Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Jim%20 P — 05 Jan 2018

Ok, where to start?

First, The Last Jedi is a beautiful film to look at. Richly detailed, gorgeously filmed, epic in scale. So it's easy to be fooled into thinking it's a great movie. But you shouldn't be. Because everything that they set up in Force Awakens - the questions, the backstories, the cliffhangers - were completely discarded (more on that later). Not to mention they changed things that had already been established in the original trilogy. And although Mark Hamill did an amazing job as Luke for what he was given, what he had to work with was total garbage.

We waited thirty-four years to see Luke Skywalker on screen again. Thirty-four years! And this is what we got? A grumpy, disheveled, ambivalent jerk that doesn't seem to care about the continuing struggle of his family and friends or the survival of the Jedi Order that he alone saved at the end of Return of the Jedi. In other words, everything he always cared about up to this point. Every decision he made was the exact opposite of what Luke Skywalker would have done. First, if he didn't want to be found, then why did he leave a map so he could be found? Then, the epic ending of The Force Awakens and Rey handing Luke's original blue lightsaber to him was tossed away... for a slapstick joke. Luke fishing? Drinking green alien titty milk? Really?!? But here's the big thing: Luke sacrificed everything to save Darth Vader, the most evil villain in the history of villains, because he was his father and he sensed the smallest bit of good in him. And he succeeded, so he KNOWS that you can turn someone that was completely consumed by the Dark Side back to the light. But then he senses the slightest bit of the Dark Side in his young nephew and he was going to murder him in his sleep?!? I'm sorry, but that is NOT Luke Skywalker. Did Rian Johnson even watch the original trilogy?

Since when has "running out of gas" ever been an issue in a Star Wars movie - or any science fiction movie set in space, for that matter? Yet, the entire premise of the conflict in The Last Jedi hinges on the fact that the entire Resistance fleet apparently forgot to stop at the nearest Shell station to fill up on hyperspace fuel and as a result, can't get away. I would expect a plot like that to be in Spaceballs, not Star Wars.

Chewbacca's best scene? Not eating a Porg.

Leia "Mary Poppins" Organa flying in space? That will go down as one of the WORST and most RIDICULOUS scenes in the history of film making. She's never once done anything other than have somewhat of a force sensitive connection with her twin brother and now she can revive in space after being killed in an explosion and then fly around like flipping Superman? Seriously, I almost got up and left the theater.

Yoda laughing while he burns the original and sacred Jedi texts? Yeah, right. Totally strikes me as something he would do. Not that it mattered anyway, because Rey had them the whole time, without any explanation as to how, why and when she stole them from under the nose of the most powerful Jedi, possibly ever. And then there's this: Obi-Wan made it clear on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back that Force Ghosts can't interfere with the choices of the living. So how and why did Yoda conjure real lightning to burn it all down? Fuuuuck!!!

All the questions about Snoke after The Force Awakens were completely ignored. Who is he? Where did he come from? What's his plan? Will he complete Kylo's training? Who knows? And it doesn't even matter because he was killed with no backstory or reason whatsoever. Darth Maul's role in The Phantom Menace was an expansive character study compared to the attention to detail (or lack thereof) that was paid to Snoke.

All the questions about Rey after The Force Awakens were also completely ignored. Who are her parents? Where did she come from? Why is she so Force sensitive? How did Maz come into possession of Luke's lightsaber? When she touched it in The Force Awakens, she saw Luke and heard Luke's voice. Heard Yoda's voice. Heard Obi-Wan's voice. And when Maz was asked where she got the lightsaber, she said it was "a story for another time." And then there was no mention of any of it and it turns out that it doesn't even matter. Why? Because Rey is just... a nobody. Not a Skywalker, which is what this whole thing is supposed to be about - the Skywalker family. Not a Kenobi, which would have been an interesting twist. Just... a nobody. Wow. How incredibly thought provoking. But then again, none of it matters either because she's become a Jedi Master with literally no Jedi lineage and no training at all, which is why she went to the island in the first place - to get trained! Come to think of it, why does she even need the Jedi texts?!? She's been able to become a Jedi Master completely on her own!

Moving on... why not just tell Poe the flipping plan? Oh, because then he would have had nothing to do. They have an escape plan so simple, that makes so much sense and for no reason at all, the purple haired lady kept it all to herself. Here you have Poe, the top fighter pilot in the Resistance and they guy that just destroyed Starkiller Base and now all of a sudden he's a total douchebag that can't be told the escape plan. And how is it possible that Poe, a Commander and top pilot, didn't know who the second in command was? She even had purple hair! "Oh, the purple haired lady! I know her!" But apparently he's never seen or heard of her, even though there's only a couple of hundred people left in the Resistance..

Kylo Ren "space texting" with his shirt off? That was creepy. There's no other way to put it. In no situation, in no instance, in no way, shape or form should it ever be necessary for Rey to tell Kylo Ren to put his shirt on. Jesus.

