least, having seen people hit with beer bottles, which are smaller, a full bottle of wine doesn't shatter hitting someone in the head. It makes a dent. A big dent. It can cause concussions easily and death. It doesn't make pretty, tiny head scratches. This is just Hollywood bullshit though and can be ignored I suppose. More relevant is there there is no way she would have suspected the priest character. He hasn't given himself away. If anything, he's been kind, generous and open with her...more than anyone else in the movie and maybe her life. There is another handwave line by her that 'you've been used enough, you learn to recognize a user'. But that's just bad writing and directing. If that's true, then you should set that up. Setup and pay off, remember?  You need to give her something to make her suspect him. Some slip up. Some reason to suspect that he is not just dishonest, but actually means her harm. Because she doesn't just avoid him, she fucking clocks him with a bottle and goes running out into the rainy night without taking her coat or even her shoes. NOTHING we've seen or she's seen would justify any of that.  
Problem #5: The movie jumps around in space and time.  One thing that's common for me in first drafts is that I'll write a lot of exposition, a lot of backstory. On second drafts, I'll cut almost all of that out and instead I'll weave that into the plot or reveal it through actions, or as a last resort, character dialog.  Drew didn't do that cutting. As you can tell from the 2:20 run time. So we get the 'back story' of each character, jumping back in time for each character, sometimes repeatedly.  When are we when we jump? No idea. the Priest's robbery takes place 'ten years ago' but that's the best we get. Each jump causes the audience to 'reset'. Suddenly the audience needs to figure out again, where we are, when we are, who's here, what's happening, etc. Tarantino did this a lot in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. But he did it well and it always tied right back into the moment we left the main thread of the story. Drew doesn't do it smoothly and we instead are jarred time and again. And often, we don't need it. We don't need to see Darlene's backstory of being sexually harassed, it's enough for us to know she's a down-on-her-luck singer. We don't need to see the cult leader meeting and seducing the kidnapped 'Boots', we don't need to see half-abuse, half-murder implied scene with the sisters, we don't need to see the priest in jail getting his diagnosis.  Pull all of those out and the movie still works. The problem is that the author is too close to his own words and loves them too much. I get it. But Drew clearly needs a collaborator that tells him what to cut and what to keep. He didn't get enough of that here. And that ties into the next problem directly.

Problem #6: The run time of this movie is two hours, twenty minutes. Unnecessarily complex, that's this movie in a nutshell.  This could have been a tight, interesting 90 film. You can add a few minutes here or there as needed but there is no reason this movie should be this long. The flashbacks and the need to 'tell' rather than 'reveal' is part of the problem. But the unneeded complexity is the other part.  For example, as a metaphor for the movie: the FBI Agent is masquerading as a vacuum salesman. Inside his huge, bloat, oversized sample box is...a fake vacuum. And under the fake vacuum is a secret panel. And in the secret panel is a briefcase. And in the briefcase is...lock picking tools. Just...normal snips and probes and tension bars that fit inside a normal leather pouch. You could just hide these tools in your luggage. Or why bother hiding it? Who's going to search his stuff? He might be undercover but he's not going undercover anywhere that Russian agents are after him. It's needlessly complicated. And the revelation is underwhelming. Much like the revelation of the spying windows, the movie camera, it happens either too early or too late, depending on the kind of story you're trying to tell.  Know when to cut. Know when to trust your actors. Know what needs to be in your dialog and stage direction. Less is almost always more.  Next time, Drew: start with a 60 minute cut, then see what you absolutely need to get to 90 minutes. This is a suspense movie, keep it tight, keep the audience in suspense. Flashbacks kill suspense, by the way.

Problem #7: The ultimate antagonist is confused in his motivation and his purpose in the plot. This is a problem with almost all the characters: they aren't real people. They don't act like real people, they don't want real people things. They are two dimension cutouts that mouth dialog, that's it. Billy Lee, played as well as could be by Chris Hemsworth, seems to be a cult leader who believes...well we don't know what his cult is based on, except that maybe it's based on the desire of everyone to fuck him. Which it might be. There are weirder cults out there. And his sexuality, not his threat of violence, seems to be what ties people to him.  But what does his cult believe and how does it tie into the plot?  We don't know. Chris makes a vague statement about how much he hates being forced to choose between two things, like right and wrong. And yet...he makes the tied up guests choose red or black in the end. It doesn't make sense for his theology, for lack of a better term, because his character and his worldview isn't developed. He's given too much screen time or not enough depth in what he is on camera for. Why is he asking for 'the truth' about who everyone is and where the money came from? Why does he care? His theology isn't about truth or hatred of lies or deception, though it easily could have been.  He demands answers because the author put those words in his mouth, not because they would come from them naturally.  
    In contrast, take the Usual Suspects, written by Chris McQuarrie and directed by gay pedophile Bryan Singer. This is my favorite movie of all time, so I'm biased, but everyone in that movie feels real. They way they talk, what they talk about, what they care about or who...it all feels natural. That's good writing. Even the bad guy in the Usual Suspects is clear enough in his motivations to be the antagonist for the main characters.
Your protagonists are only as good as their obstacles. The struggle to get a nickel out of sewer grate so you can buy some candy isn't much of a story. A bad guy who gets defeated by shoving him down, isn't much of an antagonist. A cult leader who gets cut off and verbally shut down by a tied up prisoner...isn't much of a threat.  I know it made Drew feel good to broadcast his Virtue Signal but it gutted his already thinly-motivated bad guy, Billy Lee.  And a bad guy who is emasculated isn't a threat and your victory over him means little. If Princess Leia had snapped her fingers at Dark Vader or slapped him and survived, then it makes Vader look weak and not terribly interesting as an opponent.

Problem #8: Unanswered story hooks and wasted opportunities. Some of this I'll touch back on in the 'how it could have been great' section below. And I already mentioned how The Management was mis-handled. But there's more than that here that isn't explored or answered satisfactorily. One is the film. A big deal is made over this film of someone having sex, but we're not told who it is. All we're told is that it's a guy and he's now dead in today's time...whenever that is. He's important and famous, easily recognizable. And the line is said by Billy Lee that 'sometimes the legend of the man lives on after he dies' or something like that. Who is it? The movie doesn't say. I suppose it should be left to our imagination but...it's not really an interesting revelation, is it? It could be. What if it's JFK? Well, everyone today knows that JFK would and did fuck everything that moved. So that's not much of a revelation, maybe not even much of one back then.  So who is it? Well, it's vague for no good reason and it's a missed opportunity. 
  Who was the money stolen from and is anyone else looking for it? This is another handwave. The Priest said 'it doesn't matter, no one's looking for it' and 'everyone else is dead'. Which is such a missed opportunity it's laughable. It's basically removing a plot thread and a possible antagonist right off the table. Now I get that we're already running long (in the movie and in this review :) ) and you need to manage your characters and plot. But the money is the prime motivation for one, maybe two characters. It should be given more respect, be higher stakes, more valuable and more interesting. It should be what people are fighting over. Again, I have a suggestion that would be an easy twist to tie it all together. But we get no one and nothing about who backstabbed the thieves in the first place. And, keep in mind, that is the inciting incident of this whole movie. And it's tossed away and never exploited.
  Why is the FBI here? Seriously, this pervy hotel has been around and spying on people for year. Did the FBI know about that? Is the FBI 'The Management'? (What an easy fix that would make.) If the FBI doesn't know about it, does it care? Why or why not? What does the FBI intend to do about any of it? Why is the FBI, which has direct jurisdiction over kidnapping, not interested in a kidnapping? No idea, any of it. Once Jon Hamm is dead, he means nothing to the plot. Stupid and a waste, again.

Problem #9: Characters in this movie are not believable. This mostly isn't a dig on the actors performances, again, with few exceptions, I believe they acted the way the script and plot demanded. This is a failure of writing and directing.  For example, despite a very strong performance by Jeff Daniels, I don't believe that his thief character is SO entranced by Darlene's singing that it's some legendary gift, worth surrendering half of 'his' money and worth defying wacko cultists over. I just don't buy it. 
  The kidnapper, Dakota Johnson's Emily character starts out sassy and defiant. She flat out murders the FBI agent when he tries to rescue the sister she kidnapped, no hesitation, no remorse.  But then she dithers and dawdles and turns into 'blindly loving older sister'. She does nothing else, the whole movie. She takes no actions after tying up the desk clerk. Nothing. She isn't even sassy and defiant anymore. It's like the director forgot what her character had been in the opening scenes.Which might be what literally happened, for all I know. Drew had a lot on his plate, too much maybe.
  The desk clerk is revealed at the end to be some kind of super soldier marksman. But he doesn't act like a war vet earlier. This feels like a plot and character twist Drew made to finish up his story. He didn't go back and add in elements to make the person at the end feel like the person at the beginning. Fixable problem, fix wasn't attempted.
  The FBI agent first follows orders, then doesn't. And he doesn't act like an Agent. Again, plot contrivance and unneeded complexity. I talked about the vacuum cleaner box, which draws more attention to himself than is needed but then he draws even more attention to himself by 'playing' a loud and demanding salesman who somehow seems to know more about the El Royale than the desk clerk does. Why would someone do this if they're trying to keep a low profile? If he's going to go rescue a girl, against orders, why wouldn't he secure and tie up the kidnapper before untying the girl? Why wouldn't he secure the pistol and dagger that he DID see through the two way glass? (I give him a pass on not seeing the shotgun) Why didn't he go back to the payphone and call the State Police and say 'I'm an FBI Agent, badge number 1234, I need ten state police here to help me with a kidnapper.'? It's all plot contrivance, actions taken by a puppet and not a real person.
  The final confession of the dying desk clerk is another missed opportunity. The last line of the rite of confession for Catholics is something like this: "May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, whatever good you do and suffering you endure heal your sins, help you to grow in holiness, and reward you with eternal life. Go in peace."  Go in peace. What a beautiful way to send someone off who is dying. I've also heard this as 'Go now and sin no more'. I'm guessing Drew isn't Catholic. I'm also guessing he didn't spend the five seconds it takes to Google the Rite of Confession and work it into the final scene with the priest and the desk clerk.

Problem ultimate: Drew Goddard isn't willing to fuck the dog all the way. There's a great quote the magnificent writer Shanon Peavey brought to my critique group, back when it was still around: If you're going to fuck the dog, stick your dick all the way in.  Gross as that is, it's ironically relevant to this movie, almost literally.  
  In a scene where the desk clerk is talking about 'all the awful stuff I've seen', he mentions a man 'lying with a wolf'. Now, what are you visualizing, in this internet age were furries and bestiality is all out there online?  Pretty terrible, isn't it. Only Drew can't quite bring himself to stick his dick in there. He backtracks in the movie and says 'it wasn't sexual, but it wasn't NOT sexual'. Wishy washy bullshit.  And seriously, the worst he's seen is a Senator (because of course it was a senator) beating a whore, fornication and that guy sleeping with a tied and chained wolf. That's it. No rape, no murder, no drug use, no cannibalism.
  Everything is implied, he won't come out and show us or tell us anything definitive.
  Boots is shown as irredeemable, but we don't see the killing the cult performed. No murders. Did Boots do all the killing herself? Did Billy Lee order it?
  Was Boots molested by her father? If so, why is she so clearly fixated on him? Is Billy Lee both father and sexual figure for her?
  Did Emily murder her father? Does Boots know this? How many other people have Emily killed to murder the FBI agent without hesitation or remorse?
  Drew isn't willing to let all of his characters be complex. The singer has to be completely perfect and a perfect victim who can redeem fake priest and use reverse psychology to get the addled desk clerk to 'snap out of it' and save them all.  He isn't willing to make the cult's ideology real, isn't willing to make Billy Lee a full psycho.
 He goes half way, letting 'Boots' be a very bad, feral child/woman. He kills off her older sister. I legit did not expect that.  And that's just it. It's not all bad. It's got good stuff in there. Drew had assembled all the pieces needed to make a great suspense/mystery. But he fumbled the assembly. So let's look at how this could have been a great movie.

How could we it be fixed? Let me run through each problem and offer very, very simple ways to fix Bad Times at the El Royale. Most of these would not be extensive re-shoots or require much expense. Much can be done just at the script/dialog level. I'll go through each problem and suggest a brief solution.
Fix for Problem #1: Simply tell us the date. It can be as simple as a calendar in the opening scene. Done. We know when we are.  For flashbacks, the few we keep, we can stick with the '10 years ago' or 'six months ago', etc.
Fix for Problem #2: The Management needs to be a lurking threat. Something to fear, something to deal with, even if just by getting away. The Solution is to just pick who Management is.  Make it the Russians, fits the time period and reality. Or make it the FBI, which helps place our agent there and explains some of the weird orders he gets. It should be about more than just 'perverts', just decide what and go with it. I lean towards FBI with the plot as written.  The discovery and revelation raises the stakes for everyone there.

Fix for Problem #3: Darlene has no tie to the location, the plot, the characters. She alone has no dark secret but she doesn't act like a normal innocent woman: stealing the FBI agent's gun after following him, seeing him take stuff out of car engines and seeing him get murdered. She clocks the priest without reason given in the movie. So the fix is simple enough: the third robber we see in the opening scene and in the flashback (if we keep it) is BLACK. She gets a line of revelation about that money being 'half hers', saying 'my daddy said there was money here but he never found it'. Or something like that.

Fix for Problem #4: Tying Darlene's father into the robber fixes half of her problem. The other half is her recognizing the priest. He needs to say something that resonates with her or slip up in some way. Or she sees the bottle of drugs in a mirror. Again, a simple dialog/script fix, combined with Darlene's backstory fix and this sudden attack doesn't come out of nowhere. We lose some of the 'shock' but we gain justification. We can even have the revelation come later, in the car or when tied up at the end, if we need that shock attack scene.

Fix for Problem #5 and 6: Runtime and jumping around. This is a complex fix. The biggest savings is to cut the flashbacks.  We need the opening scene with the money being hidden. We can link that to the 'earliest' scene of the robbery, the accident, the priest's brother driving to the El Royale.  We may need the flashback with Boots and her sister, her father and her father's murder. We can even keep the shooting and Vietnam flashbacks, as they are brief and true flashbacks and not whole new scenes. Cut all the rest.  That gets us about 20 min of screen time back and it gives us a clean forward narrative: 10 years ago the robber, 10 years later we are back at the El Royale. 
  The rest of it is small snips and narrative choices as far as pacing.  We have long, lovely camera shots. Those mostly have to go. Long scenes of Darlene singing and clapping, those need to go. We go from introductions, to discovery of the secret passage, to the kidnapping, to the murder, to the interrogation, to Billy Lee arriving. No more hard POV jumps between characters, the set up and introductions will have to happen real time and characters will be doing things simultaneously, cutting between characters but not changing scenes.  That means Billy Lee is already on their trail, unknown to Boot's sister. Boot's betrayal will have to happen later, via dialog or we can just cut it. Boot's actions tell us enough without needing the phone call. It would be work but it would be doable and worth doing.

