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Rey's father is Admiral Akbar. Ewan McGregor makes a cameo as Obi Wan Kenobi's force ghost. Mara Jade is Luke's daughter. Finn gets frozen in carbonite. And Poe Dameron hooks up with Captain Phasma. 

Rogue One was awesome, but these other two latest episodes, 7 & 8, though entertaining, come across a little out of tune. So much more could've been done with the Snokes villain, but nope, no backstory, no reason why everybody acts scared of him; he just sits in his chair. And anyone else think Kylo Ren is badly miscast? Still not used to that actor. I like Rey though. 

I like that for once we get to see the growth of a villain in a Star Wars movie.  We saw the creation of one in the prequels.  But every single other one (Vader, Palpatine, Thrawn, Maul, Dooku, Grevious, Snoke) we just accepted that they were already a bad ass.  I like the change up.

People also seem really upset about no backstory on Snoke.  It's like there were so many fan theories after the last one, we expected a pay off on all of them.  When has that ever been Star Wars' thing?  We still may get one in book or standalone movie form down the road, but sticking strictly to the movies how often does Star Wars do that.  We got a bit of Vader and a bit of Dooku in the movies, at least the knowledge that they were fallen Jedi.  But with Dooku, we never got a why.  With Vader we had to wait nearly 2 decades for a why.  We got literally no backstory for 20 years with Palpatine. The others, sticking to the movies, we got absolutely nothing.

I wasn't born until a year after Jedi came out.  Were people back then pissed that we knew nothing about Palpatine, or even why there was an Empire?  Truly curious.

thoughts on the movie:

 - biggest problem i have is leia. with the death of fisher, they had multiple opportunities to kill off leia in a classic way. instead she will have to be either killed off screen or with cgi. imo, they should have swapped her and holdo and let leia sacrifice herself to save the resistance by running into the destroyer at light speed (awesome btw). i know they'd have to cgi that part, but it wasn't much more than her pushing the gas pedal and they'll have to do a whole lot more in this next film. this would give leia and fisher and fitting end and would allow the new holdo character to become the new leader of the resistance with a clear line of succession and little hiccups. also had already established some kind of hard relationship with poe, so no need to build it in next movie.
 - also on leia, she's been shown to have sensitivity to the force, but never any ability to use it. and it's not unlikely she would have trained some with luke, but they've never let her used even small force powers in any of the 5 movies shes been in. why is she all the sudden able to force-space walk? just seemed to come out of nowhere. also looked very strange and poorly executed, imo.
 - snoke - similar to maul, such a good character that's just gone. no idea where he came from, how he got into power, what he wanted, his motives, etc. not a huge issue, cause the emperor was similar in the originals, but he didn't just disappear either.
 - dj (del toro character) another good new addition gone too soon, or at least no explanation what happened to him. he reminds me of solo, selfish and morally ambiguous guy trying to survive, gets opportunity to join something bigger and better than himself. except he made the opposite choice, to keep serving himself instead of joining the rebels. i hope he makes another appearance.
 - phasma is another character with poor background and gone too soon. i never got attached to her, though (mainly because they didn't give us any reason to get attached) but she had potential.
 - the jokes, just too many. i liked many of them, like yoda taking out the tree or luke tossing the light saber. but some came at bad times and just didn't fit with the rest of the films. they all had some comic relief, but not every 5 minutes. biggest one that bothers me is luke shrugging off the dust after (seemingly) surviving the onslaught of blasters before facing kylo. was an intense moment and him stepping out should have been enough, instead they throw in a little joke for a cheap laugh. took away from the moment, imo.
 - don't have a huge problem with rey's family being nobody's. only issue is they spent a whole movie building them up, only for them to be nothing. maybe that was the big twist for this movie, but it didn't hit home for me. however, i'm glad they aren't having all the main characters and leaders of both side from the same small group of families. luke, leia, han, vader, kylo all the main heroes/baddies, all related.
 - i LOVE that they weren't forcing a love story between rey and finn. finn has someone else, now, that at least likes him (not sure if reciprocated) and i don't have a problem with that. just don't think we have to have 2 main characters in love story, and after ep7 it looked as though they were going to force that on us again.
 - snokes death was awesome.
 - the headshot kill by kylo (assist from rey) was one of the best kills i've seen.
 - thankful they didn't let kylo switch sides, especially since they didn't give us any reason to hate snoke. hope he doesn't get redemption in 9.
 - missed it first viewing, but rey stole the jedi books, and yoda knew ("there is nothing in that tree she doesn't already possess").
 - luke force projection was awesome. curious to see what he does in ep 9. hope he isn't gone just like that.
 - love that luke was honest with himself and rey about who they jedi were/are. and later yoda confirming that failure is best teacher.
 - the dark side cave scene with rey was cool.
 - the kid with the broom at the end, nice touch. expecting to see more jedi (and sith) in next movie. or hope to anyway.

had a very ep5 feel to it. rey off training with old reclusive jedi master (luke/yoda)/ rey enters cave of dark side force looking for answers, doesn't like what she finds (luke in cave, sees himself as vader) / resistance making last stand on old base on a white (salt) planet while first order uses at-at's to attack, resistance fights back with small land speeders (battle of hoth)

overall, i liked the movie. biggest issue i have is going forward with leia. they had a great opportunity to give her character a classic sacrificial death to save her beloved resistance, and now that fisher is gone i'm not sure how they'll be able to do that going forward.

nice read, bwarbany, and i agree. i like going in a new direction. they even had several not so subtle hints about moving on and letting go of the past.

Why are dragging this out?Revenge of the Jedi sent the series out on good terms.Since then they've tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit,JMO

Kylo Ren had hilariously high pants. 

Octogenarian style.