Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Rookieone — 08 Jan 2018

This movie finishes what TFA started.

TFA heavily wounded the StarWars universe by undoing everything that was achieved in the original trilogy.

TLJ finishes it off by gutting it, making it hemorrhage sense and continuity.

To top it off there is nothing meaningful happens in the movie at all, we could have jumped straight to episode IX. "Rebels" are still fleeing from an inexplicably powerful first order, its just a couple less now.

To sum up my impression of the movie: Propably better than the christmas special. Propably.

For those with the patience to read more, this is a list of the points that make the movie such a disaster, in no particular order.

1. The timing.

Episode VII ends with Kylo Ren heavily wounded by a bowcaster and a light sabre. Snoke ordered to have him brought to him to finish his training. Also the ultimate weapon of the first order has been destroyed.

Propably about half a day later he is fully healed and shows up with a complete fleet, including a not-quite-ultimate battleship at the resistance HQ. Or maybe the resistance was stupid enough to not immediately initiate their GTFO protocols. I'm not sure which would be worse.

Well either way, at this point in time the first order has taken control of the galaxy. Yes, the whole galaxy that was pretty free under the protection of the republican fleet a day ago. There are 200 billion suns in our own galaxy, and the first order took control over that amount of systems instantly. Palpatine did that by using an existing power structure that had grown over millenia, and the first order does it by conquest in a snap. There is no way to properly descripe how incredibly stupid this is. If the first order is that powerful, how did the republic ever stop them? How do you fight somebody who, after losing that bs Starkiller base still has the means to do THAT??

2. Apparently you can use your hyperdrive to cut right through a vastly larger object with your ship. This of course means that any superweapon could have been easily destroyed by a rusty freighter flown by remote. This alone makes the first order and its fleet of unneccessarily costlly and huge ships a non-issue for anyone with a brain. Sadly nobody in the entire movie has one, or they would have done that with one of the two ships they were abandoning anyway. After all, how would the First Order prevent it? Destroy it? Apparently they can't at that distance. Evade? With a ship broader than the Executor was long??

3. Luke Skywalker. This is NOT Mark Hamills fault in any way. He was turned from the incarnation of Hope, someone who thought redeeming Darth Vader was worth a shot, into a nihilistic grouch hiding on an island somewhere in the galaxy. Seriously, its only the empire returning in a more Nazi fashion and his sister fighting for freedom and her life. Who cares, right? It doesn't matter anyway. Also for some reason he thought about killing a teenager in his sleep for having dark thoughts - which is, of course, absolutely irredeemable. Apparently dropping an unstable stone hut on him is so much power he has to hide 'till his death. Oh and he was finished off so his iconic figure doesn't stand in the way of whatever they come up with for IX. Apparently death by meditating is a thing now.

4. Physics. No, really.

The movie opens up with a battleship being attacked by bombers of the resistance. Which would be no problem - except for the bombers having WWII style bomb bays. What is supposed to drag them out of there and toward the target? There is NO gravity in space. (Not completely true, since that was in orbit, but the effective force of the gravity is zero, or everything would crash on the planet). Even worse, each bomber had about 500 of those bombs. The hell is that supposed to do? The first dozen bombs will explode and either push those coming after them away or outright making them explode outside the target doing nothing at all. And the bombers were HUGE targets. Get a squadron of B-Wings instead. Those are bombers that make sense. Well, anyway, the one bomber that made it blew up that multiple km ship. Apparently hitting it anywhere will cause a chainreaction blowing it up or something.

Snokes flagship also doesn't seem to know there is no gravity in space, because its oversized turbolaser shots arc like artillery shells would on a planet.

5. Hyperspace tracking.

Well, this is not so stupid from a technical point, but massively retarded from a story perspective. Because you see there is a... story arc about only the flagship doing the tracking. But the flagship wasn't there when the rebels fled. So it isn't necessary to track at the starting point. So... hit&run, with X-Wings or otherwise, doesn't work anymore. Any ship approaching a secret rebel base would instantly betray its location. There are only two possibilities for any further movie.

I'm only stopping now is because I'm running out of characters. Thats how bad VIII is.