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

Rian Johnson said he didn’t make this movie ‘to give the fans what they wanted to see’ and Mark Hamill said when he read the script he was “insulted”. So should we be surprised that this movie has gotten so poorly rated by fans? Because of the innumerable plot holes and invalidating 40 years of Star Wars history this movie is beyond bad. Surprising the audience is one thing but this is just denigrating history.

I think most fans understand and agree that the definition of Star Wars movies needs to eventually expand and it naturally would have. However, you can’t just take a shortcut to get there by retconning the 40-year history of the Skywalker saga. There is still going to be hundreds more Star Wars movies made by Disney you would think they could have left the Skywalker Saga alone to some extent. I suppose The Force Awakens direction unfortunately put all this in motion but Last Jedi still did not have to so completely invalidate the importance of George Lucas’ Skywalker saga. I have no idea how episode 9 can possibly fix any of this without coming off overly contrived. The first 6 episodes of the Skywalker saga and Rogue One ultimately all lead to a very satisfying logical cohesive conclusion. Disney having a new director pop in to each new episode in the new trilogy and take it in their own personal direction clearly does not lend itself to creating a cohesive new trilogy story. This movie amazingly also retcons most of anything you would care about from The Force Awakens too. I agree surprising the audience is valuable but when that is achieved by just simply saying everything before me is just not valuable anymore that comes off as cheap, unearned, insulting and just poor story telling. This movie sadly as many have stated in a way destroys Star Wars. Things that are no longer valuable in Star Wars if we are to believe this movie: Jedi, goodness, fighting for good, lightsaber battles, Anakin, Vader, Luke, Jedi training, respecting tradition, Luke being a Jedi, Yoda thinking training is important, shields, respect for the chosen one fulfilling the prophecy and bringing balance to the force, respect for the chosen one’s lightsaber. If none of these things are valuable anymore then why did Disney in even buy Star Wars? It’s as if this movie is stuck up on itself and thinks it’s more important than all the other movies before it. This movie actively makes you try to feel bad for believing in anything that came before it. This movie in a vacuum still does not deserve to be rated well for its innumerable plot hole issues but ultimately this movie deserves a negative rating because of what it represents to Star Wars as a whole. These are dark times for Star Wars.