Fix for problem #7: Billy Lee. I actually like the idea of a cult leader who leads entirely on sex and charisma. The power and danger are baked in, because Hemsworth is not small or weak. But he needs a consistent ideology that ties into the script.  So this is one flashback we, sadly, need to keep. Instead of him blathering about changing sides, we have him talking about how much e 'loves truth' and 'hates lies and liars'. He can even talk about the 'fairness' of chance in determining outcomes. How 'anything can happen in a fight', which ties into the fight over who gets to fuck him, which reveals about Boots' character and it ties into the final fight where the tables are literally overturned. You can even stick in something about how much he hates religion as 'full of lies', if you want. Honestly the priest not being 'real' would be enough to trigger Billy Lee.  And if Darlene knows the priest is fake, she can even be the one to reveal that, under duress.  And duress needs to be there.  Threat needs to be there. Which means Drew needs to swallow his desire to deconstruct and preach his political religion and if he needs to give Darlene her 'powerful men who love to talk' speech...and I really, really would cut it...then you have to see that such a speech has no effect on Billy Lee.  Have him shoot her, in the gut or the leg. And let him answer her defiance by raising the stakes, not undercut. 
  We also need to get Billy Lee into the story earlier. So we need to show the cultists arriving well before they bust in. Show them walking through fields or down hills, all pretty, then show the guns, then show the El Royale from above or in the distance. Keep the threat imminent. Remember, we're going for suspense and tight run time.

Fix for Problem #8: Unused plot hooks. Most of these we are tying up and using above. The FBI is the Management. That's why the conflicted FBI orders. 
  Who is on the tape? Here's a subtle way to tell without telling.  Everyone but Darlene looks at the film. She's not interested. But every time the film is looked at or mentioned, have them glance at Darlene. Just a look, not a big look.  The dialog in the movie is 'he's famous' 'he's dead' and it would be a big deal, be very valuable and...of interest to the FBI, at least at one point.  So who is dead in, say 1970, who is already a legend, who's legacy would be tarnished by sexual indiscretions being discovered?  Well...Martin Luther King comes to mind. You wanna talk bombshells.  He fits the dialog in the movie and in a subtle way, it ties Darlene back into the plot some more, even if only by her race.
  Who's the money stolen from and who's looking. Again, that's Darlene's father who backstabbed the other two thieves. If we want to use the FBI again, they investigate bank robberies. Switch it from an Armored Car heist to a bank robbery and add the money hunt to the FBI agents tasks there. Done.
  
Fix for Problem #9: Characters don't behave like real people. This is mostly just direction.  Keep Dakota Johnson's character sassy and defiant and a cold eyed killer. Make her active, even if that means she's subverted in her intention to kill the desk clerk by her sister.  The priest isn't enraptured by the singer's singing, or not only that, maybe there's some conflict between them instead of a hugbox. Let Darlene be conflicted, desperate, needing that money but maybe repulsed by what she has to do to get it. If the desk clerk is a war hero, let him act like it. Don't have him freak out about a tied up girl. If you need him to be passive, and I don't know why, then play up the drug addiction. Make it hard on him. Maybe Darlene's father died of a drug overdose, tying her to him. Have Darlene motivate him at the end by either their shared drug talk (which I'm making up, they never have any moments until the very, very end of the movie with her 'reverse psychology' moment) or by pleading with him to fight or save them or something other than 'you don't have to kill anymore' turning instantly into 'ok, I'll kill some more'. Give the FBI agent a reason to act so squirrel and impulsively due to the conflicts in his orders. Or have the little sister be the one to kill him or something like that. Not free and easy but easily fixable

Fix for Problem Ultimate: Fuck the dog. Go ahead and show the cult murdering the family in LA. Go ahead and describe actual fucked up shit that happens in hotels. When the desk clerk says he's killed '124 people', don't show us a Vietnam montage...show us the clerk killing 124 people at the hotel at the orders of The Management. This ties him into the FBI Agent as well.  Show the red phone ringing, then him shooting a guest. Phone rings, another shooting. Phone rings, another shooting. Give him something to REALLY regret, not normal wartime killing, that can be traumatic for most people, but it's nothing he should feel religious guilt over. Make the incest (very slightly) more explicit, make the murder of his father more explicit. Or kill the desk clerk and have Emily kill Billy Lee only to have her little sister boots murder Emily in a rage.  Don't pussyfoot around implying stuff, tell us and let us deal with it as a audience. Or if Drew isn't willing, or the studio more like, then cut and make changes. But this is a small picture, let it be honest and bolt.

So, if anyone actually read all this, thanks.  I really wanted to love this movie. But I didn't. Sadly, I think it has all the ingredients for greatness, but they were not assembled to create that.

Not recommended.

TL;DR - A very good action-packed movie with plenty of emotion as well. This movie leans on the previous films for character establishment and development but works well even as a stand alone film. Highly recommended.


Long version:

This needs to be two reviews, really. One about the movie itself. And one about the culmination of the past 18 Marvel films that have been leading to this two-parter finale.  Let's start with the film itself.

Avengers Infinity War -

One of the rarest movies out there is one starring a villainous protagonist. And make no mistake, this is Thantos' movie. He is the driver of the action, he pays the heaviest emotional price to accomplish his goals.  The heroes, the Avengers and others, act as antagonists to his goals. Sure, that's the case in just about every fantasy, where the heroes stand between the big bad guy and his goals.  But in other stories, the focus is usually on the hero protagonist.  But the focus here is mostly on Thanos, even when he's not on camera, the rapid cuts between different settings and characters rarely keeps him off stage for long in Infinity War.

Even more rare is for a story to have a villain protagonist that is sympathetic while still staying monstrous. Mark Lawrence has his Prince of Thorn book series but he fails to make a sympathetic character. Glen Cook's Black Company series doesn't keep the main characters truly villainous.  This movie is balanced, to borrow a theme expressed in the film.  Thanos is powerful, intelligent, motivated and driven by a belief that he is right.  This isn't someone going after power for it's own sake or to aggrandize his ego. He is going to right a wrong, as he sees it, in the universe.

And he's going to do it by killing half of the universe's population.  

What worked:

Pretty much everything.  The pacing of this movie is fast. The character are put into new small groups and are all following their own plots. The film cuts between these groups so you never have time to get bored or for the story to be dragged down by too much exposition or over-long fight scenes.
There are high emotional stakes as well as high 'plot' stakes. The heroes are trying to save half the universe and to save or to avenge the lives of their loved ones.

But Thanos is gaining power, not for it's own sake and not for a love of killing (and not to impress his girlfriend, thank God), but to allow the survivors to flourish in a galaxy of limited resources.  Thanos has his own high emotional and plot stakes.

At the same time, the good guys and bad guys here are not ambiguous. Thanos has depth, more so than expected, but he IS bad/evil and 'must' be stopped.  This is not a grey movie. We do not have 'gray' heroes who snap necks or kill random, faceless thugs.

Everyone or almost everyone is given moments to shine, to save the day in little ways if not big always.  With a cast of this size, this is also a near miracle.

Most of the humor is character-based, we don't have jokes undercutting too many big emotional moments. It happens once but it actually works there. Plus Drax is just hilarious.

Perhaps needless to say, the special effects in this movie are flawless.  There is no 'bad' CGI in here. Everyone and everything looks real. We live in an age of visual marvels. What is even more 'marvelous' is that the technology has been tied to a good story.

What didn't work:

This is a very good movie. But it's not perfect.  There are a few flaws. Most of them don't take away from the film but one or two of them do bump me a little.

The biggest one is the basic assumption at the core of Thanos' reasoning. That there are limited resources in a limited universe and the only way to avoid over-population and destruction of all society is mass murder on a cosmic scale. This is what Thanos calls 'balance'.  And this monstrous belief is not a fictional one and is not shared only by big, purple supervillains. It's called Malthusianism, after the 18th century theorist, Thomas Malthus. He believed that population would increase exponentially while food supplies would increase linearly. At some point, overpopulation would cause mass starvation, war, disease and death.  Even today, there are radicals who call for enforced sterilization, mandatory birth control and even call for mass murder of the kind Thanos uses fictionally here.
  The problem here isn't just the monstrousness of the philosophy. It's that it is false. Or has been proven so, so far.  As population has indeed increased, so too has our food production. Even today, our challenge is food distribution, not availability or even cost.  Technology, from agriculture to birth control, has resolved the Malthusian dilemma. 
  And no one in the movie ever makes the case that Thanos is wrong on factual, not just on moral grounds. On moral grounds, Thanos is willing to pay the price of being hated and 'misunderstood' and even willing to sacrifice those he cares about. He is not accessible to moral arguments. He views his position as fact. But no one attempts to refute his facts. 

Second, some of the scenes are edited too quickly. It is hard to follow the action, which can be literally dizzying in places.  This is not true everywhere. The choreography of the fight on Titan is clean and easy to follow. So is the fight with Dr. Strange and Iron Man with the first two Black Order henchmen. Likewise the final fight against Thanos is clearly, mostly because it is in slow motion.  But the Wakandan battle and the early fight with Scarlett Witch and the other Avengers verses the other two Black Order henchmen is unclear.  I'm wondering if two different crews and fight choreographers were used or two different editors. We have two of each working on Infinity War. There were similar problems with Black Panther, but different editors and different fight choreographers were used here.

Third, we don't see Thanos obtaining the Power stone and the destruction on Xandar. It MAY be that they're planning to save that for a movie perhaps featuring Nova, as written by Dan Abnett.  But no such announcement has been made. And it may appear in flashback in the second part of Infinity War. I don't know but it stands out and feels odd, since we spend time watching Thanos acquire the other five.

The rest are nit picks. Like how Pepper Potts is a terrible character and a nag and a terrible match for Tony Stark or any other man with self respect. Or how everyone can just talk to everyone else at any time, seemingly. Or how sometimes Thanos uses his power stones well and sometimes he doesn't. Or how only girls fight girls and boys fight boys in most of the movie, which is odd.

Or, most of all nits, how the Black Order is established and used. Only one really stands out, Ebony Maw. And he's killed without being able to 'Mary Poppins' himself to safety when, of all characters, he should and could have survived his defeat.


Plot (with spoilers):

Picking up some time after the events of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Black Panther, we see Thanos finally in motion to collect all 6 infinity stones. He has taken the Power stone from Xandar (off camera) and we see him butchering the survivors of Asgard. Thor is beaten and defeated. Quickly, Thanos defeats the Hulk decisively, receives the Space stone from Loki and strangles Loki to death when he attempts to kill Thanos. Heimdall manages to send Hulk away summoning Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, but is killed for this.  Thanos and his Black Order henchmen/children depart, leaving a crippled Thor on a burning starship that explodes.

Hulk arrives on earth, crashing into Dr. Strange's home and transforming permanently (for this film at least) into Bruce Banner.  Banner warns Strange and Tony Stark about Thanos but almost immediately, two members of the Black Order attack them in an attempt to seize the Time stone from Dr. Strange.  Spiderman helps in the fight but Dr. Strange is abducted. Iron Man and Spiderman stow away onboard the starship and manage to rescue Dr. Strange however they are unable or unwilling ultimately to change the starship's course and they decide to attempt to attack Thanos on his homeworld, Titan when they arrive.

Meanwhile, the other two members of the Black Order attack Scarlet Witch and Vision as the two lovers are debating going off on their own. Vision is crippled in the ambush and never truly recovers or is able to use his full powers. Scarlet Witch fights tremendously well but just when she is about to be cornered and killed, Captain America, Falcon and Black Widow show up to rescue them both.  They decide to see if they can remove the Mind stone from Vision without killing him and then destroy the Mind stone rather than letting it fall into Thanos' hands.  To do this, they must go to Wakanda.

Meanwhile, out in space, the Guardians of the Galaxy are responding to a distress signal sent by the Asgardians. They arrive to find a nearly dead (mostly dead?) Thor, who they rescue and whom rapidly recovers.  Rocket Raccoon and Thor, with Groot, go off to have a new weapon forged to replace his broken hammer, a weapon that can actually defeat Thanos.  The other Guardians decide to go to Knowhere, where The Collector has the Reality stone. They intend to steal the stone before Thanos can get it.  However they arrive too late.  Gamora attacks her foster father and seemingly kills him. However it is revealed that Thanos has already acquired the Reality stone and the ambush was merely a test to see how Gamora felt towards Thanos. He handily defeats the Guardians and forces Gamora to reveal the location of the Soul stone by torturing her 'sister' Nebula.  She is unable to tolerate Nebula's torture and reveals the Soul stones location. Thanos takes Gamora to the location of the Soul stone.  There is his forced to sacrifice the one person he truly loves, his daughter Gamora, to receive the soul stone.  Thanos does so with regret and having paid for the stone with her life, he departs for Titan.

Meanwhile, Thor and Rocket find that the forge world where they intended to find a weapon is cold and abandoned.  Thanos has been here, too. And his Infinity gauntlet was created by the last surviving 'dwarf' blacksmith.  Thor and Rocket manage to re-start the forge and obtain a mighty axe, using part of Groot as the haft.

On Titan, the Guardians meet and confront Iron Man, Spider Man and Dr. Strange. They unite and ready an ambush on Thanos, the plan being to separate Thanos from the Gauntlet that holds the Infinity stones. There is an epic battle but Thanos defeats the combined heroes, despite near success when Star Lord learns of Gamora's death and attacks a stunned Thanos before the Gauntlet can be removed.  Dr. Strange, having looked into the future and finding only ONE scenario where the heroes succeed, 'strangely' gives Thanos the Time stone in return for Thanos sparing Iron Man's life. Thanos takes the Time stone and heads to Earth for the final Infinity stone, in Vision.

The heroes arrive in Wakanda and are greeted and aided by Black Panther and his sister. They attempt to remove the Mind stone so it can be destroyed without killing Vision, however the surviving Black Order members have come back to earth with an army of ravening four armed beasts.  They attack immediately and manage to circumvent the protective shield around Wakanda.  Bruce Banner is unable to summon the Hulk and fights in borrowed 'hulkbuster' armor. In the vast attack, the Avengers are put in great jeopardy but the return of Thor turns the tide of battle and the members of the Black Order are killed.  However, Thanos himself arrives, with 5 Infinity stones. And single-handedly, he defeats all the heroes as they try to keep him from Vision.  Scarlet Witch manages to destroy the stone but doing so while the stone is still in Vision, killing him.  Thanos uses the Time stone to rewind time to before the stone is destroyed and pulls it out of Vision's skull, killing him a second time and giving him all 6 stones.

Just then, Thor attacks Thanos with his new axe and inflicts a terrible wound to Thanos' chest. However he is not able to prevent Thanos from using all 6 stones at once. And half the heroes and people in the universe die and turn to ash.

