Driver has been really, really good. I think that the entire point of the helmet coming off was just as you said, to lessen him as a baddie. From a character point of view, he can relate a lot more to fans and be more sympathetic to them. Given the teases they've done so far, it makes sense for them to continue down the road that humanizes him rather than just a masked bad guy. I think he's really the key to Ep9. They have to do his character right and right by the saga, even after killing Han, he's still Han and Leia's kid and obviously strongly connected with Rey. If they can pull if all off, the way I see it in my head, he might have the best overall arc of any SW character in the entire series.

... and he would've happily killed Luke, if not deceived. And Rey, if he could have. And Finn. And he did kill the kids at the Jedi Academy. And that village at the beginning of TFA. I understand the baddie-being-redeemed, but playing him up as sympathetic is just poor writing, IMO. Just how far are we supposed to follow someone being a murderous ahole, and still be expect to be interested? Even Vader wasn't particuarly 'redeemed', he just stopped jusssssst shy of killing his own kid.

So, I would agree - if they can pull that off, it will be something to see. But how exactly does that happen at this stage? They pulled the ultimate one with Vader ('don't kill your own boy!') Ren doesn't have that big a stake to play. Maybe they give him a pet porg.

Driver and Ridley and Boyega have been the best parts of these new films. Such original characters. Making original choices. Everyone else is like "trying to be" one of the classic characters. And Hamill too is like nothing I've ever seen him do before. He isn't "trying to be Alec Guinness" either.

I don't get the hate for not telling Poe the plan. They clearly thought his strategy skills sucked and were trying to exclude him from decision-making. The plan they had was not that great, so telling him may have caused him to sabotage even that.

Finally saw this on Friday. I came away with the weird experience of:
a.) Really liking the film, while also
b.) Agreeing with pretty much all the criticism of it that I (later) read

I guess the flaws just didn't bother me as much as they did others. The fact that it looked cool and moved quickly was enough to counter some admittedly dumb plot points and weird choices. But then again, while I grew up with the originals, I'm not as invested as some in the whole franchise, so I can hand-wave certain problems away.

It is more difficult to like The Last Jedi vs. The Force Awakens, in my opinion.

In a way, it's like those convoluted WWE storylines that don't make any sense, and look like they were put together at the last second. If you make a negative comment, people jump at you and say "Just forget about the little details and enjoy the show".

I am willing to do that, but it's the great movies that reward you for paying attention, and the little details that you notice pay off later in the movie. Once again just my opinion, but this is what takes it from a great movie to a good movie. The more you look into it, the less it pays off, and you notice a ton of flaws and plot holes in it, probably moreso than any previous Star Wars movie.

I still enjoyed it a lot, but I think a lot of the negative chatter about it is also justified.

So the Blu Ray comes out on Tuesday. Everyone is offering a preorder except for Amazon. Does anyone know why this is?

Not sure but I figured the possibility of getting more digital purchased (which released 1-2 weeks ago) might be driving that decision. I will be buying from Target tomorrow as I think they are the only retailer here that carries the BD/DVD/Digital combo. We like those because the kids can watch the DVD in the back of the van (no blu-ray player there).

I think the short answer is that Amazon and Disney often play hardball with each other. So Disney has all these individual deals with Best Buy and Target and others for the stores to get early access and have exclusive packaging, etc, but they don't have that deal with Amazon. Amazon apparently doesn't sell any Disney movies as pre-orders.