Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Bad-Magic — 21 Dec 2017

In short this is a really difficult movie to review. There is so much wrong with this that as you try to lay out the criticisms in some sort of coherent fashion you are bombarded with memory after memory of this mess of a film.

It starts fairly well, the iconic scrolling text and opening are solid despite some daft spaceship designs (bombers... in space? And it ends as well as you might expect) the brief space battle looks good but it too heavy handed and sets the tone for this movie; it wants to be emotionally hard-hitting and slapstick without succeeding at either.

The comedy elements: often mentioned but I found them so unobtrusive or ineffective that I won't mention them further beyond that they were often at the expense of the audience.

The story premise is a fairly good one and could have worked (plucky rebellion are being pursued by a vastly superior First Order force and need to think their way out of almost certain defeat) but every arc and subplot is self-defeating at best or outright awful at worst. The Force Awakens did not do a very good job of uniting the characters it hopes to build this franchise upon and compounds the problem by including more characters that are even less fleshed out - if asked I could not describe Finn, Rey or even Poe except in the vaguest of terms - which leads to the bigger problem.

What the hell is going on? Is there a Republic, who are the Resistance, what situation are they in, what planets got blown up and what was actually lost by the First Order's attack? The world building is non-existent, I have -no- idea what the Resistance is what it's fighting for what challenges it faces and I cynically expect it is kept nebulous to allow lazy writers to shoe-horn in details as it needs them down the line.

I had expected to enjoy this, and I could not believe how embarrassed I was to be sitting there watching this film. I spent the majority of the excessive runtime staring at the screen incredulously; the choices and direction this film takes are breathtakingly stupid in places (Space Leia anyone?) and seriously detract from the story which begins disintegrating almost immediately after the opening scene. During the screening I was in there were regularly groans and whispered complaints, even strangers behind me were asking me if I were seeing what they were, and there was not a single laugh to be had. The Force Awakens for all its faults was still enjoyable, and the audience was right there carried along (admittedly once you left the theater or attempted a second viewing the spell was broken) but this was one of the least joyful experiences I have ever had watching a film.

Everyone outside of Luke Skywalker (with some uneasy character development) was a single note character, they were whatever emotion they happened to be portraying at that moment. From the writing and narrative it was impossible to determine what any of these characters principles or motivations are. Granted, Kylo and Rey get some intrigue that worked better than I expected only for it to unravel in an utterly pointless confrontation towards the end of the movie - and by then I just wanted it to end.

There is so much that did not work in this film and it is bitterly disappointing. I don't think I'll be watching the next one, and I'm not someone who would support boycotts or petitions for a remake or any of that silliness, I have just seen all I need to see and don't want any more.

TL;DR Force Awakens was fun whilst I was watching it, but does not hold up to further viewings.

Rogue One was watchable but utterly meh and suffered from some casting issues.

The Last Jedi was badly thought through, regularly undermined itself and uncomfortable viewing. There are a few good moments peppered throughout, but they are destroyed by terrible writing and confounding plot choices. Not that the Last Jedi is hard to follow, you just find yourself wondering about how these ideas made it to the screen. It reminds you it is a movie at every turn, and a very bad one at that.