Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by C8M — 20 Dec 2017

Movie reviewers are becoming completely out of touch with audiences. Last Jedi feels like when the MTV Movie Awards used to parody scenes from popular movies. General Hux getting a crank call on the bridge, Luke throwing away the light saber like trash, then going to milk a sea creature's nipple, Leia flying through space and making fun of her hair style. This isn't supposed to be a throwaway Marvel movie with lots of cheap laughs. Doing so undermines the evil of the villains and makes light of the seriousness of the themes of the movie. The characterizations of Luke and Leia feel false. After watching 5 of her planets blown up, finding out the First Order corrupted her son to kill his father and watching her friends including Ackbar blown into space, the Leia of the original trilogy would be lightspeed ramming Snoke's ship herself not sending a subordinate to do it. Luke would never attempt to kill his sister's son while he was sleeping, run away to an island to die alone, ignore his sister's call to join the fight, and then refuse to show up in person to protect her like a damn coward. Whomever wrote this movie didn't understand the characters and didn't care about disgracing them in their last scenes.

The movie lacks any continuity from the Force Awakens even though they take place moments apart. Why was a map left to find Luke, why is the Resistance completely wiped out, why didn't Hux return to Snoke, how is Finn and his jacket okay when he just had his spine sliced by Kylo Ren? Plot ideas and interesting characters that Force Awakens created are abandoned with total disinterest (Snoke, Knights of Ren, Phasma). The 3 new hero characters are robbed of major hero moments and are isolated the whole movie. The movie wastes our time with 2 secondary plots that accomplish nothing other than a very cool explosion and a long prequel-esque escapade to a Casino planet. A good story teller would've at least had Leia pilot that ship into Snoke like a mofo and time it so the explosion stuns Snoke, saves Rey, giving Kylo the opportunity to kill Snoke. The way they wrote this movie both the good and bad guys looked weak and stupid when both should be impressive. Finn and Rey's competence in combat against much more experienced fighters remains an ongoing mystery that might just be a result of awful storytelling.

The movie is not original either. The entire Rey story is stolen from ESB. She travels alone to a distant plant to meet a strange reclusive Jedi Master for training, while there she discovers an ominous cave that will hint the truth about who she is before disobeying the Jedi Master and confronting an enemy that reveals who her parents are (Dagobah = Ach-To). That is the main plot of ESB beat for beat. Meanwhile the rebels bunkered-in fight AT-AT's on a salt/snow planet that they must retreat for their lives (Crait=Hoth). While visiting a corrupt wealthy planet the good guys meet a shady character they ask for help but he betrays them (Canto Bight=Cloud City). Do not tell me Last Jedi is any more original than Force Awakens.