This is an entertaining film that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but still manages to mostly fly by for its absurd run-time.

I don’t know where to start with this movie. Even if you don’t know anything about its troubled production, the film feels like a bunch of different ideas thrown together, or a few films grafted onto each other: basically an origin story plus a heist movie, one of those heists movies with seemingly infinite double-crosses. It also feels as though it was set up for a sequel. I have no idea if that’s coming or not but I do find that type of ending rather annoying (though very characteristic of this franchise).

I don’t know who is responsible for what, but the finished product is actually pretty damn entertaining. I found myself laughing more than once – especially at the feminist droid – and I generally found myself entertained and not really paying attention to the fact that this film is well over two hours long. But…

If you think about any of it, you/ll find it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I am not just referring to the endless double-crosses of the climax, which takes the heist movie double-cross trope to ridiculous extremes. I mean the character motivations, who’s who, that sort of thing – not much of it makes much sense. This movie wants to surprise you all the time, and it doesn’t worry about whether or not any of those surprises actually suit the story or the franchise. (I have read that the pre-Ron Howard version of the film was even further away from mainstream Star Wars films, which really makes me wonder.)

But for all of its nonsense, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself.

6/10 feels overly generous but, honestly, it’s more entertaining than a lot of the more serious, more coherent Star Wars films.