^ The only thing TLJ subverted is overzealous fans' expectations... the vast majority of which were never going to be met in the first place.
The fact of the matter is this: Rian Johnson took what Abrams gave him and ran with it, and succeeded in making a phenomenal Star Wars film without attaching any agenda to it whatsoever.
Agreed. I was expecting more of the same (pointless callbacks, blatant plot do-over, etc) but was pleasantly surprised at the time and enjoyed most of it. I'll be watching it again next week.
The only conscious agenda I recall was it was
loosely copying the format of TESB (darker, Rey finding herself, rebels in trouble). Rian subverting so much was nicely done.
Benicio Del Toro stole the show at the casino...
Ren got rid of the Gonzo Muppet mask helmet. Admittedly, trying to outdo Vader's costume would be a tall order. I did not expect Snoke to say what he had regarding the helmet.
Okay, Snoke got killed off a little too quickly and without any depth. The Emperor from ROTJ had some decent dialogue. Snoke got a retread of some of that, but it all felt like filler or padding the movie. It's the only scene that had me pausing for thought. On the plus side, it opens a big opportunity for Ren to take over. I still hope he can convince Rey to join him, though that's just a fanboy dream. Later trilogies will probably do it at some point, there are many directions the saga can take, and needs to in order to remain properly fresh (let's never see another carbon copied debacle like VII again, which worked solely because of characters and their interaction... even Han breaks the fourth wall, which is THE moment the movie managed to lose the remainder of the plot's credibility.)
And the one thing about TLJ that really works is how it's opened up the franchise than more than just special people having meddling chrlorines or whatever to make them "Force-sensitive".
Loved the porgs, especially Chewie in earning his nickname there by eating one for breakfast but the rest of them forgive him later on. Far better than the Viet Cong-inspired Ewoks ever were.
And there's nothing sinister or insipid or PC about Rose's "fighting for what you love" or whatever. Shakespeare even went down that road too, though human evolution due to the inevitability of linear causality being less developed back then made some interesting observations, nor would Shakespeare have
ever fathomed events like "The Sadie Hawkins Dance" since he preferred to suggest how women were "not made to woo" (which has been proven to be nonsense and everybody knows it.) For more about Shakespeare and his plays like "A Midsummer's Night's Dream", your local library has gobs on him and his plays. Anyhoo, back to the original topic since squirrels have nothing on me, Rose is largely lackluster as a character, but that one line did stick.
But squirreling back to human evolution, I can't believe movie theaters had to put up signs saying there was no technical fault with the sound system. Were audiences thinking there was an audio problem? The silent explosion scene was as
massively cool as it was intentional. How could people not notice the coincidence? Or is it one of those Pavlovian thingies where they're conditioned for a big loud splodey in space while remembering nobody can hear ya scream? (In sci-fi, there's almost always sound in space in the way the laws of physics would say "nuh-uhhhh" to, but that's not exactly the point... unless it was part of the point. For once being true to physics or even as a directorial/artistic choice, the lack of sound was awesome.)
Which reminds of the bomb dropping scene. There's a nice youtube video that explains how it can be accomplished. Heck, timed electromagnetic relays so the bombs don't float back to the source ship is reasonable enough...) Heck, each bomb could have a small cache of compressed gas that's activated to make the initial drop possible.
Which still doesn't let the franchise off the hook for flagrant scientific inaccuracy, but it's sci-fi/
fantasy. In reality, space is boring. "2001" was boring because it tried to be true to science reality, but an urban legend claims people who say it more than once were all doped up on something, which makes an eerie sort of sense... A lot of Doctor Who stories from 1969, cashing in on the moon trip hubbub, also did the "reality" trope - which resulted in tons of padding, not always good padding either... the sad part is, nobody doped up while sitting through those. Which might be for the best if the target audience for that show was 12 whereas "2001" was meant more for older teens and adults...
Bonus:
