Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Joffrey L — 25 Jan 2018

The problems with the this film are too numerous to count but here's a list of ones which stick out to me:

DERIVIATIVE STORY:

Many claim TLJ doesn't follow the structure of Empire Strikes Back and is therefore more "original" than TFA... Hmmm?? Lets see...

[1] Our main protagonist goes to an isolated planet to find an old Jedi Master and learn about the Force from him.

[2] On said planet, our hero experiences a hallucination/vision in a place that is strong with the Dark Side.

[3] Meanwhile, the rebels are being chased through space by a much more powerful imperialist force.

[4] Some of our heroes go to a flashy, luxurious location where they encounter a mysterious individual who appears to "help" them but then betrays them to the imperialist bad guys.

[5] There's a big Ground Battle on a WHITE planet, where the Rebels use TRENCHES to fight AT-AT Walkers.

[6] At the end of the film, the Rebels, having suffered a major setback, are shown flying off in a ship.

Despite all this Copy & Paste imitation, TLJ feels NOTHING like a Star Wars film because its tone, characters, themes and values are as shallow as a Transformers or Marvel comic-book movie.

TFA may have been just as derivative of New Hope but at lease it remained true to the spirit of Star Wars!

PLOTHOLES:

Too many to count, so I'll just stick to the Finn/Rose ones:

[1] Rose & Finn find "Codebreaker" (wearing a distracting white tuxedo like a 007 Parody) but are thrown in jail where they "just happen" to meet a prisoner with exactly the same skill-set?? WTF?!

[2] Said prisoner just casually opens cell-door and walks out... Why the hell didn't he do this earlier??

[3] Rose sets an animal free, glibly stating, "Now it was worth it!" while completely ignoring CHILD SLAVES they just met!

[4] In the Crait battle, the ski-ships are called off but Finn continues fllying toward the canon... until Rose knocks him down... How is this physically possible? Finn was at full-speed... Rose was flying the opposite direction and had to do a 180. How did she get anywhere near him let alone catch up with him??

[5] They crash right in front of the AT-ATs, yet not one of them blasts them?

[6] Rose says, "We don't fight to kill those we hate, but save those we love." WHAT?! Thats EXACTLY what Finn was doing! Saving the ones he loved by destroying the canon that was about to blast the cave! If Rey and Luke hadn't turned up, Rose would have just single-handedly ENDED the Rebellion! Her illogical "bumper sticker wisdom" makes no sense!

And these are the Finn & Rose plot-holes!

CONTINUITY:

Or lack of it...

[1] At the end of Episode 6, the Empire was finished and the Emperor was dead... In Episode 7, the 'Empire' is back and there's a new 'Emperor' in Snoke. Since J.J. gave no explanation for this, we expected Episode 8 to address how this happened or at least explain who Snoke is... Nope! Johnson just kills Snoke off! No explanation as to who the hell he was!

[2] When/How did Snoke seduce Kylo to the darkside? Never mind... he's dead.

[3] How did Maz come to possess Luke's lightsaber which fell in Cloud City? Who cares!

[4] Who were the Knights of Ren? Doesn't matter! We'll just never mention them again!

[5] What are these Sacred Jedi Texts? They showed them in both TFA and TLJ but they play no part in the story except Luke wanting to burn them like some Communist/Fascist.

[6] What about the rest of the Galaxy? What happened to the Galactic Capital of Coruscant? How much of the New Republic still exists? How much does the First Order Control? These big geopolitical questions are completely ignored.

[7] How did Leia become such a powerful Force user? As a Skywalker, we knew she was Force-sensitive but if you're going to show her do something as unbelievably ABSURD as flying through space (!), at least have some explaination!

DIVERSITY:

There's a BIG difference between authentic, organic diversity and contrived pandering to identity politics. This film represents the latter by shoehorning in characters who serve no purpose other than box-ticking a demographic.

Obvious example is Rose, whose whole subplot with Finn ends up serving no purpose in the story whatsoever. She's a "token Asian" designed to appeal to Hollywood's 2nd biggest market: China. This of course failed on a massive scale because TLJ made less than HALF of what TFA made there.

Overall, this movie was just a DISGUSTING INSULT to both the Star Wars legacy and the audience.

Johnson and Kennedy should hang their heads in SHAME!