Wounded, with the Infinity Gauntlet twisted and seemingly broken, Thanos escapes. And, having accomplished his goal, he rests and smiles wistfully at an alien sunrise.

***

And yeah, that's it. Thanos wins. Heroes fail. Many, many heroes die and turn to ash before their friends and loved one's eyes.  

Now this IS part 1 of a two part movie.  But....the BALLS on Kevin Feige and the Russo brothers are immense. Not since the Empire Strikes Back have we seen this kind of dark, down ending in a series.

For one of the rare times in my life, I have NO idea where they could go with this. And no idea how to 'fix' this situation.  This isn't just a cliffhanger. This is an avalanche that leaves the few survivors stunned, broken and disorganized.


What would I change?:

Not a lot, honestly. This movie does everything pretty damn right.
I'd have shown the Xandar massacre. I could probably write a scene that would take less than 3 minutes of screen time but would have given us even more spectacle. But honestly, the movie serves up plenty of spectacle and shows us Thanos power in other ways.

The set up for the Soul stone should have come before this film but it is the emotional core of Thanos' journey here, so it does work.

It would be nice to find a use for Falcon, War Machine and Black Widow.  They aren't helpless, but they don't do much and have no plot impact.

Valkerie and the characters from Thor 3 are not here at all. But I sorta hate all of them, so good riddance.

Likewise, Bruce Banner went from scientist in Avengers 1 and 2 to scared little boy in this movie. That's not great characterization, though it does set up character development for him and Hulk and that's not nothing.

The Black Order should have had a bit more interaction and 'named' each other more. They did their job here, but they felt like red shirts.

Summary:

This is a nearly miraculous movie in how much it got right, in the choices made and in paying off setups from previous films and leaning on the characterization done in previous films. It is an action movie with a lot of emotion and high stakes.

Even if you haven't seen all the other Marvel movies, it works well enough and is worth study as well as mere entertainment.

Highly Recommended

***

Part 2 - Avengers Infinity War and what it means as a series:

Ok, let's talk EVEN MORE about this movie because it IS more than just a one-off or two-off entertainment event.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it started with Iron Man in 2008. However the McGuffin 'powerful artifact' plot line really begins with Captain America 1. In that film, the Nazi's gain what we know as the Tesseract and they/Hydra develop sci-fi super weapons with it.  Then in The Avengers, we have Loki coming to earth at the head of an army lent to him by Thanos and bearing a spear/scepter that contained another infinity stone, the Mind stone, though it was not called by that name then. Thor 2 featured yet another stone, the 'Aether', a confusing low point for the series. This is the Reality stone and it was taken to The Collector.
It wasn't until the Guardians of the Galaxy 1 that we got the full back story on the Infinity Stones and got to see Thanos demanding the Power stone from Ronan the Accuser.  After Guardians of the Galaxy, the overall plot, featuring the Infinity stones, gets pushed more front and center, though not to the extent you might think.  Only Dr. Strange and Avengers 2 really feature the stones as plot points and neither are the main plot device of either film.  Marvel really had hit its stride by then, in writing and tying the movies together gracefully.

We can also be grateful for good casting, mostly, and multi-picture contracts.  Infinity War works so well because these characters were introduced and developed over many previous movies.  They don't just feel like a costume and a power set. They feel like real people. Part of that credit goes to the writing and performances and direction, but also the structure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where they have been no ret-cons (long may that last, knock wood) or recastings, re-imaginings or what have you that have plagued the X-men, the Fantastic Four, Spider Man and Batman/Superman.

We don't need to learn Captain America's backstory in Infinity War. When he shows up and snatches the spear thrown at him, the audience literally cheered. Because we knew him and we knew what he was going to do: save the day, be a hero.  Likewise, Bruce Banner's character in this movie is tolerable because we've seen him in the Avengers 1 and 2 and in Thor 3.  This early character development is pretty essential to Infinity War working at a high level. I still think it works even if you don't know everyone and everything, they do a good job dropping in mild exposition here and there.
So talking about characters, lets go even deeper. I'm going to list all the heroes in Infinity War, what they did and their ultimate fate. Some did more and were more important to the plot here than others.  Some may be even more important in part 2, after the vast die-off at the end of Infinity war. Keep one more thing in mind: each of these characters are unique in look AND 'voice'. As a writer, I can tell you making characters 'sound' unique is not easy and is worthy of praise.

Thor - Is defeated by Thanos, off-camera, is tortured to get Loki to reveal the Space stone's location. Survives the destruction of his ship and is rescued by the Guardians. Goes to have a new weapon forged, powerful enough to defeat Thanos. Restarts the forgeworld sun and holds a mechanism open long enough to melt the metal in the forge. Transports to the final battle in Wakanda, turning the tide of battle. Destroys several drop ships of the invaders and inflicts a terrible wound on Thanos. Charms the pants off everyone but Star Lord.

Loki - Surrenders the Space stone after first defying Thanos to kill Thor.  Attempts to ambush Thanos while swearing fealty. Is strangled to death, possibly for good, by Thanos.

Heimdall - Transports Hulk to Earth to give warning and is killed as a result.

Hulk - Gets his ass handed to him decisively by Thanos and then refuses to come out again, apparently out of fear. As Bruce Banner, he brings the message of Thanos' coming and threat. Calls Captain America after Tony Stark is unable to. He fights in the final Wakanda battle wearing a borrowed Hulkbuster suit of armor.

Iron Man - Fights two of the Black Order to attempt to protect Dr. Strange and the Time stone.  Boards the alien spaceship and rescues Dr. Strange. Fights the Guardians of the Galaxy on Titan before teaming up with them. Fights Thanos on Titan and is badly wounded. His life is traded for the Time stone by Dr. Strange.

Pepper Potts - Is apparently getting married to Tony Stark. Because Nemesis is a real force and Stark has had too much success and happiness in his life. Nags at him and attempt to browbeat him into NOT saving the world. Is a scrunt. Survival uncertain but probably since we live in a fallen, unjust universe.

Dr. Strange - Receives the warning about Thanos and collects Tony Stark. Fights against the Black Order. Is captured before he can use the Time Stone. Stand up to Tony Stark, snark for snark. Suggest they not fly to Titan and avoid Thanos instead. Is overruled for plot and Tony Stark ego reasons. Fights against the Guardians before combining with them against Thanos on Titan. Looks into the future with the Time stone to try to find a scenario where the heroes can win. Seemingly finds a single possibility. However, gives the Time stone to Thanos in return for Tony Stark's life. Dies at the end saying 'this was the only way', seemingly not having explained to Tony Stark what he needs to do.

Wong - Wants a tuna melt. Fights against the Black order to protect Dr. Strange. Managed to strand the most physically powerful Black Order member via teleportation. Returns to guard Dr. Strange's home and items. Probably survives or not seen to die at the end.

Spider Man - Spider Sense warns him of the alien ship arrival bearing the Black Order. Fights the Black Order. Loses Dr. Strange to the Black Order. Gets new 'superior' Spider man suit. Stows away on starship against instructions. Helps blow Ebon Maw out into space. Fights against the Guardians on Titan. Becomes an Avenger for real. Fights against Thanos on Titan. Dies and is turned to ash while begging for his life.

Star Lord - Rescues Thor, much to his annoyance.  Has gained a little weight. Promises Gamora, very reluctantly, that he will kill her if Thanos tries to take her away. Leads the Guardians to Knowhere in an attempt to steal the Reality Stone before Thanos can. Fights Thanos or tries to on Knowhere. Tries to keep his word to Gamora and shoot her. Is liked by Thanos. Travels to Titan after being told by Nebula that Thanos is going there. Fights Dr. Strange, Iron Man and Spider Man before uniting. Comes up with the plan to ambush, hold and remove the gauntlet from Thanos. But breaks his 'stun' by attacking him when he learns of Gamora's death. Fights Thanos on Titan but loses. Dies at the end when Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet.  Is pretty damn bad ass for a goofball.

Gamora -  Has comfortably settled into her relationship with Peter Quill, apparently. Knows what Thanos' ultimate, genocidal goal is. Knows where the Soul stone is. Assassinates her father, Thanos, in Knowhere but is defeated by the Reality stone. Is captured by Thanos and pressured into revealing the Soul stone's location by Thanos' torture of Nebula. Has a flashback to Thanos discovering and adopting her. Is loved by and sacrificed by Thanos to gain the soul stone. Appears, as a child, in the 'soul zone' to speak to Thanos after he kills half the universe.

Drax - Has most of the good lines/jokes. Knows a man when he sees one. Also knows a pirate angel when he sees one. Can hold so still and move so slowly, he can become invisible. Or not. Attacks Thanos in Knowhere, unsuccessfully.  Fights Dr. Strange, Iron Man and Spider Man on Titan before uniting against Thanos. Manages some good hits in against Thanos. Does not get his vengeance. Dies at the end.

Mantis - Is very cute and cuddly. Has 'mean face' down. Awakens Thor after his rescue. Knows Drax when she sees him. Tries to confront Thanos on Knowhere but is defeated by the Reality stone.  Scares Spider Man. Fights Thanos and her ability to put Celestials to sleep is used to good affect during the ambush. But is defeated by Thanos and dies at the end of the movie, turning to dust.

Groot - Is a brat. Plays handheld version of Defender and is surly the whole movie.  Uses part of his body to form the handle for Thor's new Thanos-killing axe. Fights in the final battle at Wakanda. Dies at the end when Thanos uses the Infinity stones.

Rocket - Gets promotion to 'Captain' and actually acts like it, surprisingly. Shows empathy. Takes Thor to forge world to get new Thanos-killing axe for Thor. Give Thor a cybernetic eye, brown in color. Helps re-start star forge. Fights in the final battle and helps turn the tide against the invading aliens in Wakanda. Knows a good gun, and good arm, when he sees it. Survives the great culling at the end, the only Guardian of the Galaxy to do so.

Nebula - Attempts to kill Thanos after the events of Guardians 2 and 'very nearly succeeded'. Is captured and tortured. Thanos learns Gamora knows about the Soul stone from her. Breaks free after being healed by minions of Thanos and tells the Guardians Thanos is going to Titan. Fights Thanos on Titan but is defeated. Survives the great culling at the end.

The Collector - Gives up the Reality stone to Thanos. Likely dead, only seen 'alive' during the Reality stone trap.

Captain America - Shows up to rescue Vision and Scarlet Witch. Leads them to the Avengers HQ where he confronts Sec. of State Ross and gains the allegiance and help of War Machine. Leads the Avengers to Wakanda and gains the aid of Black Panther to attempt to remove the Mind stone without killing Vision. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Attempts to stop Thanos but is defeated. Survives the final culling at the end of the movie.

Bucky Barnes - Is called back into service by Black Panther. Gets new arm. Is reunited with Captain America. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Dies at end in the great culling at the end of the film.

Black Panther - Allows the Avengers into the country. Offers aid in removing the Mind stone from Rallies his people to fight the invading army of Thanos. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Gives the order to open the shield to the invaders to avoid becoming flanked. Dies at the end in the great culling.

Main Bald Black chick warrior (yeah, go ahead and hate me; her name and look don't stand out) - Fights in the last battle in Wakanda. Survives the great culling.

Shuri - Is so smart. Somehow. Despite apparently limited contact with the outside world and zero experience with Infinity stones and creating new life forms. But is so smart.  Attempts to remove the Mind stone from Vision and would have likely have succeed if not interrupted by the Black Order and then Thanos. Survival uncertain, not shown to die in the great culling.

Baku? Gorilla-themed guy - Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Is using a wooden club, which somehow works despite not having any powers or vibranium. Survives the great culling.

Falcon - Helps rescue Scarlet Witch and Vision. Travels to Avenger HQ to reunite with War Machine. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Dies at the end in the great culling.

Scarlet Witch - Is in a romance with Vision. Fights the Black Order. Is very, very powerful. But has little defense. Refuses to destroy Mind stone before Thanos' arrival because of love for Vision. Agrees to destroy it if removed. Fights decisively in the final battle in Wakanda. Destroys the Mind stone while holding back or slowing down Thanos. Is very, very powerful. Dies at the end in the great culling.

Vision - Is in a romance with Scarlet Witch. Has developed a very British stammer dealing with emotions like love. Apparently tolerates being in Scotland. Gets badly wounded in his first fight and basically does next to nothing apart from being rescued a lot. Gets rescued a lot.  Attempts to sacrifice his life for the sake of untold numbers of people. Gets turned down about the idea until the very end. Fights to protect Shuri when the Black Order comes for him. Dies twice. 

Black Widow - Rescues Scarlett Witch, twice. Fights the girl black order member. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Survives, somehow, despite not having super powers. Has blonde hair. Has great voice. Survives the great culling.

War Machine - Joins Captain America at risk of court martial. Trolls Bruce Banner in Wakanda. Fights in the final battle in Wakanda. Fights against Thanos and loses. Survives the great culling.

Nick Fury - Calls Captain Marvel for help when he sees the great culling happening. However dies before he can issue some trademark profanity.

...that's 29 distinct characters who have some plot-related actions or responsibility!  I'm a little dizzy just from writing that up, let alone doing it in screenplay form and making ti work.  Damn.

What Marvel movies has done here is unlike anything anyone else has ever tried. And they pull it off with style and grace.  18 movies building up, in small ways and in big, to this moment. When half the universe is killed off.

Warner Brothers/DC tried to follow in Marvel's footsteps but failed. Why it failed is likely a source for a good, long article in and of itself. But most of the reason is due to: vision, casting, pacing.  DC wanted to get to where Marvel is in a hurry.  It wanted to do so by making dark, gritty stories that don't fit the DC characters. Instead of spending time creating, developing and using their characters, they tried to jump ahead in line.  Casting and direction have also hampered them, as have cost cutting measures in their special effects.

Like Marvel movies or hate them, you have to respect the effort and the balancing act at work here.  Kevin Feige had a vision AND Marvel/Disney gave him the freedom to pursue it, even to the point of removing personnel who were tainting his vision.

Along the way to Infinity War, they mastered the art of character development (of heroes and villains), of action that serves to develop the plot and reveal character, the art of casting. It survived turbulent relationship failures with talented directors who would not accept the production direction Feige was laying down and found even more talented directors who could be trusted to match the Marvel vision while expressing their own voice.

The Russo Brothers, Kevin Feige, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely....all the techs, cast and crew....you did it. You made a miracle.

So what does Infinity War mean?  It means an ending. It means, I hope, that hard work and boldness is rewarded. It means having a well-developed villain is no less important than a likeable hero. It means the old stories still work, the old ideas of entertainment first, still work.

It means...I'm going to watch Infinity War a few more times. And I'm going to enjoy myself each time I go. 

Thanks, sincerely.

TL;DR - It's ok. Good performances anchored by a charismatic Chadwick Boseman and good worldbuilding for Wakanda are undercut by terrible fight coreography, sub-par CGI and a racial marketing buzz.

