Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Kevin B — 24 Jan 2018

Depends on your history or potential with the true Star Wars franchise. If you've seen each of the movies about once; you know maybe you haven't seen one or two and you've seen one or two a couple times on TV, if that's you and you have very little investment or appreciation for Star Wars, you'll love this movie.

It looks very good and sounds very good, and has genuinely emotional moments. There are gaping plot holes and stupid things people do that the movie seems to present as completely reasonable but these can be neglected because of the evocative and pretty nature of the movie.

I'm just saying, if you went into the sequel movies (the force awakens and now this one) invested in a coherent plot and competent characters who as their character are supposed to be very competent or at least incompetency to be picked up on by the movie, you may not like this movie very much.

Also, if coherent plot matters to you a load, you probably won't be able to forgive this movie. What Star Wars fans or casual admirers were offended by was the bastardisation and nonsensical nature of the Luke Sky walker we know and love.

Speaking generally to dodge spoilers, Luke is presented as being in the dumps and struggling but the problem is this isn't an actual character development, what we learn about Luke in the movie goes against the character himself.

Rey is still a Mary Sue (an incoherently, randomly overpowered character which has no real struggle, thus not actually being interesting and normally inserted for a specific reason like poor, ironically sexist attempts at diversity and female empowerment or a personal director's over attachment to an idea) and in fact her Sueness is increased in this movie significantly.

The whole B-plot to the movie being pointless bores me. I understand how some could blind themselves to this in order to enjoy it, but honestly I can't get past the pointlessness and be engaged by half an hour of filler.

Admiral Holdo not telling anyone that she even has a plan and leading Poe to believe that they're all going to die without a fight, thus causing said B-plot and unneeded tension in the movie is actually portrayed as a GOOD decision.

This isn't really a spoiler but she isn't either jailed or significantly demoted to a normal soldier or first-level leader for her responsibility in some of the actions caused by the tension which could've caused death and the ultimate falling through of her secret plan which annoyed me.

Poe should rank above this pretentious psychopath. Another non-plot issue I have with this movie is the gross under use of Chewbacca as set dressing and an occasional joke source. They carry on the sequel trend of the force awakens by betraying the character of Chewbacca by having him let out endless cute growls to the extent that it's annoying in an attempt to dilute any gravitas, menace or reserve of the character of Chewie.

Remember in A New Hope when we first see Chewie in the cantina as a silent, deliberate companion? While later in the original series Chewbacca was tastefully, respectably and entertainingly made more whimsical, the sequels have turned him into some sort of toddler character.

Seriously, to any SW fans reading this, would you be surprised if in episode 9 (which we need to agree not to watch) Chewie got scared by lightning or had a makeshift dolly which he pampered? No, because they've destroyed the awesome character of Chewbacca and replaced him with an imposter.

Imposter Chewie, imposter Luke, imposter force. This is why people are considering the sequels non-canonical (as in, not really Star Wars but pretenders under the name). As a final negative, the Snoke storyline went nowhere.

Any positives beside the aesthetic and tear-jerker at the end? Very good performance from Carrie Fisher R.I.P. Very good performance from Mark Hamill (who BTW is dead against what they've done with the series and was tricked, but tried his hardest anyway to work with the drivel he got), good on him.

Those are all of the positives I can think of right now. TO SUMMARISE, I disliked it a lot because I like Star Wars but if you're not that acquainted with Star Wars and don't value coherency of the plot too highly, you'll very much like this emotional, pretty picture.

However, one thing that is objective is that this is not Star Wars. This is objectively not the same world that we saw from Anakin's childhood pod racing in Episode 1 up to his redemption and death in Episode 6.