The whole casino mission? Stupid. I mean, really... they get arrested for double parking their spaceship on the beach? That's excruciatingly laughable! This entire plot line could have been left out of the movie completely and it wouldn't have changed anything. It just gave Finn something to do. The only thing that would have made the casino worthwhile is if they would have run into Lando. After all, a casino is exactly the kind of place where you would expect to find a "scoundrel" like Lando. But not only was Lando not there, they didn't even find the "only" code breaker that could help. But they did coincidentally find another code breaker that could do the exact same thing as the first code breaker who was supposedly the only code breaker that could help. And then the other code breaker that they found didn't help, so we just wasted forty-five minutes of screen time. Seriously, who writes this shit?

I know it's Star Wars, which requires a certain amount of suspension of belief, but please tell me how you drop bombs in zero gravity in space? That was just lazy writing.

Remember all that talk about how Captain Phasma was going to have a larger role this time around? And it was hyped in the trailers. But nope. Barely in the film. Which totally takes away from the battle between Phasma and Finn. Why would I care if Phasma dies any more than the average Stormtrooper if I literally know nothing about the character other than the fact that she's silver instead of white?

And then, after all this, we didn't even get to see Luke fight. And I mean REALLY fight. Because that wasn't Luke at the end. It was a flipping hologram like at a Tupac concert. And enough with the "it was so bad ass that Luke could project himself halfway across the galaxy." That's a cop out and more bad/lazy writing. The real Luke wouldn't have done that. The real Luke would have faced Kylo Ren head on, and potentially would have even tried to save him like he did his father, since Kylo is also his blood relative. And don't even get me started on that horrible L'Oréal hair color for men they brushed in his beard. My god, that was terrible.

Imagine this: earlier in the film, they briefly showed Luke's X-Wing in the water on the island coastline. Imagine if after getting advice from Force Ghost Yoda, Luke raises it out of the water, doing what he couldn't do on Dagobah years ago (with Yoda watching from afar). Luke then races to face Kylo Ren, in front of Rey and Leia. Rey could even have joined the fight, with Luke giving her instructions on using the Force during battle. Imagine the emotion of master and former pupil battling with the tutelage of Rey happening simultaneously. Imagine the emotion of Leia having to watch her brother and son duel to the death. Imagine the emotion of Luke trying to turn Kylo Ren back to the light like he did with his father and failing, cementing Kylo Ren's status as possibly a bigger villain that's darker and more powerful than Darth Vader, something we all know Kylo Ren wants to achieve. And if Luke had to die, he could have been killed by Kylo Ren, possibly in an effort to save Rey, with Leia watching. Watching her son kill her brother. Luke could have died a noble death, passing the torch to Rey, who already saw Han die at the hands of Kylo Ren and now would fully realize that she is in fact The Last Jedi and the Last hope of the Resistance, setting up an epic Episode IX. Especially if she turned out to be a Skywalker or Kenobi. That would have been fantastic! But noooooo!!! We don't even get a real lightsaber battle! Trivia question: which Star Wars movies don't contain a climactic lightsaber duel? That would only be The Last Jedi. AND YOU COULD HAVE DONE A LIGHTSABER DUEL WITH LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER!!! Instead, we got "Hologram Luke," with Keanu Reeve's moves lifted right out of The Matrix. And then Luke dies alone on a rock. And from what? Exhaustion?!? What the holy fuck?!? Thirty-four years of waiting and that's the best you can come up with for possibly the most iconic hero in film history?!?!? George Lucas is probably regretting every dollar he sold this to Disney for.

Rian Johnson (and Disney) took everything we grew up knowing and loving about Star Wars and flushed it down the toilet. The Force Awakens, although as much of a reboot as a sequel, was at least fun, nostalgic and set up some really interesting questions and cliffhangers to move things forward. The Last Jedi ignored nearly all of that and was a depressing, convoluted, ridiculous mess that threw everything we knew up to this point in the garbage and made every wrong decision with every character at every turn imaginable.

I hated it. The more I think about it, the more I hate it. It is by far the worst Star Wars movie, not because of the acting, action or visuals, but because of the horrid decisions that were made with the characters and story. It makes The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones look like Citizen Kane by comparison. (For the record, I liked Revenge of the Sith - the last forty-five minutes of that movie is Star Wars gold.) Flawed as the prequels were, and believe me they were flawed, at least they told a fluid and consistent story that made sense within the overarching narrative. Even Rogue One, which was a stand alone film, still tied into the overall story, nestling itself brilliantly in between Episodes III and IV. This movie made zero sense and has no place in the story that was told up to this point. They destroyed everything to the point where I'm not sure they can fix it with Episode IX. I'm not even sure I want them to try. At least JJ Abrams is coming back to direct Episode IX. Maybe he can right the ship. Maybe. But I'm not too hopeful.

My Star Wars film rankings are as follows:

1) The Empire Strikes Back.

2) A New Hope.

3) Return of the Jedi.

4) Rogue One.

5) The Force Awakens (tie).

6) Revenge of the Sith (tie).

7) The Phantom Menace.

8) Attack of the Clones.

9) The Last Jedi.

That is all.