Marvel just knows how to make good movies.  Kevin Feige has a deft touch at knowing what will appeal to a broad audience. The Black Panther is neither as bad as you might fear nor as good as you might hope.  Like most movies it has flaws but it also has good stuff in it.  If you can suspend your disbelief, like you need to for most Superhero movies, you'll have a good time watching it.  You won't get preached at too much and you get to see the bad guys lose.
That is no small feat.

I won't go into the history of Black Panther, some time spent on Wikipedia can do that better than I can, but I will point out that there is a strong desire on the part of some of the writers of the comic to make the character a polemic on the evils of white people.  Every time the comic does that, sales tank the the writer has to find other work.  But the movie manages to avoid that. Mostly*.  The message of the movie is one that preaches the merits of being inclusive and open, of helping other people rather than painting them with a wide brush as 'the enemy'. If there ever was a time for that message, it's the post-Obama age. This is an inclusive movie, regardless of how it is being marketed and portrayed on social media.

Plot - 

Chadwick Boseman is T'Challa, the new King of Wakanda, following the death of his father in Civil War.  He is also the Black Panther, the protector of the fictional African nation that enjoys a sci-fi standard of living thanks to being the sole source of the magical mystery metal 'Vibranium'.  

However there are a few loose ends to tie up for the new king. One is Ulysses Klaue (NOT the Living Laser in the comic continuity, thanks David), a thief last seen in Age of Ultron who managed to actually steal a great deal of vibranium from Wakanda. The king and most of his advisors want Klaue captured and brought to justice. And they also feel that they should control all the vibranium out there in the world.  To that latter end, Wakanda apparently has a vast international network of spies and agents, hidden among the nations of the Earth.

Which brings us to the second loose end, the villainous Black Lives Matter radical/murderer/terrorist/CIA agent (?) Killmonger.  Killmonger is part of Klaue's crew but also is of noble blood, being the son of a Wakandan Prince. Killmonger was abandoned to live alone in Oakland California after the previous Black Panther (T'Challa's father) killed him.  This lost cousin grows up very, very bad. And he wants revenge and the crown of Wakanda.

One of the interesting quirks of Wakanda is that their isolation and cultural homogeneity has preserved some very old traditions. Including one where those of royal blood may challenge for the throne via single combat.  This sort of monomacy was a valid form of succession in a few ancient cultures and the survival of it into superhightech Wakanda is odd and unique.

Killmonger challenges T'Challa, wins the fight and takes the throne.  After that, he commits to use Wakanda's technology and spy network to foment a world-wide revolution that will supposedly result in Wakanda ruling the world.**

T'Challa however survived the fight and reappears at the end of the movie to defeat Killmonger and prevent the spread of high tech weapons to revolutionaries.  

However, having secured his throne, he is more convinced than ever that Wakanda should reach out to the world, not to rule it but to lead by example and by trying to improve the lives of people outside their hidden nation.

What worked?

The two strongest elements I thought were the characters and the setting.  Black Panther's family and friends all interact as if they truly knew each other and liked each other. They seemed to be real people, which is a good and an important trick in making a movie.  (A trick the DC movies have not mastered)  When you have characters that care about each other, we care about them too.
Wakanda is...well, it's a daydream, frankly. But one that has its roots in other literature as well. From King Solomon's mines, to Tarzan to The Phantom (the Ghost Who Walks), we have an image of an African nation that was both able to maintain it's archaic traditions without sinking into tribal barbarism and dictatorship. All of them, Wakanda included, ruled or protected by a powerful guardian with abilities beyond those of normal men. In this case, The Black Panther.  

But if you accept the premise - that this semi-magical material, 'vibranium', has allowed Wakanda to not just forge powerful weapons and armor but to also somehow create a high degree of education and science*** - the details that go into this setting are amazing. I wish Asgard had gotten one tenth the amount of thought and detail Wakanda gets.  Then maybe we'd have cared when it was destroyed in Thor 3...

Andy Serkis's performance as Klaue also stands out. He's just having so much fun and seems to be a real threat with his new laser-shooting artificial arm. A quality bad guy is so important and while he lasts, Klaue is a wily and amusing antagonist.

Chadwick Boseman's performance also stands out.  Like Captain American, Black Panther has a moral clarity and strength. He is strong, masculine and decisive. When faced with moral quandaries, he doesn't mope or wallow in pity, he acts. He is heroic in his character.

I also liked the James Bond riffs in the early part of the movie. If the whole film had been like that, I would have been okay with it. Or if the whole movie had been set in Wakanda only (which would have made for a stronger film), I'd have been okay with that too.

Finally, Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger was not a great character and not a great performance but I will give Jordan credit: he was in great shape and seemed physically and emotionally menacing. Not bad for the villain.

What didn't work?

The CGI in places, especially in the second half, was sub-standard. It stuck out and for the Black Panther vs Killmonger final fight, it detracted from the movie.  There were a lot of effects houses working on this film, the ones who focused on Wakanda did a fine job. But not all of them.

The fight scenes were also badly choreographed and edited. I've seen Creed, the previous directorial effort of Ryan Coogler, and that was well-choreographed. So I don't think it was strictly a problem of direction. I suspect Rachel Morrison, the Director of Photography, didn't know how to shoot fight scenes. They were hard to focus on, did not show the actors full bodies often, and some scenes had noticably been 'sped up' to seem to be faster and more powerful. Possibly one or more of the fight choreographers weren't up to scratch. Or maybe the problem was with the actors, though Boseman seemed fine in Civil War and Jordan was fine in Creed.  I'm putting this at the D of P's feet.  Fight scenes are important in action movies, you can't screw them up like was done here.

Michael B. Jordan's dialog and dialog/character did not work for me.  Again, I've seen Creed. He's not great in it. He was ok, more of a physical performance than an acting display.  And in this, he talks like a hood rat.  Which makes his introductory scene in the museum almost laughable, it's so bad.  Also, and this isn't on him precisely as an actor, his backstory is a problem. He's not only supposed to be a street punk from Oakland AND a secret Wakandan prince, he's also supposed to be a CIA agent who works to destabilize countries. *facepalm*  Now, I'm no virgin, I know the CIA and other TLA agencies do in fact perform dirty tricks like that. But I hope to God they wouldn't use someone as sloppy and unable to be low profile as this Killmonger. Spies are subtle. They aren't thugs, not if they want to live and avoid jail time in third world shitholes.  Maybe this was a fault of the director, maybe the co-writer Joe Cole, who is not very experienced.

Martin Freeman didn't really work for me. He's supposed to be a former Air Force pilot in this movie as well as a CIA agent.  *buzz* No. I have known many Air Force pilots. They are all cocky, arrogant, assured assholes. (And I say that in love)  They are not Bilbo Baggins here. He's in this story purely as a way to show how cool and advanced Wakanda is compared to 'white people'. He's here to be yelled at and belittled. Now the movie doesn't lather that on too much, but it does happen. Particularly in the 'barking' scene.  What would have worked better would be to have Bucky Barnes in his role. He was IN Wakanda at the end of Civil War, so I'm not sure why he wasn't here.  Failure of imagination, maybe. But the Winter Soldier would have worked better than Martin Freeman's Everett Ross.

Finally, there are a couple of tone problems.  Overall, the movie worked but without nitpicking it for hours, there were some parts that just bumped me.  
    Two are in the South Korea scene...by the way, I assume South Korea is in this movie for transparent pandering reasons and it is jarring...the first is when Klaue blasts a car Okoye (one of the bald bodyguards) is standing on. She uses her spear and the hood of the car to sorta...surf her way to a stop.  No. That's not how physics works.  She is not a superhero, so I can't cut her the same breaks I'd cut Black Panther.  It's dumb and breaks the movie moment.  
    Second is also related to Klaue blasting the shit out of car. We have his almost comical moment of the driver's seat and one of the other bald bodyguards skidding to a halt.  The rest of the car was blasted to oblivion but she's just...cartoon blackened. It doesn't work, the movie isn't a slapstick and considering the murder and throat cutting past and future in the film, it doesn't work.  If you want us to accept the jeopardy, you need to treat the danger as real.  See Captain America 2 for how to do this right.

    Another is, sigh, the guy with a lid in his lip. Yes, it's a real thing. And yes, it looks stupid. Everytime he talks, I get the giggles. I can't take him or his character seriously. And don't get me started on his green suit.
    Then there's the rhinos...just...no. No riding war rhinos. I can't take a fight seriously that has people riding war rhinos. It does not match the tone of the rest of the movie.

So how would I fix it?

The tone problems are easy to fix. Just treat the danger as real, not a cartoon.  Make the threats real, shoot some Wakandas who don't have magic body armor****. Don't give the guy with a lid in his lip any dialog. Don't have people riding war rhinos.

The fight choreography can be fixed by either spending more time with the actors, getting a new fight guy or by fixing the photography/editing.  Seriously, it's a superhero movie, you need to get the fights right.

I'd put the Winter Soldier into the story in place of the Martin Freeman CIA agent. He has the skills and maybe the contacts to help find and fight Klaue. And he has the kind of physicality that allows him to stare down hooting gorilla themed black guys.

Also, as much as I like monkeys, you shouldn't put gorilla themed black guys in your movie. Unless we're saying that is no longer racially offensive. Which I'm ok with, because I like monkeys.

Move the action to be either in Wakanda or on the borders. Michael B Jordan and Klaue can break back into Wakanda to steal vibranium to make up for what was stolen or lost in previous movies. Then Jordan can stab Klaue in the back as planned and make his play for the throne.  In fact, he should be making his play for the throne much earlier. Then we can have the real plot conflict happen in the setting they worked so hard on, rather than shoehorning in some Asian scenery porn to try to appeal to China.  Also China is not South Korea. I don't think you're fooling anyone, Marvel.

Also don't kill off Klaue, unless Andy Serkis said he didn't want to play the role anymore. Which I doubt.  He was/is a good villain and he's wasted here, literally.

Summary

This is a pretty good movie.  It is not a blacks vs whites movie, to its credit.  It has a message of hope, inclusion and heroism. It's a solid movie.

Recommended.

*There is habit of some of the characters to refer to all white people in the movie as 'Colonialist', which is funny considering it's said repeated to a supposed American character. America, of course, never had colonies in Africa and in fact was once a colony itself before rebelling. But I digress.

**Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. But villains don't have to be smart or right.

***HOW exactly does some sort of metal make you better or even good at science?  It's not like the owners of wootz steel, the closest real-world analog to this super metal, founded famous universities or were renowned for its learning or created airplanes centuries early or anything.  If anything, the vibranium, by not acting like other metals, ought to retard the development of the scientific method. But now I'm just nit picking. Like I said, you have to suspend disbelief for superhero movies.

**** I know they want the PG rating and I give them credit for actually killing people in this movie.  But a little blood, a gunshot wound or two would go a long way to grounding this and making the bad guys more of a real threat.  Also those Black Panther claws are sharp and all but they're only about two inches long. In order to actually kill someone with them, you'd need to do more than just poke your claws into their chest, like when Killmonger's father is killed. You'd need to rip and claw, you know, like a real cat. But that would be hella gory and I get why they didn't do that.  I'm just saying, this could have been Deadpool levels of gore if you really wanted to use those claws they way you'd have to to kill someone with them.

​
TL;DR review - Good visuals and some good performances is all that save The Last Jedi from being an outright bad movie.

Ah Star Wars, why can't I quit you?  You keep abusing me and making me embarrassed to be a fan.  The next/last movie in the Kylo/Rey trilogy is going to have to work very hard not to get tossed into the same mental rubbish bin I store the Prequels.

What worked:

I like some of the performances quite a bit.  I don't like Luke's characterization and story turn, but Mark Hamill delivered the best performance in the film. He's become an actor in the past 30 years and it shows on the screen here, doing a part he clearly doesn't want to do.

I liked Kylo Ren, actually.  I felt his need and rage. Sure, he's emo but that's his character, he's playing it appropriately. Not every villain is a tower of self-regard.  He feels that he was forced to be evil, I think.  And he's trying to embrace that, even if he is...tempted by the light. And by Rey.  And what he wants is something that's easy to understand: he wants respect. And if he can't get that, fear.

Rey was...well, she's a superhero at this point. Overpowered as fuck.  But I watch a lot of superhero movies so for some reason, that didn't bother me. It should have. It did in The Force Awakens.  But in this one, I was more drawn to her temptation of Kylo. He's someone who won't comply with her demands.  And he's the first, only person, to try to reach out to her. To talk to HER, not her power or her destiny, but her as a person.  It helps that Daisy Ridley is charismatic. She can't act in a wide range, she has one or two 'moods' at most. But she draws the eye and after Rogue One, I can see how important that is.

I actually like the 'fake' codebreaker, DJ, played by Benicio Del Toro.  He had a very grounded and realistic view of the universe. I like him and I liked the advice he gave.

BB8 was fine as the cute toy/comic relief. Porgs were not/are not needed.

The Plot...and what didn't work (Spoilers...it's the plot):

Also Spoilers. The humor doesn't work. I laughed once, when Snoke hit Rey on the back of her head. That was it.  BB8 was as good as the 'humor' got and that just got a smile from me, no laughs.

Trying to sum up the plot is pretty simple because there's not a lot that actually happens from a story-viewpoint. You will spend two and a half hours watching a movie that should have been 100 minutes, tops.  But in the end, almost nothing has changed from the end of The Force Awakens.  Almost no characters change, grow or learn anything. We get awkward self-insert fan fic characters added, some new toys are introduced but the universe and the plot advance at a snail's crawl. And what changes do happen to the universe, do not favor the 'Resistance', although they do still have main character plot armor.

Ok, let me try again: Rey has found Luke Skywalker but he's not interested in training Rey or helping 'The Resistance'*. She begs and pleads and finally he gives her three lessons.  Then he refused to teach her anything more when she shows a blind excitement about diving into the Dark Side of the Force.** Meanwhile, Kylo Ren is being humiliated by Supreme Commander Snoke.   Kylo is filled with rage and need and at this time of profound isolation, he finds himself in frequent mental contact with Rey. The two of them seem to have a bond, more than that, they seem to have a connection, even an attraction for each other. Rey finally assaults Luke and when he kicks her off his island, she runs toward Kylo Ren, hoping to redeem him(?), it's unclear. But she does meet Kylo and confront Snoke with him.  And finally she rejoins the two dozen or so surviving Resistance members out of the thousands who were fleeing the first order.

Hm?

