aivilovee

Until I started this show, I had seen a handful of Star Wars movies- one or two from each batch of trilogies- and never really cared much about it. I was never much into fantasy, so it never appealed to me. Then, one of my friends told me that I should watch this show, explained what it was about and why she thought I'd like it, and I thought "ah, what the hell, I'll give it a shot".

I was not expecting such a real, relevant, and enthralling watch, even going in with the spoilers I knew (I'd seen the very end of Rogue One years ago). In season 2 especially, you can tell the creators of this show had something to say, and it really resonated with me. The small stakes nature of this show, the questionable ethics of some of the characters, the political games, espionage, and secrecy, it really showed the work and sacrifice that goes into building a rebellion. How many people, how many years, how much TRUST it takes to fight against something as daunting as an empire. It took a step away from the mythic and the fantastical elements of the rest of Star Wars and gave us real, normal people fighting an unstoppable evil.

There are a few minor gripes I have. The pacing was a bit uneven, some of the characters were a touch underwritten or abandoned, but I'm absolutely willing to forgive that.

This show did what I thought was impossible: it made me care- even if just about this specific part- about Star Wars.

One thing that I don't typically love about paranormal movies is that once you figure out what the paranormal thing is, the movie stops being scary, because nothing is as scary as the unknown. Weapons got around that by making the end absolutely hysterical. I was ROLLING through the finale. I did not go into this movie expecting visual comedy and slapstick absurdity, but it was a welcome surprise.

You'd probably think that this would take away from the terror of the movie, but you'd be mistaken, because as funny as it was, it was also still brutal. It's something you can't really explain without spoilers, so I won't.

This movie is also the most scared I've been at the theater in a LONG time, and it doesn't rely on jumpscares! Possibly the scariest part was a one-shot that takes place in a car, and it filled me and the rest of the audience with pure terror. People were shrieking in an almost silent one-shot with no jumpscares. That's an impressive feat. I've also legitimately struggled to fall asleep the last few days because of some of the imagery in this movie. That hasn't happened since I was a kid.

Now, there are definitely some flaws. There's some pretty glaring plotholes, and I know some were underwhelmed by the reasoning behind the missing children, but I think the way the story was told, the acting, the way it looked and sounded... all of that made up for any shortcomings.

This was an immediate favorite for me, and you'd be making a huge mistake not seeing it at a theater.

This is a project that didn't have anything really new to say. If you're up to current events and politically informed at all, none of this is a surprise, and this doesn't exactly seem like something that's made to change the minds of people that don't believe in the arguments the film makes, so I'm not really sure who exactly this is for. The narrative points also weren't compelling enough for me to really care for the protagonist. I think this is something that should have been entirely a documentary that delves deeper into the subjects it wants to discuss, or just a dystopian sci-fi story...