So the good: It was a very well-done movie that felt very very very very Star Wars-y.

The bad: … because it was made entirely of mixed-up and reassembled Star Wars parts. It was like an episode of Chopped where the ingredients in the basket were the previous six movies.

So every scene is like, take the plot events from Return of the Jedi, set it in a place from Phantom Menace, and give it characters from Empire and New Hope with themes from… well, basically any of them, really, then mix it up just a bit with some garlic from the pantry.

I think they did that on purpose, of course, and I think it was actually the right thing to do — establishing that yes, you’re making a Star Wars(tm) brand film was going to be the #1 key to the success of this movie, and the best way to do it is to stick to the hyper-familiar. (And let’s face it, Disney was going to take no chances with their $4 billion franchise.)

But I do think that also knocks it out of the running for “Best Star Wars Movie,” because even if you think it was the best one at some level, it’s like saying that “Greatest Hits” was [insert rock band here]’s best album, you know? Like, it’s true in a sense, but…

But all that comes off more negative than I’d intend it to be. It was a well-made movie that had a lot of very distinct Star Wars flavor to it and managed to thread the needle between nostalgia and novelty in a surprisingly effective way, and if it was astonishingly unoriginal, well, that’s also in the DNA of the franchise — I mean, it’s notable that this was the third Death Star, not the second, you know?

(Oh, also it worked really well in 3D. As always, when 3D is done well I tend to forget it exists, but it was subtly effective here, I think.)