Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by B H — 23 Jan 2018

Huge disappointment. I am a long-time Star Wars fan, but not what I would necessarily describe as a hardcore one; I liked the original trilogy, didn't care for the prequels, thought TFA was a good palate cleanser to get back to the optimism of star wars, and enjoyed Rogue One for what it was.

I left the theater utterly disappointed after seeing TLJ. After almost a month, my reaction has moved from disappointment to anger and contempt.

This is not just a bad Star Wars movie. It is a bad movie.

The plot makes very little sense. There are gaping holes in logic and rationale. The idea of a space bomber that relies on gravity to work. Holdo/Leia not telling their CAG, Poe, what their plan is. Space Mary Poppins. The failure to use the two freighters that they know will run out of fuel first as weapons. The fact that Holdo stayed on the main ship (ostensibly to pilot it, even though she was just sitting around and any droid could have done the same), passively watched shuttles get destroyed, and only after they were almost all gone, decided to ram the first order ship. What a stroke of fortune that the surviving shuttle contained the characters the movie cared about!

The humor is forced and ill-fitting. The casino planet served no purpose other than to provide a very muddled, tremendously hamfisted attempt at social commentary. The brand new characters (Rose, Holdo) serve little to no purpose except to remove agency from Poe and Finn respectively. The ability to completely waste having Laura Dern in your film merits mention all of its own. The acting in general, which has admittedly never been a strong point of the franchise, hits new lows.

But my largest complaints are reserved for the plot decisions they chose to make.

I don't even care that much that they ruined Luke's character except that it was totally unnecessary. Literally, the ONLY reason that bit was included was to make Kylo Ren seem like he might be redeemable and join with Rey... and then they stomped out that possibility within twenty minutes. So what was the value of destroying a character for a plot point that didn't even survive the movie?

Apart from the terrible writing, that's my biggest issue with the movie; exactly how many of the decisions made were unnecessary. If you take it as a given that the goals of the movie were (a): kill off Luke and put the focus back on the new characters, (b) strip down the resistance to the barest essentials, and (c) put kylo in command of the first order, those goals were all achievable without so many boneheaded decisions.

Instead, they tarnished Luke's legacy, they changed Poe into the sort of moron who consistently gets everyone following him killed, they took away any agency or capability whatsoever from Finn (who accomplishes nothing in the film other than exposing the resistance's already terrible escape plan and being prevented from heroically sacrificing himself by pointless write-in Rose), and they wiped out any of the mystery surrounding Rey leaving... what, exactly? A young woman who is inexplicably good at everything, has no backstory, and hasn't had any character development in two movies?

Through Marvel, Disney does a good job of shepherding their MCU movies and making sure they build off of each other and support the larger storyline. It's a pity they couldn't do the same with Star Wars. It's a pity they thought it was a good idea to give the second movie in the trilogy to a director who so clearly had no interest in building off the first movie. It's a pity I no longer have any interest at all in seeing episode IX.

All of the excitement and hope that TFA brought back after the very mediocre prequels is gone.

But hey... at least the increasingly out-of-touch critics liked it.