You know you're in for a great time when the second sentence of the opening crawl is about the taxation of trade routes. It's a shame that the story is more complicated than the original trilogy, but not more nuanced, and therefore you end up less invested.
That said, the ships are great (Coruscant!), the visuals are (at times) really good, and there are plenty of iconic moments. The podrace is good fun (especially when your friend points out the…
“A man's heart has heard two ways through life. The way of nature. And the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked… It accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. It likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around…
When Scorsese said Marvel wasn't cinema, this is the cinema he was talking about. I've seen this twice now, and I do not regret it.
