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

In some ways, worse than the prequels. At least they had some characters you could like and knew how to make villains scary and heroes heroic, even if the storytelling was amateurish and the whole thing looked like a 14 year old rendered it on a Commodore 64. Only character that nailed her part was the Falcon, who gave as spectacular a performance as ever.

Problems - Vague spoilers!

Kylo has no redeeming characteristics as good or evil and fails at being both every time. Cannot hurt untrained force-sensitives that have never held lightsabres, only old men who aren't fighting back during petulant I hate you moments. No respect for this villain.

Entire Empire, sorry 'First Order' is a total joke, it commands neither fear nor respect. You are too busy laughing at how stupid Poe can make them look to be scared.

Only bad guy (girl) with potential turns out to say barely anything, do nothing, be on screen for 30 seconds, then die. Great use of Phasma there Disney.

Rey never has to try to achieve anything, she just immediately succeeds. There is no hero's journey.

Finn has been reduced to the status of... sidekick? Less maybe? I especially like that he is told he shouldn't destroy things out of hate, but rather protect what he loves, news flash, he was trying to do just that, as has every single Rebel to ever sign up to fight the Empire. They all want to protect what they care about. You don't give a crap about the gun if it isn't about to shoot your friends....

Leia Poppins.

Luke has been done the worst disservice to a beloved character imaginable and fans will never forgive. I'm sorry, if you want to make this radical a shift in a character, you need to make me believe it, not just say surprise, look what happened to this guy! This is not good storytelling, its unbelievable rubbish done for the sake of making people think you are shaking it up. Tell me, how does the guy who, while being a whiny git in some ways (not perfect) nonetheless stared down the Emperor and Darth Vader while friends of his were dying by the (hundreds?) and not turn to the dark side. Not fail. And also redeem Darth Vader because he believes in redemption that much. How does he turn around and go this guy who is also my family might go bad, maybe I should murder him in his sleep? Do. Not. Believe. You.

-Luke's supposedly redeeming heroic bit can be seen from 12 parsecs away and is just a total cop out, because really he's just doing a lulz baited bit on the 'bad guy' who is really just a child in the middle of a tantrum. Not remotely epic.

-Leia (not your fault Carrie!) has also become terrible. I can't really put my finger on why even. She's just beaten down, instead of determined and fearless. Another one of my heroes destroyed in what I guess you thought was a good idea.

So the only one of the original 3 that was still likeable was Han. One out of three is not a success is it Disney....

Admiral Snackbar has been done an incredible disservice. You include him in the movie only to have him removed from it in totally ignominious fashion. You replace him with a character we don't know and don't care about only to remove her from the story before we have a chance to care about her instead. It's like you don't want us to care or even know anything about any character in this supposedly sweeping epic story...... If you wanted to not include Ackbar, here's a tip. JUST LEAVE HIM OUT.

So that's character and plot issues. Believe me these were my main gripe. But I also spent the movie wincing painfully at some 'other issues'.

Pointless subplots and using impossible stuff to tell your story.

Example: Rose and Finn are injured and on foot, on a flat salt plain, 10 metres from a dozen walkers and 3km from Rebel lines. What happens to them in such a situation?

You are in the galaxy's slowest chase and you can't go any faster but neither can your pursuer. But your pursuer has many, many friends who can all run much faster than you and could easily get in front of you and surround you. What happens to you in this easily-predicted situation?

You have a very very large and expensive ship that has force fields that can protect it from small fighter craft, rendering them useless against you. Do you;.

A. Turn on the force fields that should already be on anyway, so that a small ship cannot take out every single turret protecting one side of your ship on its own.

B. Leave them off and see what happens to you, even when several turrets are already destroyed?

You are told by Maz Kanata, a wise and interesting character who you choose to leave out of this movie, because, reasons..... that she and one other person are capable of doing a job and you must track that person down. You end up in gaol and your highly dubious-looking cellmate tells you that he could do that too, no problem. Do you think to yourself;.

A. What a spot of luck, this random is telling me he can do that. Lets go!

B. A very wise person who has previously proven trustworthy told me there are two people who can do this job. Let's escape and keep trying to actually find the one we're looking for. If we can't do that we have to give up on this.

Overly ham-fisted social justice warrior themes. This stuff is fine, I totally agree that original Star Wars was way too male-centric, too whitewashed, etc. I love that we're now telling a girl's journey (even though she is rapidly becoming pointless and uninteresting, but again that's your fault) But you're sacrificing pace and plot to get uninteresting people like Rose and Holder (who you dispense with before we get a chance to care anyway) and pointless plots like that planet with the nasty rich people who profit from war that take up half the movie and remove all the drama. This is apparently so you can push your politics into my escapist fantasy and I don't like it.

Here's the best irony of that, to my mind, Original Trilogy Leia seems to be a far superior heroine to Rey. She's fearless and doesn't quit when she fails. She's not all-powerful she's just awesome. Rey is more like an omni-tool, she can get any job done efficiently and without being tested.

You're meant to be telling a trilogy. So far you have;.

- Made a movie that set up the threads for a trilogy story arc. Check.

- Made a second movie that cut every one of those threads and made that first movie totally pointless. Congrats, Last Jedi didn't only ruin itself as a movie, it also managed to ruin any level of quality from part 1 of this trilogy. You broke 2 movies with one... That's an achievement.

- Ended this second movie in such a way that there is no related story to tell in a third movie and nothing left of the current rebellion. To me they now have to reset to zero and start over with new threads. I don't care about anything or anyone anymore in this movie, except Chewie. So I think you've ruined the first and last movies of your 'trilogy' with the second one. I could not wait to see how things would wrap up after Empire, this time I don't care, see how much different that is?

The box office for the third movie is hopefully going to suck based on this turd. I'm going to do my part. I will not watch it (don't even want to), and as much as it's going to hurt I'm not even going to watch Solo (I really want to) until I can stream it cheap. Where normally I promise I'd have a bluray of this pretty soon, I will instead never watch this rubbish movie ever again. So at least I can help hurt them there since I already made the mistake of buying a ticket to this mess...

Hopefully this helps articulate to many of the people that liked the movie why there are so many of us that don't. It is not up to the character story or plot standard we wanted from it. Only the visuals and the musical score hold up to scrutiny and are both exceptional.