Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Tasso P — 01 Jan 2018

I think it may have been the worst Star Wars film ever made. I have trouble determining whether or not it was worse than Attack of the Clones but having watched it multiple times now I am more convinced it is at the very bottom of my list.

The main plot wasn't that bad, but it was basically just a rehashing of the classic films. Old hermit trains young jedi, the apprentice abandons training against the advice of the master in order to save friends (ESB), then young jedi lets themselves be captured in order to try to turn bad guy back to the light, they team up to defeat the big bad guy (RotJ). The most disappointing thing was it was the first main film that didn't have a real jedi vs sith lightsaber battle.

The side story was not only ultimately pointless but ended horribly. Finn and Rose accomplished nothing, their entire adventure made no difference whatsoever in the plot. The Resistance was decimated by the combination of a young hotshot pilot and an incompetent admiral so that at the end the entire Republic military could fit within the Millenium Falcon. It was 2 hours of the bad guys slowly whittling away at what was left of the good guys. They could have covered that in the opening text crawl and saved a lot of time and effort.

I'm not as annoyed by the "new" force powers as much of the internet seems to be. The former EU had powers similar to a force trance to temporarily survive the vacuum of deep space or the ability to project an image across large distances. The superman flight of Leia was quite awful though, even the force powers created for the EU required some object or gravity to push against, much like a ship's repulsorlift wouldn't function in the vacuum of space. And the graphics of that entire seen were terrible.

And even setting aside how they still can't create a unique story (like being betrayed by a handsome scoundrel on a casino planet again) one of the things that most annoyed me was how they portrayed Luke's character. I realize they want to move away from the EU, but it was just completely out of place for everything that had been established about Luke.

I kind of like Rey, but from a story standpoint am somewhat concerned by how easily she is drawn to the dark side. They could have explained it (like fan theories that she was a clone of Vader or the Emperor), but the revelation of her parents makes it just seem out of place. Although it does explain why she has so much power with the force, the dark side is quick and easy. I also didn't mind the porgs as much as it seemed like I would after the previews. They were just cute little background things.

I still don't like Finn, he is this series' Jar-Jar, he is just there for comic relief as he is constantly doing silly gags. I can't stand Poe, he is cocky, abrasive, and unlikable (and his attempt at comedy just comes off as annoying). At least Han was charismatically full of himself. And Kylo is just a whiny little emo brat, although I understand why they made him like that (they wanted to channel Anakin from the prequels) and he did have some character growth this time around.

Then there are the wasted deaths. The revelation of Rey's background being irrelevant was somewhat disappointing, but we get absolutely nothing about Snoke despite the assertion that he was working in the background since the Old Republic and supposedly corrupted Ben Solo. His end was fairly anticlimactic. But he got a better sendoff than Phasma or even worse an established and lovable original character like Ackbar who they nonchalantly mentioned as an afterthought. We also still get nothing about the Knights of Ren, despite being teased about a battle that was filmed with Luke on the jedi island.

Disney knows their audience, they made this new trilogy to appeal to small children. The blatant slapstick humour and marketing of cute creatures is right up their alley. But for fans of the older movies it comes across as disappointing as the original films were more about dry and sarcastic humour which didn't distract from the story. And for fans of the EU it goes from being disappointing to just plain terrible. Some of us have been reading stories and playing video games immersing ourselves in the Star Wars universe for decades, to see what Disney is doing with their reboots and lazily borrowing story from more talented writers is just disheartening.

The film had some redeeming qualities, and knowing that I am not the target audience I was a little lenient in my rating. But it was still a long and boring film with little redeeming worth.