Oh right, there's actually two stories here, three really. But only Rey and Kylo's have any real story or plot significance.  But out of a sense of completeness...The First Order after blowing up three or four planets is seizing military control over the galaxy. We can only assume that they succeed, since they have all their incompetent people in one General Hux-shaped basket who is sent off to try to kill the Resistance before they can evacuate from their base.  Since Hux is terrible at everything, he can't quite manage this despite catching the Resistance in mid-evacuation and despite having some mysterious tracking device that allows him to follow them through hyperspace***.  What we get is a very slow motion stern chase where the First Order is picking off Resistance ships as they run out fuel.
  From here, we have two minor plots, one of which has some character development and one that has Finn and a huge waste of screentime.
  Minor plot #1 has us following Poe Dameron, who helps blow up a Dreadnaught (an even bigger big ship, not that we are given a sense of its scale ala Star Wars). However, surprising only idiots who run the Resistance, there are severe casualties among the fighter and 'bombers'.  Poe gets slapped, demoted, insulted...but he doesn't give up. He keeps trying to fight the First Order. However, his superiors refuse to tell them their plans. Partly due to 'none of your damn business' and partly because they barely have a plan.  And what plan they do have....wouldn't have been compromised by telling people what it is. Which makes minor plot #1 even more frustrating and confusing.  Poe finally leads a mutiny...which doesn't go well, of course. Leading him to be stunned as well as slapped, insulted, demoted, abused and kept in the dark.  However, Poe does learn one thing apart from women making lousy commanders, he learns that sometimes you do have to cut your losses and not attempt break-neck attacks that will get everyone EXCEPT you killed.  He learns some responsibility.  Congrats Poe, you're the only person who gets a character arc and learns anything.
  
  Minor plot #2 involve Finn and...sigh...a new fan fiction author self-insert named Rose Tico.  Finn wakes up from his injury and immediately tries to run away. He gets captured and stunned by Rose, a self-described tech who 'squats behind pipes all day'...so she may actually be a plumber. But we'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she has some useful maintenance role.  She has a case of Finn-Hero-Worship...for unknown reasons. Finn accomplished nothing but surviving, sorta, in the last movie. Which seems to be enough for Rose.  They decide that they have a plan to stop the First Order from tracking the Resistance.  And that plan is....big breath here....
  They are going to go to a casino planet and find this master code breaker that the learn about from a skype call with Maz Kanata. They then intend to fly to the flagship of the First Order, sneak in, find the tracking device and insert a short delay in the tracking system to allow the Resistance to jump to safety without the First Order knowing that their tracking has been compromised. And then, we assume, they intend to sneak off the flagship...which is shooting at Resistance fleet...and fly back to the Resistance fleet...without getting shot down or discovered...and jump out with them.

Savor the stupidity in that plan. It's almost a monument to bad ideas.  And, giving some credit to writer/director Rian Johnson, it doesn't work. Finn and Rose fuck up in nearly every way it is possible to fuck up without actually having to deal with the consequences of their bad ideas.  They fail and fail and fail. Yet, they survive. Shame.

Minor Plots 1 and 2 rejoin as the Resistance tries to take shelter in an old abandoned Rebel base only to get most of the refugees killed trying to leave the Resistance flagship. They are cornered by Kylo Ren and the First Order almost immediately on the surface. Most of the Resistance is apparently killed (off-camera, as most important or dramatic things are done in this movie) but a few dozen escape by following space foxes to a unmapped hole out, which by sheer luck has Rey waiting on the other side to magically lift the blocking boulders and to fly away with the survivors in the Millennium Falcon, which seems to be the very last starship left to the Resistance after losing all the rest in combat.

Oh and Kylo Ren faces an astral projection of Luke Skywalker, who's stalling for time to let the heroes follow the foxed. Oh and he dies from the effort.

Yea? The End?

That's the plot. And it's terrible. It has one core good story, dealing with Rey and Kylo who are both spurned by those they seek approval from. They reach out to each other, seem to need each other, even....balance?...each other.  But they are very different people with very different outlooks on what they want. Not that Rey knows what she wants. At all. About anything.

The rest of the run time is spent in space battles and running around and trying dumb things. Now the dumb things mostly don't work, to the movie's credit. Sorta. But that just means Rian Johnson really is just wasting our time.  Why not spend this story and run time and the millions of dollars on good characters, spending time together, trying good ideas that may or may not work when they confront a competent enemy???
Why this fuckery? This failure? These new, terrible characters?  What is so infuriating about all this is that it's all fixable. Preventable.  And even worse is that the decisions that are made in this movie, most of the interesting and heroic stuff happens OFF CAMERA.

How is the First Order tracking the Resistance? No idea, Snoke is told about it off camera.
How does Rey escape from Snoke's flagship? No idea, it happens off camera.
How does Finn and Rose survive a massive explosion that kills hundreds of other people all around them at the moment that they're about to be executed?  No idea, it happens off camera.
How do Finn and Rose escape from Snoke's flagship?  No idea, it happens off camera.
How do Finn and Rose know how to even pilot a starship? No idea, again, their ability to fly a starship is just glossed over.
How does Rose know how to undo the jamming signal when she's just a maintenance tech?
How does Finn know the layout of Snoke's flagship when he was a janitor (supposedly) on Starkiller base?
How does Finn know anything about high level encryption? 
Why is a Resistance Admiral wearing a ball gown the entire movie?
How many people died on the abandoned Rebel base?
How many survived?
What was that cool mosaic design in the cave? Can we get a look at it on camera?

This movie is almost aggressively flipping off the audience and the fans of the series. And I haven't even gotten really into the mass of fail that is Rose Tico.
So let's do that!

Rose Tico is a chubby Asian woman who has some of the most cringe-worthy dialog this side of Tumblr. She's been described as this series' Jar-Jar Binks. And, yes, she's that bad.  She is awkwardly made a main character out of nowhere, Finn comes across her as he's trying to run away. She's crying over her dead sister, which is supposed to make us feel sorry for her I guess. Her dead sister, Paige Tico, heroically died bombing the First Order Dreadnaught.****  She catches Finn trying to run away, while gushing all over him. Naturally, she gets the drop on him and stuns him unconscious.  But when she's taking him to the brig, sensibly for him trying to desert in the face of the enemy (a shooting offense, even today, in theory), he tells her about the First Order being able to track the Resistance. And she seems to immediately know how they are doing it and how to stop it.

Savor that stupidity too. It's like a fine cheese, stinky and soft and filled with mold.

So Rose and Finn decide they're going to go find a code breaker that can get them into the secure room where the tracking device is kept. Where ROSE apparently is going to disable/jinx the tracking system so the Resistance fleet can escape.  This code breaker is on a casino planet where we get the privilege of listening to her make assumptions about who the people there are, how they made their money, their moral inferiority to her, Rose Tico and how terrible this planet full of people enjoying themselves is.  It is every bit as shrill and unenjoyable as it sounds.  She continues to be a scowly, lecturing killjoy.  And at near the end of the movie, when Finn is about to sacrifice himself to protect the Resistance...the first time he actually would make a difference in any of these movies...Rose knocks his ship aside and prevents it. But not before heavily implying that she loves Finn, kissing him...and conveniently 'falling unconscious' so she doesn't have to see the result of her unasked for kiss.  (Isn't that sexual assault under the current rules? Finn sure didn't ask to be kissed and didn't offer affirmative consent. I think in California, that's a crime now)

Rose is also the bestower of such wisdom as 'We won't win by fighting those we hate, but by saving those we love'.  Which, in a movie called Star WARS, in the middle of a fight against people who have/are/will be killing your friends might be the stupidest thing said on film.

Rose is terrible. Her acting is bad, her tone is snarky and passive-agressive when she's not being actively aggressive against people who haven't done a damn thing to her but exist. She has vague, undefined abilities and skills that somehow are plot critical and she gets to kiss the handsome boy at the end, tee hee. She feels like someone from a BAD fan fiction and I have no idea how she ended up in this movie.

But, bad as Rose is, it's not the most damning thing about this movie.  What's damning is...all the missed opportunities.  Rian Johnson is credited as the writer and the director.  There MUST have been other writers or direction given to him from either Kathleen Kennedy or someone at Disney.  There are too many strange fingerprints on this movie for it to me one writer's vision. Too many storytelling failures that make no sense coming from the director of 'Brick', which is actually a good modern noir movie.
We get cheated.  We, the audience, don't get to see our heroes doing smart things. We don't get to see them being competent. They don't win by skill or by having a good plan, they don't even win by luck. They succeed because page 27 says that they are now in location X.  We don't see them try, we just see them fail AND not suffer the consequences of that failure. We don't see them grow and learn.  The one exception is Poe.  No one else is taking on any new responsibilities or showing new resolve or even regret.

We don't see the rest of Poe's squadron in action, we don't get to know who they are, just that they died. Off Camera.  We're told of the results of Poe's recklessness, but we don't feel it.  No one with a speaking role dies in the opening fight.  His demotion is meaningless, his mutiny is meaningless, he isn't left to suffer and wait in the brig while his friends fight and die.

I feel like I should write another thousand words about Luke and how he got cheated by this story too.  We see Luke ready to kill his apprentice Kylo/Ben.  Seriously, he goes that far ,but we don't see what he sees. We don't get a scene of what Luke saw inside Kylo's mind or in his future.  We're told, over and over again, about 'I've seen your parents' or 'I see your future'. But we don't. Film is a fucking visual medium and we don't SEE any of this stuff.

We don't see Rey deciding to leave Kylo alive. We don't see her escape a burning starship. We don't see her DOING much of anything except levitating some bad CGI rocks. Oh and beating three trained killers at once.

But, you know, I don't even care about her being OP AF.  Rey being a Mary Sue is a trope itself at this point.  In this movie, she's a superhero. She's a Marvel character, she might as well be one of the Guardians of the Galaxy and be paling around with Drax.  She's so broken from anything connected to reality that I'm done trying to make her fit in with anything realistic.

What we do see, hazily, is that Rey doesn't feel connected to anyone or anything. This is ironic since, being so strong in the Force, she should in theory BE connected to everything and everyone. But she isn't. She's...incomplete.

So is Kylo Ren.  He has a huge amount of power (The scene in the Force Awakens when he freezes a blaster bolt in mid-air might be the single coolest thing I've ever seen in a movie) but he isn't given respect. He isn't feared and we wants to be. He's missing someone to respect him and give him their regard. Someone like...Rey?

That attraction and tension is the one, thin thread that keeps the Force Awakens from being an out-and-out bad movie.

This is supposed to be the 'low point' in the trilogy, but we don't get that from the characters. Despite having lost all their ships, most of their people, their only Jedi, everyone...EVERYONE is all perky and smug and self-righteous. What low point? Nobody is low.

Oh there were other good things in the movie was well, as I mentioned above but the movie doesn't work, logically. If it works at all, it has to work emotionally. Unfortunately, we don't get a resolution there either. And if this movie is any guide, we won't get any in the next movie.

Summary:

I can't recommend The Last Jedi, honestly. If you CAN skip it, and some of us can't, you're better off watching a Marvel movie.  If you have to watch it, try to find some of the good things to focus on and don't think about the plot.

*I have to stop putting quotes around the 'Resistance' but the question remains: who are they resisting? The Republic seems to be in power at the beginning of the Force Awakens.  Are they a non-government organization waging war outside the law?  Are they resisting the Republic?  The Rebels won at the end of the Return of the Jedi, right? So why is Leia still flying around getting people killed?

** Not that she acts at all dark-sidey.  Daisy Ridley seems incapable of doing anything but playing spunky and sincere. So that undercuts the 'dark side' business, as does painless and danger-free interactions with the dark side.  Wasted opportunity, one of many, many.

*** Missed opportunity #2 of many, many...we never find out what this tracking device is or how it works.  It would seem logical that there is some physical device on the Resistance flagship. Or maybe the First Order's tech is so good that now any of their ships can 'lock on' and track ships even after they jump to hyperspace. This is never explained and is used only as a plot McGuffin to allow the First Order to keep following the Resistance.

****You know what? Paige Tico would have made a good, new character. We see her to something competent and heroic.  There's no reason she couldn't have survived or been rescued, especially considering the other crap that happens in these movies.  She could have been a main character working with or sparring with Poe Dameron. Or if the stupid side plots HAD to happen, we at least know that she knows her way around a starship and that she has some military training.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is visually amazing and completely absurd.


I don't just mean that it's silly, it is and deliberately so, I think. I mean it's absurd in almost the sense Lewis Carroll's work is absurd.  Nothing is explained, things happen and you can either roll with it or try to understand it and drive yourself insane.

The comparisons to Luc Besson's previous work on the 5th Element are inevitable and deserved. The writing is marginally better than the 5th Element, the casting is mostly worse due to the horrible decision to give a job to Dale DeHaan, who combined Keanu Reeve's line delivery with the babyish body and face of 1990's Leonardo DiCaprio.  Seriously, Tom Holland portraying a 15 YEAR OLD BOY is more masculine.

Both movies present a fully realized, lived-in world. Both are visually stunning. Both seem to have been translated from French with some vital Gaullic logic not making the leap.  But let's do a quick overview of what we're dealing with here.

Plot:
Valerian (Dale 'duhhh' DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are 'agents' of the Earth Federal government. They are also seemingly military, with Valerian given the rank of Major and Laureline addressed as Sergeant occasionally.  Maybe that makes sense in France, but not in the US.  
  But the movie actually starts with two prologues. The first is a wordless exposition about Earth uniting and making first contact. The second is a gorgeous scene of sexy androgynous aliens living on a beach, collecting pearls and feeding them to little kitty/lizards which....shit out dozens of duplicate of whatever it's fed.  This legitimately idyllic life is shattered when spaceships fall out of the sky. Not land, but fall. Impacting.  The natives go poking around inside one of the fallen ships. Finally a really, really big, moon-sized spaceship falls and destroys the planet, including the space princess we've been following in this prologue.
  Cut to Valerian and Laureline flirting on a virtual beach, which involves some light hand to hand combat (played flirtatiously, not aggressively) and a marriage proposal. Now we have no idea who these characters are and this is how we're introduced to them. Maybe a better actor and actress could have sold this premise. Maybe. But I doubt it. I realize that for some in Europe, Valerian is an established comicbook character, but billions of people don't know that.  
  They go to a legitimately fascinating virtual market in their A.I. -controlled spaceship, meet with some military folks in funny hats and go to....recover some stolen property. Which turns out to be one of the kitty/lizard things from the prologue.  Action ensues, they bring the titular 'City of a Thousand Planets', a constantly-growing space station that started in Earth orbit but now drifts through space as a sort of UN mixed with a great trading hub populated by a thousand alien races, including humans.
  Once there, Valerian and Laureline meet a shady military commander, some less-shady military officers and end up as bodyguards to the shady officer. There is a problem on the space station, at the center of it is some supposedly irradiated zone that they can't find out what is inside. But they're pretty sure it's hostile as probes and patrols have been killed investigating.
  The sexy natives from the prologues appear with strange force fields and goo guns and kidnap the commander.  Valerian and Laureline give chase and have lots of adventures for about an hour of screen time. (Seriously, trying to writing down what happens and in what order would pretty much be like writing the screenplay treatment)
  Finally they discover that the shady military commander is being held by the sexy, androgynous, mental prodigy, ethically elevated, compassionate natives of the prologue.  The commander orders an attack on the aliens and then one on the soldiers themselves.  Laureline emotionally blackmails Valerian into giving the aliens the little kitty/lizard thing so they can finish their homemade spaceship and....make a new planet with it as well.  They kill the bad guys, arrest the commander and make out with Laureline possibly accepting the marriage proposal Valerian has been making to her every five minutes of screen time.

