Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Lorey S — 13 Jan 2018

If you see this movie, you will be treated to really gorgeous effects and a great soundtrack, with solid performances by Mark Hamill and Adam Driver. There are many scenes and sequences that are exciting, and there are interesting new places and creatures.

But overall, not much happens. Which just makes this a flashy, yet forgettable throwaway. And if you aren't a Star Wars fan, you can go see it on that basis and be relatively entertained. But for fans, this is a much more mixed proposition, and for a movie that is part of a series.

.. it does not succeed. Any questions set up from the last movie (The Force Awakens) are dismissed with utter laziness from a story-telling perspective. The phrase from the trailer "this I not going to go the way you think" seems like a weapon aimed at assaulting Star Wars fans by giving them nothing to fulfill any expectations.

Instead you get a ho-hum plot and incongruous character portrayals. The pace of the main action (chasing rebels through space) is slow and dull, and makes all the leaders (both rebel and first order) appear incompetent and absurd.

There is also a habit of disrupting any true interesting tension being built in the story with the insertion of dumb jokes, negating any sense that any of it matters - making it hard to conjure up any real interest or investment in the story on the part of the viewer.

The truly sad part is that this movie minimizes and subverts the old characters, especially Luke Skywalker. If the new characters grew or did anything interesting, perhaps you could forgive a bit. But that didn't happen either for the most part (Kylo perhaps being the exception).

I think the filmmaker was aiming for "dark," but honestly the film is just depressing and certainly doesn't leave you wanting more. I think many fans will wish they had just stayed home to watch the old films and pretend this never happened.