Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by M M — 11 Feb 2018

What a sad disappointment of a film!

Star Wars offers such a rich palette with wildly creative possibilities for new film makers to take hold of and run with.

It's steeped with a rich history built on some of best films ever created. It boasts some of the most beloved characters put to film. Darth Vader, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Leia, R2D2, Han Solo and many, many others.

All great films are influenced by and stand on the shoulders of the others that came before them, and Star Wars was no exception there. It borrowed from various sources including classic westerns & Flash Gordon, to name a couple. Having said that, Star Wars did something that no other film has ever done to the degree it did.

It took movie goers & film making to a place it had never been before. Star Wars was a phenomenon when it was first released in 1977. It changed movie making forever with it's technical innovations, wildly creative galaxy and it's endearing characters. It left an indelible mark.

It captured the imaginations of children and adults perhaps like no other film/s ever have. That is why, in large part, some 40 years later, Disney is able to attract a record breaking audience who is delighted to return to that galaxy far, far away.

With Disney & new talented film makers now taking the helm, I welcomed growth in the Star Wars universe. I was very much looking forward to moving the Star Wars stories forward into new & uncharted territories. What would new talented film makers add to that rich legacy & how would they they propel Star Wars into more wildly creative directions? It is a tantalizing wish for these new films.

As an avid film enthusiast & multiple award winning film maker myself, I wanted one foot firmly planted in bringing fresh and thrilling new voices to this film series, I craved a more diverse & strong group of new characters. I wanted the Star Wars universe expanded to include stronger female characters & persons of colour who had important roles to play. I also wanted to see if film makers could bring their talents and considerable resources at their disposal to bare and welcomed bold new directions along with clever story lines and an expanded Star Wars universe.

Surprise us, delight us and develop the new interesting characters that were so well cast and created in The Force Awakens and lets see where they will go and what they will do within this universe.

As I mentioned earlier, great films are always influenced and stand on the shoulders of the ones that have came before them. I also mentioned in regards to the new Star Wars films, I wanted to have one foot firmly planted in a rich, diverse and exciting new Star Wars stories.

But I also wanted, as many did, to have the other foot planted firmly in respecting why Star Wars is still so popular to this day. That it is built on a rich past of fantastic ideas and characters. Fans want to have that ethos honoured, NOT COPIED, NOT STAGNATED, but honoured and respected to an appropriate degree. Why include the old cast in the new films if that isn't an interest? Why make new Star Wars films if they are not based an the galaxy they were created to occupy in? I'm quite sure film goers who love those characters want to see them close out those characters in a satisfying way.

As the old saying goes, "the only constant is change". That I accept and welcome.

What I did not welcome with The Last Jedi was:

PLOT HOLES! "The suspension of disbelief" is a key tool that a story teller often needs to cultivate in telling a great story. Considering that these stories take place in a galaxy far, far away & a long time ago this would certainly qualify. So the story teller will stretch reasonable possibilities but like previous films it's in the craft of making rules in this universe that make it reasonable for these things we are seeing to occur. Lucas created the "rules" of this galaxy that made the Force possible, lightsabers, Jedi etc etc. Now many of these rules throughout this film were simply disregarded partially or entirely leaving me, the viewer in disbelief. I was also in disbelief of the utter stupidity of these plot elements. It wasn't like there were clever reasons to "bend the rules" or break them, he simply just chucked them out. As a viewer, the spell is broken & I'm left feeling my intelligence is being insulted by these ridiculous scenarios presented. I'm also offended that so little respect was given to why I liked the previous films and bought tickets to see this one!

One example amongst many was Leia, blown out of the bridge into space. No problem, everyone else instantly dies but she, after a moment of freezing and apparent death herself, "wakes up" & flies like superman back into the blown out hole, knocks on the window on a door, that now makes up the outer skin of the ship & they let her in. Wait...didn't they just show you a rule? Like when the pressurized inside air of the ship is breached folks get sucked violently out into space? That applied a few seconds ago but not now? Now this may sound geeky but the film is full of stuff like this. Poorly thought out scenarios that constantly undermine itself. Is it a parody? If it was then that exactly what you do in parodies you make fun of the "rules" of the story. Especially a story that has so many specific & unique "rules" like Star Wars does.

The clumsy heavy handed utter disrespectful way that the film maker had for the previous films ethos was kind of appalling. There are many examples of simply throwing away the past for poorly motivated or seemingly thoughtless reasons. And a remarkable disregard for the reasons many fans adored the series.

As much as I would like to characterize this in a more sophisticated manner, simply put, it was like getting the middle finger from this film maker & Disney if you loved the old films.

I'm not interested in seeing a parody of Star Wars which this film often felt like it was gravitating towards. "Dying is easy, comedy is hard". A well placed joke in an otherwise serious plot can really add to the enjoyment & richness of the story as well as greatly enhancing the likability of the characters involved. It started early with an oddly placed "joke" and really digressed from there. We had Yoda making jokes about burning, what I understand in the ethos is sacrate Jedi books. A perfect example with the lack of touch and judgement this filmmaker demonstrated on numerous occasions. It doesn't matter, none of that old Star Wars ethos matters! Let's sweep it away as if it meant nothing.

Old characters & new interesting ones were dismissed, killed off and under utilized. "Let the past die" as Adam Drivers character says. Dismiss it, erase it, joke it away and certainly provide little in it's place while you do so. It wasn't that characters died, it was so poorly handled with some gleeful abandon & infantile story telling. Why bother writing clever character arcs just flush em'! And the one that survive, disregard their previous character arc and provide film goers with some slight of hand instead of substance in it's place.

The new characters introduced in this film were really not needed as they added little to nothing to the story in any satisfying way. It would have been nice to have taken that 30 minutes or so & devote it to Luke & Rey's training. Phasma's chapter getting her due. Snoke (not my favourite villain) but he was the all powerful leader of the First Order. And Maz who was really a fabulous new character who only was in the film for a minute. Discard all that crap, like all the other things things film did. Yikes! What were they thinking?

The future of Star Wars is dead for me. I own all of the previous films and we loved them. Some of them more than others but we liked or loved them all. This one, I don't wish to see it ever again.

Disney you did a great disservice to the many fans who made you all that cash with the previous decent film & this mess of a Star Wars film. I am appalled.