Star Wars the Last Jedi Movie Review · 3:42am Oct 31st, 2018
Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Mark Hamill
Director: Rian Johnson
Synopsis: Daisy Ridley stars as Rey, who begins to develop her newly discovered abilities with the guidance of Luke Skywalker, who is unsettled by the strength of her powers. Meanwhile, the Resistance prepares for battle with the First Order.
My Thoughts:
Following JJ Abram’s nostalgia fueled blockbuster The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson follows it with one of the most controversial entries in the series. He brings back several familiar faces, while introducing a few new characters.
I could go scene by scene and rip this movie to shreds, however a lot of it is with nostalgia filter. I’ll preface this by saying I read a lot of the “Legends” lore and was hoping the new sequels would either cherry pick the best and make it work (looking at you Thrawn trilogy), or at least acknowledge some of the lore.
The Last Jedi picks off relatively close to the ending of the Force Awakens and right off the bat we start with a cheesy fake holo-call by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), The Resistance’s golden boy. His entire character arc of the movie is to learn responsibility and as General (Princess) Leia (Carrie Fisher’s last appearance before her untimely passing) puts it, “there are some things you cannot solve by jumping into a cockpit and blowing something up.” Minutes later, he’s blowing something up in the cockpit.
A lot of the drama in this one is focused on getting fuel for the ships to escape from the First Order’s fleet that is chasing them following the destruction of the Starkiller base. Who knew Disney would turn their multi-billion dollar investment into a movie about getting gas. Which leads to the unnecessary romance subplot between Finn and Rose.
Rose Tico (newcomer to the series Kelly Marie Tran) is a lowly ship mechanic who had recently lost her sister in the reckless opening scene of the movie. Which, by the way, is what sparks Poe’s character arc. However after Finn wakes up from the events of the last movie, he rushes off to escape and try and find Rey. Rose has apparently been put on deserter duty and guards the escape pods. After an intense encounter and some Buffy speak (TV Tropes are the best), the two and BB-8, Poe’s lovable astromech droid, rush off to find a hacker to disable the First Order’s fleet.
They land on a gambling planet, landing right on the beach, in broad daylight. Firstly, they were supposed to be sneaking onto the planet. Secondly, Finn gets into an argument with a local who calls the authorities, which leads to an escape scene. But before that, Rose divulges a bit about her history and shows Finn the evil side of greed. Irony in the best form.
What really was depressing to see was Luke Skywalker’s character destruction. In the original series and the books, he was built up as someone who always believed in everyone, no matter how evil. He was the one that turned Darth Vader back into Anakin Skywalker, the savior of the galaxy, and if we go into Legends territory, helped turn and then married former Emperor’s Hand Mara Jade Skywalker. No matter what happened, he was always optimistic and believed in the good of the person. In the Last Jedi… he became extremely emo.
While I understand that having his nephew be swayed by the enigma that is Snoke, and had several of his students turn to evil and then everyone else was slaughtered would be quite the wakeup call, even in the Legends, when Kyp Durron was taken over, he still had hope.
The underlying theme of the movie, hope, hope in the light. Who knows how many times that someone went on a speech about hope and how the Resistance was the spark to light the way. Even with Princess Leia somehow surviving the missile attack to the bridge, and the coldness of space, while using the Force (which she wasn’t trained in this timeline) to pull her to safety.
Like I said earlier, this review was not to go scene by scene, I focused most of things that really irked me and glossed over the other nuances. Long time series runners such as Chewbacca, C-3Po, and R2-D2 are regulated to background characters and to give it the “this is a Star Wars movie” vibe, meme legend Admiral Ackbar was brought back and quickly killed off, we had the epic Mary Poppins scene as I briefly mentioned earlier, and the Hoth-style battle. The Resistance and the First Order are just fancy ways of saying Rebellion and Empire respectively. A lot of the character’s tensions and the last half of the movie could have easily been ignored if Holdo would’ve let everyone in on her big plan. The fact that the big MaGuffin chase from the last movie made no sense when Luke purposely wanted to hide (but yet gave the map fragments to R2 and Tekka is a bit interesting), Kylo’s complete character hurts me to my core and the disservice they did to Snoke is so sad. When the director comes out and says that the next director can undo all my changes, it says a lot.
However, even with my gripes about Luke’s character, I will say that the way he passes onto the Force is probably the most Jedi thing done in the series. And was a great way to end his character arc. In the end, he came back and used his power to save the Resistance.
With a running time of two hours and thirty two minutes, this is the longest entry into the universe and arguably one of the weakest. Not even some amazing cinematography, fantastic special effects (that final fight between Luke and Kylo was pretty epic, corny, but epic) and a legendary score provided by composer veteran John Williams.
Final Score: C+
Story: C
Characters: C
Cinematography: B
Effects: A
Closing Thoughts:
Even though it seems I don't like the movie, I did read the novelization and have watched it about six or seven times. I personally think is a weak entry, that doesn't take away that it does have some fun over the top moments. The ship ram, the fight scene in the throne room, Luke's teachings, and even if the Yoda scene was a bit "wtf", it was a good throwback. And Luke sounded a lot like Kreia, something that made me smile.
Anywho, leave your thoughts/opinions down below and am ready for the discussions. Also, if you like this, lemme know. I have a few other movies I wanna try this on.
Separating my star wars love, star wars knowledge and it being a star wars movie in general (with all the Canon that comes with that) if it was set in another space opera universe I'd still say it's a weak movie. With star wars baggage it was abominable, without I would have forgotten it by the next day.
they're pulling some legends stuff. Kylo Wren is a hugely watered down version of Darth Caedus and that's partially due to Rey. I was hoping they would pull the better legends stuff, there's some good stuff that would make a good standalone movie. Personally I would have loved to see the Darth Bane stuff, although I knew there was absolutely no way that would happen (to start with, it would need to be a hard R to be good).
4961450
It's really disappointing to see what's happened and I was surprised with the amount of lenancy Rogue One got away with. And this was supposed to be their big investment too.
4961608
They stole Ben's name from Luke and Mara's kid, they got rid of any positive thing that Jacen had (before he became super OP Caedus). Bane would've been a great choice (either hard R or team with Netflix), anything really dealing with the Old Republic (around Revan's time), or hell, I'd love to see how Luke builds his praxeum, or the Vong invasion (which would also probably require a hard R). I was happy that Thrawn is being included and that they tried to do the duality with Rey and Kylo like Jacen and Jania.
The latest excuse for why people dislike/hate the last jedi put out by screen rants is pure gold.
4961731
I'm just saying they borrowed that from legends, not that they did it well. I forgot his name was Ben lol, him fighting Luke's force projection is also from the Caedus stuff. They butchered him though. Caedus fought Jaina, luke's projection and a mando commando squad to a standstill. Kyle couldn't fight a couple of Snokes guards.
I think Jacen's story would be better as a netflix than movies. Overall, it's a lot longer than Darth Bane's and it flows nicely out of the Vong stuff (they might be able to get away with PG-13 for that, but R would be better). They might be able to do some darker stuff with netflix, although there's no way some stuff in Darth Bane's books would fly, especially early Darth Zannah.
I don't think Kylo and Rey work nearly as well as Jaina and Jacen. Both Jaina and Jacen are way more competent and the dynamic is better (even if you read Caedus's story before the vong stuff lol).