Just saw it tonight.
First impressions: No Yoda, No Ahsoka, No R2D2. No sale.
Look, I've been hard on the greatest-of-all-Jedi who couldn't seem to win a single lightsaber duel across six films.
But he's been a presence in all the installments so far, why not give him a final part?
Lots of fan service. No Ahsoka or post-Rebels acknowledgment (Sabine?), which would have been something to see.
And yeah, R2 is technically in the film, but does nothing of consequence. I mean, he's the droid that can fly. Surely that could have been useful in the final space battle somehow. Everybody's dead and the two solid survivors are the decades-old droids? Is this a comedy? Or a tragedy?
Overall, J.J. Abrams was asked to clean up a story timeline that was utterly and deeply polluted by the nonsense of the middle installment.
On the whole, he did a somewhat decent job tying up the threads. But for someone known for callbacks and fan service, I was expecting/hoping for a lineup of the fallen jedis like at the end of Return. Only landing on Luke and Leia does reinforce that it's really the saga of Skywalker, but there's still one Skywalker missing.
Star Wars is pretty much done for me now. But call me when Obi-Wan picks up his sabre.
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