Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Brenton%20 L — 20 Dec 2017

Star Wars: The Last Jedi...It's not awful, but as far as the script goes it's one of the most incompetently written blockbusters I've ever seen. They squandered virtually everything TFA set them up with (NO spoilers ahead).

Okay, so my biggest problem was an overall lack of thematic and dramatic Unity. But what do I mean by that?

Here's the "unity" issue: in general, when telling a story you want it to be: Because X, therefore Y, because Y, therefore Z.

This way the choices of the characters build on one another. This develops the story like a unified puzzle. Choice matters and therefore character matters. Character growth and lack of growth matters because it effects the world around them and vice versa, the world matters because of its effect on the characters we (hopefully) have come to identify with.

That's not what Rian Johnson did. Instead he said: X happened, and the Y happened, and THEN Z happened AND THEN...

You ever had a six year old try to explain a movie? This was the professional version of that. A bunch of disconnected "happening" rather than a unified, logical, character-driven progression. Everything fits together one theme building on another like a symphony.

That's not what happened. We didn't get an opera, we got a bunch of noise. Instead of a struggle between light and dark, hope and hopelessness, tradition and progress we got...a bunch of stuff happening to some people.

There were some very good things: The inclusivity in the casting, the attempt to break out of the mold and tell a slightly different story, and the spectacles and set pieces were all very good and very enjoyable to watch.

But in the end, what matters here is story - and choosing to rate a movie highly on superficial "style" points is like declaring an underbaked cake "delicious" just because you really like the icing.