What worked:
The visuals are wonderful.  If you are lucky enough to be either mentally impaired enough to turn your brain off, or are aware of who these characters are before the movie was released, you're going to have a great time.

The script has some deftness and moral ambiguity.  The native paradise isn't destroyed through malice, but as legitimate collateral damage from a space battle happening overhead.  There's no malice in their destruction and there's some possibility that the humans didn't even know they were there. (The natives seem to be able to block sensor probes through their...magic.  I can't call it technology but whatever. Magical tech)  Likewise the cover up afterwards isn't nice but it makes sense and it isn't a 'military conspiracy', the Earth government, rightly or wrongly, signed off on it.  The military itself isn't portrayed as cliched bad guys.  This isn't a bad movie....not exactly.

The natives from the prologue feel like 'Avatar done right'.  Their society is beautiful but baffling and they seem kind, forgiving, sensual in ways humans should attain to. They are alien but the kind of aliens that actually do feel like they're 'better' than we are.  James Cameron had some stupid colonial or corporate axe to grind that ruined Avatar.  This movie doesn't fall into a polemical trap.  The aliens don't make sense, but they are rather likeable and we feel sorry for them.

Cara Delevingne does a much, much better job in this movie than she did in Suicide Squad. Give her a bikini and a good director and she can do ok. She has bit of the manic pixie girl, kickass martial artist vibe but not too annoyingly. She feels like a real person, to a point.

What didn't work:

Very little is established or set up.  What we do get often doesn't make sense.  Like the pearls being apparently 50 megatons. So are they bombs? How does it work? How do the natives use them? Have the natives had contact with the outside galactic world or not? In one scene, an alien broker clearly recognizes the pearls and the kitty/lizard thing. But how can that be possible if the planet was destroyed and hadn't had previous contact with the galaxy? Which must be the case since no one recognizes the natives or knows who they are.

That's just one tiny example.  Another one is what Valerian and Laureline can do.  I mean what gadgets they have and how they can be used. Good or bad, the James Bond movies mostly set up what gadgets he was getting and we could watch him use them.  Valerian just seems to randomly...do things or have things.  His space suit can let him charge through walls. He has some breathalyzer thing that has a robot inside it with a laser cutter. His gun sometimes freezes people, sometimes seems like a pea shooter. He has some kind of neck communicator but we don't know what it does or who it lets him talk to.  

Everything just sort of happens. Like Rhianna being in this.  As a stripper/whore. Who's a shapeshifting alien. Who dies, the first and only death Valerian and Laureline seem to care about.

The relationship doesn't work because we don't know these characters, most of us. So Valerian constantly proposing to Laureline makes no sense.  I won't go too much into how it's a very bad and very unprofessional thing to want to marry or bang your partners and subordinates, (those of you who are prior service have probably seen first hand just how much of a bad idea that is) but this is beyond a bad idea. It's baffling.  I'm not even sure how attracted the two of them are to each other. The opening beach flirting was fine but it's not sustained. And Valerian constantly bringing up the marriage proposal, at random moments, makes him feel more like a stalker than anything else.

Then you have her emotional blackmail at the end of the movie.  At the decision point of the film, there are two 'right' answers to the dilemma before them. They can give the kitty/alien thing to the natives so they can power up their spaceship and go to some new world. Or they can give it to their superiors as ordered. They are military...ish. And clearly under authority.  But Valerian doesn't give the kitty/lizard to the aliens because it's the right thing to do, no, he does because Laureline says she could never marry him unless he does exactly what she tells him to do. Even though he thinks it's the 'wrong' thing to do.  In what fucking part of the world does that make sense?

And this comes right on the heels of Valerian punching out his superior officer AND THEN turning around to say 'he's a soldier and he has to follow orders'. Right after that. The cognitive dissonance made the small audience I saw this with say 'what' and 'huh' out loud. And probably contributed to the cute redhead in the parking lot ranting about how terrible the movie was.

But the biggest problem, apart from the constant confusion about HOW things are happening, is Dale DeHaan.  I can't express just how much he ruins this movie with his line delivery and his air of unearned confidence.  I don't know how much of this is just me not liking his performance or his face and voice and everything else about him...and how much of it is the writing and direction.
  Bruce Willis anchored the 5th Element with a relatable persona. He felt like a guy. A man. Dale DeHaan feels like a pre-teen underwear model....and there's an actual underwear model in the movie acting circles around him!

Summary:

The cool factor is going to make or break the movie for most viewers. If you find everything in this movie 'cool', (and there is cool stuff here) you're going to like it.  If you need things like 'set up' and 'pay off' or 'explanations' or 'logic', then you might have an aneurism. 

TL;DR - Wonder Woman is an entertaining super hero movie with action, beautiful women and characters that feel like real people despite an unrealistic script and story.

So I saw Wonder Woman twice over the weekend and it was the first DC movie I liked.  Wonder Woman goes a long way towards proving my belief that character trumps everything. If I like the characters and want them to succeed, I can avoid nit picking a movie to death. But, boy, are there nits to pick in this movie.

But over all, I like it. I was entertained.  It isn't really ABOUT anything in the way the Christopher Nolan Batman movies were.  But I enjoyed watching this movie far more than any of the Nolan films. Much of the credit goes to Gal Godot and Chris Pine and whoever cast them together.

The plot was thin but it worked to move us from place to place with a very clear motivation...right up until the final twist.  But there were 3 credited writers (include gold-into-lead transmuter Zach Snyder) and the script is frankly a mess. Sometimes the dialog is witty and fun and sometimes the dialog is Sam Witwicky-esque jumbles of stammering and inarticulate inability to convey simple words*. So let's talk about the plot.


Plot:
  On the hidden island of the Amazons, a race of immortal women train endlessly for an eventual war they believe is coming from the god of war, Ares.  Diana is the only child on the island, supposedly crafted from clay and given life by Zeus.**  She grows up, beloved and fearless and sheltered by her mother who loves her very much but doesn't want her trained as a warrior.
  However, Diana never likes to do what she's told and decides to learn to fight with some help from her aunt, Antipoe.
  The Amazons are superheroes, all.  Faster, stronger, more agile and able to understand hundreds of languages, each.  They are the Ubermench of Nietzsche and the hot chicks of millennia of fantasies***. Diana however, is even more so.  Even from childhood, she's wearing some sort of magical bracers (which are never explained) but are shown to be items of great power. Likewise, the Amazons have a variety of magic items in their treasurehouse that do a variety of amazing things...mostly unexplained again, except for the magic lasso of Hestia.
  Into this world, hidden by the god Zeus before he died (All the gods except Ares are supposedly dead by the time of the movie, all killed by Ares), comes a man. Steve Trevor, an American spy working for the British, crash lands near the island, pursed by Turkish sailors.  Diana rescues him from his crashed biplane and she and the Amazons kill the pursuing Turks, but not without losses to the Amazons, including Diana's aunt/tutor, Antiope.
  Steve is interrogated and he tells them about WW 1 (it's never called The Great War, for some reason, except in newspaper clippings). Diana seizes on news of this war as proof of Ares being out and about and doing bad things. She declares she will go, find him, kill him and everyone will be nice and peaceful again. Yes, really.****  Steve agrees to lead her to Ares as a way to get off the island and get back to England. (There's a McGuffin about some poison gas and a notebook but it's really just a plot convenience and honestly not a great or believable one)
  Once in England, there's some culture shock but quickly enough, Diana is back on her track to find the front lines and there find and confront Ares*****.  
  Diana kills the German general and does in fact confront Ares. But Steve Trevor dies destroying poison gas which is on some timer or other.  His death gives Diana the power and rage to kill Ares....and a bunch of other Germans. And everyone takes off their gas masks and hugs, Germans and Allies alike. Yes really.
  Finally, in the framing denouement, we have a mission statement where we see Diana in modern day apparently fighting crime in Paris or something. 

What I liked:
  Character, character, character.  Character hooks you, character keeps you watching.  Gal Godot is stunning. Chris Pine is pretty, witty and strong.  Even the second, third and fourth banana characters work.  Why? Because they're likeable or entertaining, because they care about things: about causes, about each other.  Maybe they aren't all good people, but they are trying to do good and we give them credit for that.

  Paradise Island/Themascyra is lovely and perfect and timeless.  Most of the product design work and CGI is top notch. This is a A-class movie and it looks it.

  The camera work is almost mostly good. The action is framed so you can see the actors whole bodies. There is no shaky-cam. Even the camera angles chosen skirt the line between drama and give a hint of cheesecake now and then without being overly gratuitous (the only nudity in the movie, sadly, is Chris Pine's)

  Wonder Woman's costume. Classic, flattering, sexy as hell. No sign of pants anywhere. And why should she? Body shaming is clearly no part of Amazon culture.


  It was not a screeching, feminist mess.  God, it sure could have been. But Diana doesn't hate men, neither does the movie. It doesn't hate women, either. Diana is allowed to be beautiful and strong, determined and clear-minded.  If it's feminist, it's feminist by example with a superior example of womanhood at the center of it. Some of the bad guys are women, some of the good guys are men.  There's no sexual drama...though there is touch of sexual humor and tension, which is both welcome and appropriate. Ah DC, we thought you had forgotten humanity.

  And that's what I want to end on before the negativity: these feel like people. Real people. Or people you wished were real.  And that Paradise Island allowed visitors or more immigration.  Those Amazons need to stop electing Trump. #FreeThemascyra

What I didn't like:
WW 1 setting - World War 1 or The Great War as it was called at the time******  WW1 is a mess, a confusing mess with very few clear good guys or bad guys. The Germans get the 'bad guy' label but the French weren't lilly-white, the Brits used poison gas and bombed civilians too, the Russians were Russian messes, the Astro-Hungarians were greedy but evil? Nah.  The US was basically propagandized into the war with British help and probably got into the fight with the 'purest' motives.  But these were not, by and large, evil people on either side of No Man's Land.  Getting Wonder Woman involved in this war, of all wars, is a confusing choice.  WW 2 would be a much better choice given her outlook, her history and the nature of the two sides in that war.
  Relatedly, having Wonder Woman fight normal Germans feels a lot like a monster truck fighting tricycles.  She never gets hurt or threatened by them. So it's just slaughter. G-rated slaughter, but still.

The dialog - though in most places, the dialog snaps and sparkles, there were several times where the writing is just terrible. When Steve is trying to explain why wars happen and frelling CAN'T seem to.  And several other times with Steve Trevor is just a stammering mess who can't seem to speak clearly. This isn't Chris Pine, the other, better-written scenes shine with him.
  Likewise the 'message' of the movie is terribly articulated: "It isn't about deserving, it's about what you believe'??? WTF? What? What do you believe? How does that relate to deserving  What if you believe something bad (see WW 2)?  This whole movie hangs on this denouement and it feels like it's missing fucking words.  "It isn't about deserving, it's about Justice", that's one possibility. "it isn't about deserving, it's about Grace" is even clearer. But this movie, for all its talk of gods with a small 'g', stays well away from religion and morality, to it's detriment.  But that dovetails nicely into my next thing.

The gods - The cosmology of this movie is muddy.  Zeus created mankind, fine.  Ares decided he hated men and so he corrupted/whispered to them? So why is there a god of War before humanity is made?  How was he able to kill all the other gods, especially..oh...ATHENA? Or fucking Zeus for that matter, who is a Titan, not a god?  And then Zeus dies, somehow. It doesn't seem like Ares kills him, since Zeus defeats Ares in this movie. But then he either fathers a child with Hippolyta or gives the clay child life...which if he's dead, how does that work? And the Amazons revere the gods, but the gods are dead, so is it an ancestor worship kind of reverence?
  Those would normally be nit picks only, if it wasn't for the fact that it's tied up so much with Wonder Woman's origin. The movie contradicts itself.  Which bears it's own point:

The movie contradicts itself - Ares is the source of all evil in the world and if he's killed, men will be 'good' again. This is said as a rote and a fervent belief by Wonder Woman and we're supposed to roll our eyes at it. And sure enough, in a horribly written scene, Steve Trevor tries to explain that a Greek god is NOT the cause of all war and suffering...that we humans are the source******* But then when Ares IS killed by Wonder Woman, everyone is hugging each other at the end. But we know that WW 2 happens in the world. And worse, even.  So which is it, movie? Is she right or wrong?
  
Ares is misused, mis-cast and mistaken.  No disrespect for David Thewlis, I like him as an actor, but he doesn't work as Ares.  Ares' plan for an armistice makes zero sense. Why would a god of War be pushing for an armistice? It makes no sense...unless he knows how bad the Treaty of Versailles is going to be (how?) and knows WW 2 will be worse (how?) So his plan makes no sense, his plan to try to convince Diana to join him makes no sense. His decision to tell her that SHE is the godkiller, not the sword, is silly. 

The lighting during Diana x Steve's kiss. The camera and lighting work in every other scene is at least good. But this scene, an important scene for both characters, is so underlit that you can't even see the kiss. I saw this movie in two different theaters, so I don't think this is a bad print. Just a very bad decision on someone's part.

The Dress up scene - the movie comes to a screeching halt when they get to England. The dress up scene might be 'required' (the opening shot of Wonder Woman starts with her shoes, which tells you a bit about the target audience, maybe) but it isn't needed. Eta Candy (ugh, the puns) isn't needed either. Even the fight vs the thugs  in the alley could have been cut.

They use a real person, General Ludendorff as the 'main' bad guy.

And we're getting into nit picks now, so let me go through some rapidly:

The Adriatic sea is not one night's sail away from England.
Boats don't sail themselves.
There appears to be a Walther P38 used by General Ludendorff in one scene, which didn't exist yet +
Despite having just had sex, Steve and Diana show no signs of lingering affection or flirting.
Indian character in movie only as a way of tainting Steve with white guilt
The Turkish warship, with guns immeasurably more powerful than rifles, sinks and disappears off screen somehow.
Gas bombs will somehow turn the tide of war at the very moment the war is ending. Somehow.
The gas would also kill Germans.
This is seen as a good idea by a professional German officer 
There's a timer on the gas bombs but we're never shown them nor are we explained why there are timers
The plane with the gas bombs isn't simply blows up on the ground with fire.
The women who has poisoned and murdered thousands, some on camera, is let go.
Near misses by mortar rounds don't cause damage from explosion or fragmentation.
The movie is poorly edited in places, like when Diana calls England Hideous despite showing the beauty of London Bridge.
Most of Diana's magical items are not explained about what they are or what they do
Sometimes Diana can fly, sometimes she just jumps real far
Discovering she's super strong doesn't seem to cause a big reaction from Diana.
4 Engine bombers are viewed as some super weapon but they had been around since 1917
General Ludendorff is actually the general who suggested the German army sue for peace as early as September 1918.
Wonder Woman's equipment appears and disappears at random. She's almost never shown actually wearing all the stuff she's carrying.
Wonder Woman has a sword but not a sheath, making it very impractical to carry for any length of time.
There are no naked Amazons, not even in their art.


