Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Mathew B — 12 Jun 2018

If you think this is a good film, just re-watch it. I had a passably enjoyable time at the cinema but this is just a terrible terrible film that gets worse and worse the more you think about it beyond the oohhh ahhh visuals. This has nothing to do with fans vs. non-fans. It's just bad writing. Star Wars has always been at it's core a well written fairy-tale story in a sci-fi backdrop, TLJ however is using these pre-established mechanisms simply to drive a bad and now inconsistent story arc. Essays could be made about the terrible story devised by Rian Johnson and plot holes he's written. Disney for the love of god please fire Kathleen Kennedy, movie sagas need an executive producer that knows where they are going with the story and direction!

Spoilers...

The humor is terribly misplaced and misses the mark most of the time. Even when a sombre moment is building the director decides to break away or cut the tension with a porg.

The characters are awkward and act very oddly for their roles - I genuinely thought that Holdo was the infiltrator because of her behavior to Poe (her fleet commander and established hero), and that Poe was entirely justified in mutiny. She is belittling and petty, you do not write characters like that if you want the audience to like them - Holdo's death was supposed to be heroic but came off as contrived and was almost enjoyable to see her gone from screen.

Worse still, the actual villains are reduced to generic bumbling idiots. Phasma was again wasted and stupified, and Hux holds no power or dread needed from a primary antagonist. As soon as you place humor at the villains expense you have removed their menace, this happens in several ways but Hux's bumbling interactions with Poe at the start and the Rey's "oh put a shirt on" with Kylo kills the menace of these characters completely. Compare Tarkin and Vader to these morons these are menacing and dangerous and we know that the heros are in peril. Where's the threat once Snoke is dead? There is none, our heros just need to be slightly less stupid than Hux to survive.

Rey is still ridiculously overpowered and completely unrelatable, there's nothing she can't do, shes never in any danger and as such she is just a boring antagonist. She finishes the film more powerful than kylo or snokes Guards with a ridiculous skill-set of crack-pilot, wookie linguist, swims like a fish despite coming from a desert planet, lightsaber and force wielding expert with absolutely NO character flaws, and she's EARNED none of it ! That is the very definition of a Mary-sue (male or female I don't care, that's what she is). Luke, Anikin, Darth Maul, Sideous, these people had strife and flaws and growth. How can you relate to anyone who has no character flaws and needs no training to attain almost god-like power. There's a reason that Hasbro Rey figures are everywhere - nobody finds her interesting, nobody can relate to her.

-- In this movie Rian Johnson brought in choreographers and martial-arts specialists to train Daisy but forgot to train Rey.

Worse than Attack of the clones? Absolutely, at least in that film there is a continuation of story and some semblance of world-building. We have AotC's "I dont like sand" dialog vs. TLJ's leia-poppins back into a moving starship and frankly this looses that battle - anytime you have an audience laughing (as they were in my theater) during a serious scene its a very bad sign. It could and should have been re-shot and made poignant after Carrie Fisher's death however now it will be even more jarring to see how she is killed off in the next episode.

Here Rian actively insults the original trilogy with his "let the past die" but rips-off many aspects of the OT in this film, only those bits are far far worse, the emperors throne room, the ice (sorry "salt") planet, its all knocked off and butchered. What is original is just so stupid - did nobody in the creative process question Johnson on the fuel 'chase' or the pointless(!) canto byte sub-plot, or did he just have a first draft and run with it ?

The world-building is non existent, Johnson apparently had no idea or no care about the state of the galaxy after TFA and wanted his pieces in place, somehow the New Republic is completely gone after the destruction of those 5 planets and everyone has now joined the first order, we're now back to rebels and empire (another rip-off) without any sense of how we got here or what the stakes are! It's making me angry just to think about how lazy the writing is - this is part of a saga, the rules of the universe are defined but Johnson ignores it for plot momentum.

This short-sightedness causes numerous problems for the saga; as now force ghosts can interact with the real-world (Yoda's lightning and How did Luke's projection give the dice to Leia !??), turbo-blasters on capital ships cant destroy fighters and they have no shields to protect them, death-star tech is small and portable. And the biggie: Sub-light speed is now apparently uniform in all of these ships and the First order care about their fighters not to risk them!!? Why the frig cant the first order jump ahead of the rebels!!??? Oh yes, plot not story!

The holes perforate the story like swiss cheese, I could go on for hours on the problems but here are a couple off the top of my head...

- Why are the bombers so inferior to everything we've seen before.

- Rey magically turns up exactly where she needs to be and escapes just as easily without any explanation on-screen.

- Why is it that the code breaker is so conveniently in the same cell as finn and rose?

- How does Rose not kill Finn when she rams into him to 'save' him.

- How does Finn drag her back to the base without being blown to bits by the first Order's gorilla walkers,.

- Every single part of the Phasma vs. Finn execution / fight is hugely convenient and makes absolutely no logical sense.

-- This is not so-called 'fanboy' nit-picking these are plot holes a mile wide and in any other movie would be justifiably torn apart for it. People try to come up with explanations for the numerous plot holes in the film but you are doing the directors job, it is Rian Johnsons job to create story not the audience.

The scene that everyone points to as a shining example of the films quality is the hyperspace destruction of snokes ship, but after you've stopped drooling you realize that it screws up the physics of the SW universe - why was the death-star not destroyed in this way, simple because Johnson wanted his shot, and the shot is always more important than logic or universe consistency.

The less said about the butchery of Luke's character the better. There is simply no way that the character we know (the one determined to find the good in his relentlessly evil father) would try to kill his nephew in his sleep it's a fundamental change in the character without any explanation. This is Rian's subversion for subversions sake and it's insulting to everyone.

Some twists and turns are fine but it is just all-encompassing here,.

- Who is snoke and how powerful is he, why does he want Rey brought to him?

- where are the knights of ren,.

- Why is Luke on the island (what is the reason for the map),.

- Finn's back wound, how will he recover.

- Who are Reys parents and how is she so powerful,.

- How will Snoke complete Kylo Ren's training?

- lukes lightsaber "a good story for another time".

...ALL of it, every plot thread is tossed away (literally) in favor of what? Nothing! All of the answers to these questions are "nothing". Fans of the film will say that this is what made the film interesting, but it is the exact opposite, the storytelling is quantifiably bad and there is now nowhere to go from here. Nobody's special and nothing that was set up has any consequence - oh but rich people are mean and animals are cute. Brilliant! The social messages are so ham fisted, especially canto byte, it's a childs view of the world "they are mean so lets break their stuff and it'll all be worth it". I wonder who will be cleaning up that mess Finn? Could it be the 'Sanitation' workers? I'm sure it's all worth it.

This is a sequel and yet none of the story follows any of the saga's law, nor is well explained as new, all potential story arcs from ep7 are subverted with old and new characters butchered to the core without a single thought to how they got there. It would be story over substance if only there was a story here. The tragedy is that this garbage is now canon, good luck JJ picking up any kind of story from this mess, unfortunately the director who only loves the mystery box is not the man to provide a satisfying finale. Does anyone care enough to see a Kylo vs. Rey battle with absolutely no stakes or story to resolve? I'm betting on Lucasfilm flogging a quadrilogy now.

Kathleen Kennedy says that she "Doesn't Need to Cater to Male Star Wars Fans", congratulations you're doing well alienating ALL Star Wars fans through your mis-management of the franchise.