Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Rylan B — 16 Jan 2018

Updating my review since some people are saying half star reviews don't count. Somehow the critic rating going up. Unbelievable. This movie deserves nothing but this is as close as I can get! RIP Star Wars.

Original review:

Wow. Just wow. I'm not sure if anyone will read all of this, but I'm going to type it anyways and avoid bringing emotions into it if possible. Spoilers ahead obviously. I'll start by saying I was not a fan of The Force Awakens, in that it was just a rehash-mashup of the original trilogy that failed to do anything new. That might be putting it lightly. I came into The Last Jedi with no expectations, but with hope that the plot points developed in TFA would be fleshed out. After all, if I had seen A New Hope in theaters and had to wait for Empire, I might have just thought Luke was a whiny farmboy. Unfortunately, Disney has not only failed to develop the story from TFA, they completely destroy the legacy of all previous movies including TFA.

I just ask that anyone who has seen it thinks about the plot outside of a Star Wars movie. If this had just been a sci-fi film, would you have liked it? To me, it felt like Guardians of the Galaxy. Don't get me wrong, I like Guardians and the humor it brought. In The Last Jedi, however, they ruined any sense of tension by cracking jokes every few minutes. Star Wars has always had humor, but it was mostly to break tension between the serious plot points. Besides the humor, the plot itself made no sense. Think about it. The whole basis of the plot was that the rebels were slightly outrunning (apparently superior) First Order ships and were running out of fuel... but they're in space. How could the First Order not have a few of their multiple Star Destroyers just jump in front of the Rebels? Or have more show up from other directions? They're in space! And they needed some random hacker to tell them the rebels were escaping in transports they could clearly see (Snoke's telescope). The side plot about Rose and Finn on the casino planet felt like it was straight out of the prequels with it's overuse of CGI and utter lack of relevancy to the story. They do all of that, sneak onto Snoke's ship, just to get caught so they can be on board when everything goes to shit. Captain Phasma remains the most useless character, what a waste of a good actress. Snoke. Just why? Why tease us with a super-villain, only to have him die before we learn a single fact about his backstory, or he even kills a single character (let alone one the audience cares about)? At that point, it felt like every decision was made based on 'shock-value' and not how it would actually drive the plot forward in a meaningful way. The throne room fight scene was pretty awesome, I'll admit, though the ninja guards seemed odd even in Star Wars.

I could write more about the plot. Even through all of the plot holes though, I would have forgiven the movie if they had done Luke justice and we could see him go out in a blaze of glory. Instead, they turn him into a suicidal, broken hermit (a la Yoda) who drinks green milk from alien tits all day while his friends are murdered by the First Order. They ruined Luke just to given Kylo a 'tragic' backstory. Really? The guy who went on a suicide mission, gave himself up to his worst enemies, just to have a chance at redeeming Vader (the most evil being in the galaxy) and yet he considered murdering his best friend and sister's son before Kylo had even done anything??? And then he spends the next 40 years sitting on an island, didn't even know that Han had died. Even after ALL of that, I was going to forgive the movie when I thought I would get to see Luke stroll out and wipe out all of the Walkers on Krait. Nope, he just turns into a holographic Neo to distract Kylo, then disappears in a poof. What a great end for the most beloved character of the saga. No one wanted to see Luke be the perfect hero or live forever, but man, they spit on his legacy and didn't even let him say goodbye to the other main characters (save Leia). Star Wars fans waited for 30 years to see Luke drink green pus, catch a fish, and then disappear from existence. We never even got to see Han and Luke in a scene together. Mark Hamill did the best he could with that script, I just feel sorry for him.

Now on to Rey. If the new Star Wars is supposed to be Rey's story, they're not doing a good job of communicating that. How can you have a two and half hour movie without revealing a single new thing about your main character?? Unless you count Kylo's comment about her parents which could have easily been a lie to manipulate her. Many people (me included) have railed on her character as she's great at everything without any training. Seriously, she can even speak Wookie for some reason, fly the Falcon as well as Chewy or Han without ever having been in a spaceship, and is somehow a Jedi master with zero training. I had held out hope that they would reveal some backstory to explain this. Perhaps she was one of the other students at Luke's temple but suffered from amnesia after it was destroyed? At least that would explain why she knew about Jedi mind tricks etc. But no, she's just perfect. Even Yoda shows up as a ghost to basically tell Luke 'she's great, don't worry about it'. This isn't a gender thing. I want to like her, but it's hard when she has no depth of character. In fact, Kylo is the only one with any semblance of depth and that came at Luke's expense. I was digging the connection that Rey and Kylo had as it was a new concept to the Star Wars films at least. It would have been interesting to explore a bond between Light and Dark that would make them both struggle. It wouldn't have even had to be romantic. They could have turned the franchise on it's head if in that moment, Rey had chosen to join Kylo (or at least act like it) and create a new force between the Light and the Dark. But no, they both just reverted to their bland characters for the rest of the movie.

I know this is already an essay but there is so much more I could go into. The opening scene with Luke throwing the lightsaber, Leia's Superman scene, Poe's mutiny (which could have been avoided if they had just told him the damn plan!), Hux being made into a total joke, the casino debacle, Finn and Rose (just useless). I'm all for equality, but why did it seem like every male character had to either be evil, brooding, dumb or cowardly? And all the female characters were the ones making good decisions and chiding their male counterparts? I don't think there was a single male Rebel officer (beside Poe I suppose). I wouldn't have even noticed if it wasn't so clearly cut throughout the whole film.

Everyone is allowed to have their opinions, but there is no way this should have a 93% from critics. I'm sorry. We're at almost 100,000 user ratings and the score is at 56% percent at the time of writing. That's not just franchise haters, or trolls. In fact, it's mostly true Star Wars fans who feel a little betrayed. Even without the Star Wars name slapped on, it's an ambling plot covered in a shiny veneer, with no depth of character. This one hurts worse than the prequels because they could have gone in any direction they wanted, instead of being boxed in by previous films.