Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - “A surprise, to be sure! But how welcome a one is it?” · 11:45pm Dec 17th, 2017
I saw Star Wars IIX yesterday and after consulting some of my friends who are big Star Wars fans and some who aren’t, I have some interesting feedback on it.
Spoilers below the break:
I reach forward and press my fingers into the pulverized fan theories and speculation. I touch those same fingers to my tongue and assess the taste.
“Salt.”
I smile, enjoying the view of the wide field of crushed hopes and expectations of the fans.
Scores upfront, then analysis afterward.
My Personal Score: 9/10
My Actual Score (how much I think others will enjoy it): 6/10
The Last Jedi is not what you expect, even if you have no expectations. It was a surprising ride from start to finish, plot twist after plot twist, spectacle after spectacle, resulting in one of the most unique and hotly debated Star Wars movies ever produced.
I personally LOVED the whole thing, especially as a creative writing teacher. However, I noticed that there were quite a few things that would upset harder core fans of Star Wars than myself.
The movie is a master class in how to do plot twists and reveals. Each one made perfect sense, but was still quite surprising when the pieces finally fell together. Nothing was just “pulled out of nowhere” in a deus ex machina fashion (except Rose managing to stop Fin, but I’ll get to that). It was all hinted at before hand and all of the pieces necessary to understand it were given ahead if the reveal or twist, and they still managed to successfully and effectively pull off every one of them.
Writing wise, the movie nails it. Visual wise, the movie is beautiful and spectacular. My jaw was dropped for almost the entire duration for both the beautiful visuals and the surprising twists.
But Star Wars wise? It falls flat. VERY flat.
What do I mean by that? Well, the movie is SO focused on the characters and their inner conflicts that the big war isn’t present as such. The movie is SO plot tight and shaved away SO much fat that there was no satisfying show of the Star Wars galaxy with the exception of the useless casino sequence. We only see one small town with a frivolous culture on a “whatever” planet where very little of significance occurs. No big sprawling worlds, beautiful looking unique planets, interacting with civilians, or anything that indicated that the movie was anything other than a space movie that happens to have Star Wars characters in it.
It did not FEEL like a Star Wars movie. Even the prequels, with all of their terrible dialogue and bad plot lines, manage to feel like Star Wars movies. Politics, beautiful and unique civilizations, an ever growing array of alien side characters joining in the battle, and more. All of these were lacking in The Last Jedi.
Then there were a great number of gimmicks that just felt extremely out of place. The porgs were clearly a merchandise plug. The casino sequence had no story consequence. (I actually half expected an animator to sneak in a small shark for the weird horse creatures to jump over.) The hacker was useless and his potential was severely neutered. Rose was a nerd self insert who actually didn't need to be in the movie, had zero movie consequence (besides her deus ex machina moment at the end where there is no way she could have caught up to Fin), and really could die in the next movie and not be missed.
Now these things don't affect my enjoyment as much as it does most people, but it still strikes me as cheap and idiotic.
Everything else, however, was marvelous and nearly perfectly executed.
There were even some interesting interconnected moments that only make sense if you go back and see it again. For example, when Yoda said that the teachings of the books were with the girl, he didn't mean she had learned it, he meant that she actually had the books as we later see them in a drawer on the falcon. This allowed Yoda to totally troll Luke by burning the tree himself. Or perhaps Rey and Kylo Ren's visions of the future both being correct. They did kill Snoke and fight together, and for a moment it did look like Rey was going to join him. Neither of them was wrong in what they saw.
In short: It was a REALLY good movie, but it didn't feel like a Star Wars movie.
My personal enjoyment: 9/10, would watch the lightspeed destruction sequence again.
How I would rate it for most other people: 6/10, Disney is killing Star Wars as Star Wars with its corporate influence.
And now I know~