Sorry, I had to. That's the cliche joke spoiler, I couldn't resist the opportunity to actually use it genuinely.
Anyway, I'm pretty late to share my thoughts; I had jotted down notes when I got back from the theater way back then but realized that I never got around to typing them up. Better late than never. This is the post I intended to make last January, no additional thoughts have been added and I haven't seen the movie again yet, this is my original immediate reaction:
This was exactly what I had expected and hoped it would be from the trailers. I thought it was
so good!
I liked this deeper look into the operation of the Rebels, the different levels within the Rebellion, and the infighting in the Empire.
I really liked the introduction of people who believe in the Force but can't use it. This is a big part of Star Wars lore, but I don't think has ever been really explored in the movies before. Certainly not to this extent.
This was a clever way to address the so called Death Star plot hole. I thought it was neat to explain the existence of the vulnerability like this. It had never bothered me personally, but I have heard other people complain about it, so it was nice to justify it in a way that fit and made sense here and not just be a forced retcon just to appease those people.
I thought it had the perfect amount of Vader. I've heard some people say the voice was distracting because it was different, but I thought it was fine. It didn't sound incredibly different to me, and even if it was his voice changed substantially across the three original movies so it's not a big deal.
I can't believe we saw Vader's lava castle! That's a Star Wars lore deep cut. (It was originally going to be shown in Empire Strikes Back but the idea got scrapped.) Kudos to filmmakers for including it here, they knew their stuff.
One of the major complaints I've heard about is CGI Tarkin, people saying it's so ridiculously unrealistic looking it takes you completely out of the movie, but I completely disagree. I thought it looked
amazing. It didn't take me out of anything, it was incredibly well done. It only looks fake when you look for it to look fake, if you know what I mean. If you just accept it I got absolutely no uncanny valley vibes whatsoever, I was amazed. The Leia, not as good. But she didn't have nearly as big of a part. I thought Tarkin was done extremely well and it really worked.
I appreciated how the funny droid was explained. It wasn't just the movie trying to copy C3PO's personality because people like that so let's just drag and drop a new quippy droid like that's just a common thing, no it was explained that reprogramming made him frank. I thought that was good.
So yeah, I enjoyed it very, very much. Exactly the tone and type of story I wanted from this. But interestingly, pretty much nothing in the trailer was actually in the movie? The words
or scenes. "I rebel" was cut, good I always thought that was stupid, but some major scenes apparently weren't used, like one of them running through a battle on the beach, and in particular that shot of walking up to the tie fighter. That had looked awesome I'm sorry we didn't see that. I guess it went though some pretty drastic changes in parts. But I really like the end result so it worked out.
The thing that actually bothered me the most about it isn't something about the movie itself. I hate that they got rid of the opening crawl! I get that they want to make it clear these in between movies are their own thing, but they're still Star Wars. Everything Star Wars begins with a crawl, even the video games for goodness sake! And tradition argument aside, this movie in particular could have really benefited from one of those introductions because the setting needs established so it's clear to everyone where exactly in the story we're being dropped in and what's going on. I think it was genuinely a mistake, on multiple fronts, to decide not to have one.