Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by H R — 19 Jan 2018

***SPOILERS THROUGHOUT***.

Come back Ewoks, all is forgiven!

I've really tried to be understanding with regard to the new crop of Star Wars films, accounting as best I can for my own nostalgia goggles and the *high* expectations of new films... but this was utter, utter garbage...

It's not that I hate the film... I'm just so utterly let down and disillusioned... what was the point?

It seems that the director couldn't bring himself to allow even one 'serious' scene to go by without undercutting it with a weak, unnecessary and out of place joke... cue the throwing and dropping of Lightsabers, a main character essentially 'prank calling' a star destroyer, and the godawful Porgs...

While the story wasn't by any means complex, it still managed to be all over the place.

Why is the opening of the film, with a rebel base, moments from being attacked by a vast imperial fleet, introduced with cringe worthy 'cocky rogue' dialogue that could have been lifted from an episode of Brooklyn 99? "I'm waiting for General Hux?".

Why can princess Leia now survive getting blown up by torpedoes and being sucked into space? Powers so extreme and out of place that she may as well have produced a magic wand from her sleeve or been saved by a gadget on her Bat-Man utility belt. I had serious doubts about the film from its immediately bad opening, but this scene really nuked the fridge.

Why did Finn and Whatshername have to go to take that convoluted trip to the casino planet, only to discover that the REAL villains aren't the genocidal Empire or First Order... but corporations?

Why did Laura Dern's character have to withhold vital information from key members of the resistance, instead of just explaining her (really quite simple) plan to her senior staff? At every moment up until the revelation that she 'had a plan all along', her conduct was indistinguishable from that of someone who was either criminally incompetent, or secretly on the side of the Empire...this whole mutinous subplot did nothing to move the story along, and was instead incredibly frustrating...

(at least her character is dead and unlikely to return).

It's as if Johnson set out to create an immensely unlikable character, and then at the last moment decided to make her into a hero without removing any of the previous 'villain' scenes.

After all of the fuss in TFA... what was the point of Snoke? He's dead, like some second rate sidekick... along with Phasma, who has has been underutilised in two films now...

During one of the final scenes of the film, when the last members of the resistance are hiding in a bunker, Finn decides to selflessly sacrifice himself by crashing into a siege weapon that threatens to kill his friends and the resistance. Whatshername, in a moment of baffling incompetence and poor writing, decides that this cannot be allowed, and decides to crash her ship into his at break-neck speed (risking killing them both), so as to stop him from carrying out this selfless act... thereby guaranteeing the success of the enemies siege weapon and putting all of their friends in mortal danger...

(Imagine the final battle in Independence Day, except President Bill Pullman decides to crash his plane into Randy Quaid's instead of letting him destroy the alien ship... because they're such good friends).

Why, as if it were some sort of surprise, did they 'reveal' in the final scene that Luke Skywalker was some sort of force projection or illusion?

Luke, apparently 10 years younger than when we last saw him 20 mins ago, appears on a distant planet (without the aid of a spaceship), survives being bombarded by hundreds of direct hits from enemy tanks, and then produced a lightsabre that we witnessed being destroyed just minutes earlier... even the most disinterested viewer must have worked out that something was amiss...

I really do think that this film is irredeemably bad, and fear that it sets the tone for the future of the franchise.

On the plus side, they seem to have gotten over their obsession with forcing multiple references to the OT into every single frame.