Summary:

All right, some are more serious objections than others, I won't deny that. But I also won't deny that I really enjoyed watching this movie. Gal Godot is adorable and admirable in this movie and Steve Trevor is heroic and intimidated by Wonder Woman.

There is a cost to victory and people who are friends actually seem to be real friends.

Recommended.

Footnotes:

*Was Shia LaBeouf supposed to be cast as Steve Trevor originally?

** This is a little confusing, theology aside, as I'm not sure if it was contradicted by Ares stating that Diana was the offspring of Zeus and Hippolyta. Which makes her divine offspring. Either way, she doesn't seem to need to breathe, at least during the gas attack.

*** And I'm ok with both of those things. My usual objection of super barbies is that normal women, even trained athletes can't compete in hand to hand combat with even average men. They just can't, I've seen it first hand over and over. But if you've got magic or super powers, sure, game on. I will buy into that reality because that's the world that's presented in the film/comic/book.

**** One of the very charming and endearing things about Wonder Woman in this movie is how pure and naive she is.  She sees the world as black and white...but mostly white with only a few black spots that she can snip out and then the world will be fine all over. But her goodness and optimism and innocence really works for her as a character. She's powerful but oddly gentle, the way Superman should have been.

***** The fact that this works is an example of plot contrivance triumphing over good storyteling. To the movie's detriment.

******Along with 'The war to make the world safe for Democracy', because the Allies were democratic regimes...mostly. Russia wasn't.  And the Central Powers were largely aristocracies.  Also there was 'The War to End All Wars', which IS used in the movie, but wasn't common at the time outside the US. Also Woodrow Wilson was a dick, there I said it.

******* Concepts that go back centuries or longer, to Augustine and further. But more recently articulated clearly by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.

+ It MIGHT have been a P08 Luger but it wasn't well framed and I didn't see the twin knurled knobs back on the rear of the pistol which are a dead giveaway of a Luger.  So half a nit to pick.

TL;DR - It's fun, go see it. Let it make you laugh.


The first Guardians of the Galaxy was the most fun I'd had in a movie theater since 1999.  I just sat in gaping amazement and wonder. I loved the world. I wanted to live in it. I wanted to BE Peter Fucking Quill.  It is one of my top 5 movies of all time. Sure, it has flaws* but none of them detracted from the movie for me.

So the stakes were high for the sequel. As much as I tried to manage them, I was afraid the sequel would disappoint me.  And the good news is, it did not disappoint.  I just want to keep watching these characters have adventures for as long as Bautista, Pratt and Cooper want to make them.

The sequel is more of a comedy, detached almost entirely from the larger Marvel plotlines and it feels like it's targeting a younger audience.  It works very well as a stand alone movie, even if you haven't seen the first film, the relationships between the characters is clear from the very beginning. It isn't as much of an action movie as the first movie, there is action in it but it's not the focus. Literally, from the first scene, the movie makes that clear. The first action scene with the Guardians verses a huge tentacle monster is shown in the background and out of focus as we follow Baby Groot as he dances around to Mr. Blue Sky.  It's telling you right up front what kind of movie this is going to be.

Plot:
  The main story point here is finding out who Peter Quill's father is, there's a pair of secondary plots dealing with Yondu (blue arrow whistling guy) from the first movie and a new faction of Great Golden Ones called the Sovereign.
  Basically, the Guardians are hired by the Sovereign to fight a space monster and keep it from devouring special valuable batteries.  The monster is defeated but Rocket steals a bunch of of the batteries and the Sovereign send an army of space drones to destroy the Guardians. They are saved by Peter Quill's father, who turns out to be a Celestial named 'Ego', who basically is a living planet that can incarnate into Kurt Russell. Because if you could, wouldn't you?
  Ego takes Peter, Drax and Gamorra to his planet and they meet a cute antenna-wearing alien named Mantis, who is cute and empathic. Ego seems to regard Mantis as a pet who can help him sleep with her powers.
  Meanwhile, the Sovereign hire Yondu's Ravagers to capture the Guardians to bring back for execution for theft and rudeness.  However Yondu isn't interested in catching Quill, when Yondu's crew discover this, he's deposed in a mutiny.  Rocket and Baby Groot escape with Yondu, killing all the Ravagers in return. They rejoin the rest of their friends on Ego's planet to discover all is not well.
  Because Ego, despite seeming to legitimately love Peter's mom and wanted to be a father to Quill - especially when he discovers that Peter has the Celestial genes - has a purpose. And that is to spread to cover all the planets in the galaxy, to make all life....him.  To do that, he needs the power of two Celestials, which means him and Peter. However, due to the distracting power of cute girls from Missouri (which is a real thing), Ego put the tumor in her head that kills her, so he wouldn't be tempted to forget his purpose and age and die on Earth.
  When Peter finds out about Ego's action, he attacks him. And, with the help of his friends, they manage to blow up Ego's brain at the center of the planet.

Themes:
  First of all, the Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 aims to entertain. It's meant to be fun. It is a light hearted movie...with murder and cancer and child abduction...you know for a movie with poop jokes, it's got a serious dark side.  But most of that is only there if you think about it and the movie first and foremost wants you to laugh.  The jokes come fast and furious (see what I did there?), and basically every word out of Drax's mouth is hilarious. The colors are bright and vivid and beautiful.  And, strange as it may seem, the goal of a superhero movie to make you feel positive emotions....isn't universally embraced.  *cough*DC*couch* But there's no political allegory here, no religious axe to grind, it's not divisive or about anything except having fun and...well...loving your family.
  Family is a popular movie theme. Almost too much, so. If you had a drinking game where you took a shot of Patron every time someone said 'family' in the latest Fast and the Furious movie, you'd die. But I will say that the Guardians of the Galaxy does this theme well. We see Peter's mother die in front of him, with Peter refusing to take her hand when she asks him.  Then he gets abducted by Yondu and separated from everyone else he knows.  That and him never knowing his father means that he has, in the actual text of the movie, some pretty strong desires to have a family and to know his father.  So I'm glad they didn't shoot this theme in the first movie.  
  Likewise, the 'C' or 'D' plot in Guardians 2 is Gamora and Nebula, how they never treated each other like sisters.  But that both wanted that, apparently. It's probably the weakest part of the movie but it stays with the theme.
  It's said pretty explicitly that the Guardians are a family, not just for Peter but for each other.  Drax had a family but lost it to Ronan.  Gamora was raised in a survival-of-the-fittest environment overseen by the mad titan who slaughtered HER family. Rocket was created in a lab by scientists that didn't give a trash panda's crap for him.  Groot seems to be the only one of his kind. All these survivors banded together in the first movie and in the second movie, those bonds are even stronger. It's almost a 'ever after' movie, where we see what happens after the happy ending of a story.  And just like in real life, families aren't always easy or comfortable or peaceful. What they are, at least in this movie, is THERE.  Family shows up. Family cares.  And, in the end, that includes Yondu. Which surprised me, in a good way.
  Finally, under the layer of giggles and rainbows, there are some pretty dark things here. Baby Groot kills a guy and cuts off someone's toe. Sure, both were 'funny' but it does but a little spin on things.  You see a Ravager get spaced while his killers taunt him as he dies in vacuum.  Yondu and Rocket massacre dozens of the mutinous Ravagers. Ego has been killing what looks like hundreds of his children AND he gave cancer to the woman he loved. Yondu had been trading in children, bring them to Ego, for years. Space hookers. Howard the Duck exists.


What worked:
Let's start with Yondu.  Silly as he may look and silly as that arrow may be to some people, Yondu's character arc worked for me.  One of the antagonists in the first movie, he gets unexpected depths and is capable of surprising tenderness and self-sacrifice. He isn't a nice person and he says that he's 'never done anything right' but he has a right end.  And he's been protecting Peter for most of his life, even if that life isn't what it could have been back home, it's better than bring turned over to someone who might just kill him for not carrying the right genes.

The humor. I laughed a lot during this movie.  Humor is subjective, but there were many quotable jokes and situational hilarity.  Some were revealed in the trailers but I don't know anyone, even people who say they didn't like the movie, who didn't laugh while it was playing.

The universe. The Marvel cosmic universe is large, strange and dangerous. And it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. From robotic brothels to gold-tinted arrogant supremicists, the more we see, the weirder and cooler things get. Until someone can be both a planet and a floating space brain and Kurt Russell and it doesn't seem impossible.

The emotion.  Because despite the silliness and jokes and weirdness, what grounds me is the characters. They feel real. They have real emotions and those feelings matter to them. Some carry their pain stoically, like Drax. Some use it to push others away, like Rocket. And some are just angry little trees who are too adorable to kill.

The characters. The performances here vary from incredibly good to good enough.  But we get to learn more about these people and we learn it mostly by seeing them interact with each other. There's less exposition here than in the first movie and though things are spelled out explicitly at times (which is useful when you're trying to appear to a broad audience that doesn't always notice subtle things), mostly we learn by what we're shown. We see Peter trying to deepen his relationship with Gamora..or start one. And we see that even Gamora is a little more light-hearted than her angry demeanor suggests. Even the least developed character, Baby Groot, is an entertaining and ultimately useful member of the family.

What didn't:

Gamora. I won't go as far as some critics and say she doesn't have a vagina (seriously Max Landis?) but her reluctance to show interest in Peter is wearing thin.  In the first movie, she at least seems tempted and in here, she even dances a few steps with Peter, but on the whole she's the weak point.  She's almost a mother figure, the humorless one who is trying to get everyone to behave. And that gets old.  Zoe Saldana isn't a great performer, she can be wooden and her character acts about as sensual as a concrete block. You want to tell Peter to move on and hook up with the Golden One after all. She at least seems interested in some pelvic sorcery.

Nebula. I like the look of the character but the performance is almost always one-note.  Though, ironically, she comes closer to the dangerous sensuality of the comic book version of Gamora in some scene.  But her whole desire to kill and then befriend Gamora is just too abrupt. She didn't ruin the movie but she needs depth, more than just someone new she wants to kill.

Lazy storytelling.  Although the plot hasn't been the strong suit in either movie, at least the first Guardian's movie was clear.  There were very few hand-waving coincidences compared to this movie.  From convenient rising pillars in Ego's core, to being able to fly into a planet via blasting to Ego's brain apparently being unable to deal with a bomb despite having complete control over all molecules near him...there are plot...conveniences here.  Sadly, some could have been fixed with just a minute or two of screen time. Just give Gamora and Nebula flight disks. Or explain tell us that Peter is able to distract Ego from being able to use all his powers while they're fighting.

The turd joke. Yes, I laughed, both times.  But c'mon. You don't need to go there, James Gunn.

Summary:

Primarily a sci-fi comedy about family, there are both darker events and more subtle storytelling at work here than you might give it credit for at first. It rewards re-watching.  If it falls short of the first movie, it doesn't shame it or itself.

Recommended.


*So does Gone with the Wind, The Treasure of Sierra Madre and just about every movie every made. Except maybe Casablanca...maybe.

A Tale of two Wicks.

 
TL;DR review – both are good to great action movies. Keanu can act but not deliver dialog. Storytelling is not all verbal.
 
The John Wick movies take place in a slightly-fantasy version of New York. Not full on Harry Potter fantasy but it’s a world where there are hitmen everywhere (and I mean, EVERYWHERE, especially in Chapter 2), they are semi-organized and the police pretty doesn’t exist except to deliver funny dialog. But most of the fantasy is in the world building. The fights and stunts are very grounded, very ‘tactical’ as opposed to a wire-fu martial arts film or even a Hong Kong action film of John Woo’s glory days.  But if you suspect disbelief just a little, these are very good action movies.
 
In essence, these movies are Westerns, just transplanted to New York and Rome.  John Wick is the retired gunslinger who is brought back from retirement, first by a need for revenge and then by threats and compulsions. He is the reluctant warrior with an enviable reputation that also causes him problems.  There is also a ‘code’ of honor among these assassins and the organization they are affiliated with.  This is part of the suspension of disbelief again but if you buy into it, it is just as satisfying as any samurai flick.
 
Plot:
The two movies take place within days (or maybe hours) of each other, so I think we can talk about both plots at once.  I’m going off memory so this may not be as well-researched as it could be.
John Wick was a top shelf assassin for hire until he met, fell in love and married a woman from outside that world. He left, with great difficulty, the world of murder-for-hire behind. However, when John Wick 1 starts, his wife has just died. We start off seeing John grieving, going through his vast, empty house alone. Then a message from beyond the grave appears: his wife bought him a puppy and attached a note. Asking John to let himself keep loving, through the puppy, named Daisy.

One relic from his old life is a 1969 Mustang in pristine condition. A punk Russian mobster sees the car and tries to pressure John into selling it.  John refuses, the punk breaks into Wick’s house, steals the car and murders the puppy out of spite but leaves John Wick alive, not knowing who he is.  When Wick awakens, he buries the pup, goes looking for his car and returns to his old assassin life seeking revenge.  The rest of the plot of John Wick 1 is him finding and killing the Russian punk, who happens to be the son of a well-connected Russian mobster known to John in his old days*.

John Wick 1 introduces us to John, his reputation and offers a little glimpse into the alternate world they inhabit. Including old friends like Wilem Dafoe’s Marcus and old rivals like Adrianne Palicki’s Perkins. It also shows us the Continental, a luxury hotel run by Ian McShane’s Winston that offers a safe haven against violence and coordinates the distribution of contacts.  No killing is permitted in the Continental. This assassin world uses gold coins both as currency and as a way of showing that you ‘belong’ to that world. These coins are shown to be precious and we see that John Wick has quite a store of them saved up.

John Wick 2 starts off right after John Wick gains his revenge and his old associates come calling to call in a ‘marker’ to force him to kill again.  John tries to refuse but after his home is destroyed and all other attempts at reason and negotiation fail, John agrees to kill a former friend and ally.  After doing so, he is stabbed in the back and a large contract is put on his head. John manages to elude a vast number of assassins, with some assistance from sympathetic or otherwise criminals who allow him to kill the man who forced him out of retirement. However, John kills him inside the Continental Hotel, which results in John losing all immunity and access to the special resources the assassins enjoy. The second movie ends with what seems like a vast number of killers world-wide looking for him, seeking to collect the multi-million dollar bounty on his head.


What worked?
The movie has some of the best gun fighting in it since Way of the Gun or 13 Hours. The choreography is very well done and Keanu Reeves seems to have done most of his own stunts. He certainly has done his prep work and comes off as an older, lethal gunman. Sort of like a sadder-but-wiser Neo without all the magic powers. 
 
I also want to call out Keanu’s acting.   In 2000’s The Gift, I saw Keanu actually Act for the first time.  And he really impressed me here. He really can act. What he can’t do is dialog. Luckily for him, I doubt John Wick says 100 words total in each movie. It is a very terse performance and he emotes very well in it.

The writing worked well for me, too. The first script comes off as a bit rote but it builds this alternate world well, it has some great understated dialog and it has people who have what feel like real lives. Sure, many of the gunmen literally have red shirts (in the Red Circle scene of the first movie) but the speaking role characters all have relationships that don’t revolve around John Wick.  I like the way people reacted to John Wick, both in the humorous way of ‘are you working again, John?’ as well as more human ways of people being glad to see him, having missed him. You can see that John had a life here, had friends and even lovers. Stuff like that makes a fictional world feel real and its important the more ‘out there’ your fictional world is.

The movies worked emotionally as well. The death and aftermath of the puppy’s death still affect me, the way the blood trails shows how it dragged its broken body along to lie beside the unconscious John. Jeez…
Or seeing how his wife, Helen’s, death affected him and his longing for the life he had with her.  You see what he cares about and see people caring about him and that makes us, as an audience, care about John Wick too.

The second movie also did a great job of constantly raising the stakes on John. The numbers of people after him keeps going up, his obstances get higher and higher, the stakes if he fails and in the end, if he succeeds, keep rising. Things keep getting worse, even as he surmounts each obstacle. The script is a great example of how to write a ‘it gets worse’ story without turning the character into a sad sack punching bag.  The second movie also expands the world, taking us international and showing us the vast criminal network of this world. Derke Kolstad, the screenwriter, seems to have been a fan of the 100 Bullet’s graphic novel. As the ‘High Table’ of crime families feels a great deal like the ruling families of the Trust in the graphic novel. Even the assassins start to feel a bit like uncommitted  Minutemen of that graphic novel.

We also see things being taken from John, irrevocably.  His wife, his dog, his phone with the video from his wife, his house, his security with The Continental. John keeps losing everything he wanted to hang onto, leaving nothing but his lethal skills for him to cling too. A skilled screenwriter will find some way to give him something new to cling to after putting him through hell in John Wick 3.

Gun porn. I love it.

What didn’t work?

There’s some repetition of dialog in the second movie that felt odd after watching both films back to back.  Word for word descriptions of John Wick seem to have been copy/pasted from John Wick 1. That’s just lazy. 
For a fairly realistic movie with people who want John Wick dead, he survives being captured too many times. The ending fist fight between John and the Russian mob boss was odd and almost embarrassing, given the fitness and age differences between the two actors.

The framing scene that opens (and almost ends) the first movie: John bleeding, stumbling, watching the video of his wife, that felt awkward and staged. It worked ok the first time but doesn’t hold up on rewatch.

Wilem Dafoe’s assassin character was a little too easy to surprise and kill off. It felt like he was written out, not resolved.

The opening car scene from John Wick 2 was exciting but it didn’t matter to the plot of the movie and could/should have been cut.
Some of the CQB fights are too repetitive. It was all arm-lock into headshot, over and over. Or it felt that way. The first movie had more versatility in the fights.

There didn’t seem to be a strong enough motivation for John to violate the rules of the Continental hotel just to kill the guy who hired him. Yeah, he stabbed him in the back and put a price on his head but that shouldn’t be a new scenario.

Too many assassins. On the one hand, ratcheting up the stakes by sending almost everyone after John is good screenwriting. But it started to get silly. And you don’t want silly in a John Wick movie. When you have homeless hit men and random subway busker hitmen, you’re starting to approach the Warriors-level of silly street gangs.  Less is more. A handful of Replacement Killers (men of John’s caliber) is more memorable and cool than hitman bus drivers and hitman waitresses or whatever else the next level of goofiness is.  Show respect for the craft, man. Show respect for your world.

Summary:

Two damn fine action movies. I think I prefer the second movie a bit more for the action and I like the first one a bit more for the acting/emotions.  If you don’t mind violence for violence’s sake in your movies, you’ll have a good time.



*The Mob boss seems to be a former employer of John Wick or in some way he was able to command Wick’s services before letting him retire. It isn’t clear if he was one of the High Table families but if not, they certainly have power and influence in New York.

Why are the fan posters so much better than the offical one, above?  Kind of off topic, let's begin.
 
TL;DR review – It’s ok. It’s short on wonder, long on grimness and bloodless combat.  The Rebels are indeed revealed to be kind of scummy but the Empire is still bad, so it’s ok to sit on their corpses.  More of a war movie than a space opera.

Longer, boy you have time on your hands, review:

I’m going to try something different from my ‘what worked, what didn’t formula from previous reviews.

Orson Scott Card came up with the acronym MICE for writing science fiction.
Milieu – The world or setting
Idea – A cool sci-fi concept
Character- Interesting characters you like and want to follow
Event – Or a plot-based story that hooks you based on the events of the story.

A knock out story has all four elements but you really only need to do one well to have a ‘good’ or at least ‘ok’ story.  All are important, though and screwing one or more up usually results in bad or cheesy science fiction.  This is a great tool to evaluate whether a story is objectively good*.  So let’s talk about Rogue One in terms of MICE.
 
First of all, they nailed the Milieu. This movie feels like it’s part of the Star Wars universe. A gaggle of odd aliens and cultures all jumbled together with enough humans around to give you something to hang onto and identify with. You’ve got spaceships, blasters, the Empire, The Force…all the world stuff that Lucas helped create and that the good Star Wars movies feature.  It’s right up there with Force Awakens in giving us the ‘lived in’ world that the first** trilogy created and we loved.  I can’t praise the production design team enough, they made a Star Wars movie. Well done.  And for a lot of fans, this is all you need to enjoy yourself.  Tie Fighters, X-Wings, blasters, AT-ATs, Stormtroopers to kill by the hundred, they’re all here.  And there are some folks who are knocking the movie for not introducing enough ‘new stuff’ in this movie (There’s one new armed troop transport that I wasn’t personally aware of, the U-Wing, it gets a lot of screen time), this is set in a specific time period in the films, just before Star Wars (1977), so TIE fighters and X-wings are to be expected.  It’s like showing off Panzer IV-D tanks in a WW 2 film…it’s what was around and being used.
    They did screw up some of the continuity of the first Star Wars, however.  The Rebel Blockade Runner with Princess Leia in it didn’t seem like it was running FROM the Death Star. And C-3PO and R2D2 didn’t seem to know much about the Rebel alliance, far from being AT THE FRELLING REBEL BASE as the’re shown here in Rogue One.  Likewise, Leia was supposed to be a Senator but she just seems to be hanging around a space battle in this Rogue One. The plans R2D2 had had to be analyzed by the Rebellion in Star Wars, they then discovered a vulnerability to exploit. In Rogue One, Jyn TELLS them what the vulnerability is and then they go looking for the plans. Huh???  Oh and apparently you can just push Star Destroyers into each other, causing massive damage to both and the ‘pushing’ ship somehow isn’t destroyed or shot to pieces.  The scale of the Star Destroyers seems to have been lost.  There are other small injustices to the Star Wars continuity but unless you’re a nit-picker like I am, you may not notice.

The Idea here is a little thin but it’s there.  It’s the ‘how did the Rebels get the plans to the first Death Star?’ story. There isn’t really a clever idea here or concept. This isn’t a story about race relations in Star Wars or droid rights, or even how star drives have changed the galaxy.  If you want to be very technical, Star Wars isn’t really Science Fiction.  There’s very little science in here. This is Space Fantasy.  And that’s ok.  But the only other idea at work here is ‘war is messy and it can be vicious’ and ‘not all the Rebels were nice people’.  It’s a baby step towards showing more complexity in the Star Wars universe and I applaud that at least.

Character is where the movie mostly falls on its face.  The two main leads are neither likeable nor interesting.  There’s very little character development.  Jyn Erso makes Rey from The Force Awakens seem like a fireball of charisma.  Jyn is sullen drifts through the movie until she’s inexplicably called upon to deliver speeches.  Cassian Andor is a slimy, weasely little man who murders people who are on his side. He is also a black hole of charisma.  It really does show how important casting and writing is in making good characters. Heck, good casting can almost make up for bad writing. Orson Crennic is almost interesting or could have been with a little more care given to his character.  But it’s not all bad, the leads are terrible but there are two supporting characters that do have good writing and charisma: the blind Chirrit Imwe*** and the droid K-2SO. Honestly, the dialog isn’t bad here, though. There’s one groan-inducing line that’s inexplicably given to Darth Vader (Vader should not do one-liner’s folks, he’s not James Bond) and one Star Wars verbal cliché that gets cut off, but the rest of the movie felt like real people talking…except during the speechifying scenes. It’s not as bad as in Gods and Generals but it’s close. Mind you, I think if you’re going to have Darth Vader in your movie, USE him. Make him the building threat.
    One of the many problems with Jyn is she lacks motivation and transformation. We aren’t given a chance to know the character, we don’t see her interact with anyone before the plot kicks off. We don’t know what her deal is, what she’s like so we can’t really get interested in her as a person. And we certainly can’t believe her transformation from skittish criminal to impassioned Rebellion true believer 
    Worse, what we see of Cassian Andor makes us like him even less, as he murders an informant who’s just trying to give him information and get away, alive (seriously, this is some Gestapo-level shit he pulls). Then later he shoots a rebel attacking imperial troops for no reason I could see on one viewing. He’s also ordered to kill Jyn’s Death Star-building father and if he’d done that, I’d at least given him the respect of being consistent. But they screw that up to.  There’s no Peo Dameron here, no Han Solo, heck there’s no Kylo Ren here.  I don’t know if it’s bad casting, bad writing or maybe bad direction.  On the whole, I think Gareth Edwards did well here, so I don’t know what went wrong here. But it did go wrong in the character department.

Finally, the Event or Plot of Rogue One isn’t great. It might even bad.  I’m tempted to just do a huge list of questions that this movie doesn’t answer but that might get boring. I do want to start with one huge flaw.  There is an old saying that ‘Hope is not a plan’, when it comes to military operations. Yet, that’s EXACTLY what the Rebel plan to steal the Death Star data is.  They just are going to sneak in and hope they can find the plans.  This is such a huge screw up.  Instead of a cool series of scenes where the Rebels find the plans and scheme to get them, they Rebels just go in, blow stuff up and sorta droid-hack their way to victory.  There is no plan. None. The idea that trained Rebel soldiers would go along with this suicide mission makes zero sense.  Basically it seems like the writers ran out of page count and decided to spend run time on space battles and gun fights that are supremely stupid.  I…I can’t just let go of this, the ‘hope’ not-plan is SO bad. And it could have been so good.
    That is terrible but the rest of the plot isn’t a whole lot better.  It is fairly simple and linear, which fine.  The Rebels break out Jyn so she can talk to a torturing terrorist-style Saw Gerrera  whom she knew as a child, who has a pilot trying to defect, who has a message from someone building the Death Star.  The message is from Jyn’s father so she tries to go find him and then she goes to a third planet to try to steal the plans.  Not great, but it could be worse.  There is some subtle complexities here, like the fact that Jyn is being sent to talk to Saw Gerrera because he might just kill any other Rebel who might try and meet with him. There’s in implication that the Rebels have tried to assassinate him before, he certainly thinks Jyn was sent so they could kill him. Again, that the REBELS might kill him, not the Empire.
    And I might be alone here, but I’m starting to feel sorry for the Stormtroopers.  They just line up and get shot like paper targets on a range. They never use tactics and never get to win.  And they apparently have some sort of body armor that doesn’t actually protect them from anything, even punches and…sticks.  Lame. Once again, your protagonist is only as good as their opponent. If the Rebels were up against tough, aggressive, dangers bad guys, their victor would mean more and so would their losses.
  I think they tried to keep things fast-paced. The movie certainly didn’t feel like two hours +, but the downside of all the running and fighting is that we don’t really understand what’s going on and why and who. It’s basically trying to baffle us with bullshit instead of treating us like adults and giving us a clear plot we can understand and approve of.  A clear plot takes time, set up and even some exposition here and there.  If they’d tried to make a movie more like The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare, they might have had a really great war movie. Instead we get…Hope.
  Hope is not a plan. And it’s not a plot.

So how could we fix it?

Well it wouldn’t have been hard to make this a very good movie instead of an OK one.  I want to go over some ideas that I think would have made more sense. The more I write, the more it seems like I’d need to re-write the whole frelling movie, so let me try to focus on just a few key changes.

1. We meet Jyn and spend time with her. Give us 5 minutes of Jyn being angry, drifting, lacking anything to believe in.  She’s a criminal, so show us her doing criminal things and getting caught by them empire.
2. Give Cassian a reason for being a murderous douche.  If his informant is running to the Imperials blabbing his mouth off, he might deserve a blaster bolt to the back.  Just wanting to live and get away doesn’t deserve death.
3. Either show Cassian having reservations about the killing he’s being told to do, or being forced to do, or make him a fucking soldier. He’s almost one, a guy who follows orders because if you don’t follow orders in wars, people get killed.  You can even toss in a scene with Jyn not wanting to follow his orders and getting someone killed. There are consequences for acting without knowing all the facts.  Grunts don’t know the big picture, so they have to trust their officers know more than they do. That doesn’t make them Stormtroopers, it makes them moral people who believe in fighting for a cause.
4. Make the Empire ‘human’. They can still be the black and white bad guys.  But show a personal connection between Crennic and Jyn’s father. Maybe they’re friends. Maybe he’s been covering up for him because he’s a friend and not just because he’s super scientist man.  Make Crennic’s problems greater.  It shouldn’t be him going to Vader, it should be Tarkin. Tarkin is taking over the Death Star and he’s going to bring Vader along to make sure Crennic can’t do shit about it. Give Crennic a reason to go scurrying around trying to fix things. His life should be at stake, not just his career or his command. And see my note about the Stormtroopers, above.
5. Forget one of the locations.  We jump from one world where Jyn’s father is at, to the tropical world. Pick one, all the action should take place there. Don’t waste screen time. Combine the events, the finding the plans and the assassination/reunion with Jyn’s father.
6. Finally, have a PLAN to steal the Death Star info, not just Hope.
 
 
 
*(I remain convinced that there are objectively good stories and objectively bad ones.  That doesn’t mean one’s personal taste prevents you or forces you to like it.  But quality is quality and deserves respect. Crap is crap and deserves jeers.  Hey, I like Pepsi and it’s objectively crap, so not trying to be pulpit pounding here)

** There really is only one trilogy. The Prequels were terrible alternate history.

***Boy, these names…I’m sticking with character names here for consistency. Donnie Yen played the blind monk and he’s really, really, really good. Check out his other films.  And, bad as these names are, they avoid the worst of Lucas’ excesses like Dexter Jetster or Kit Fisto.