Yesterday we watched The Last Jedi, the next movie in the Star Wars chronological timeline after The Force Awakens. Of all of my Star Wars movie posts, this is the post I’ve most dreaded to write.
This is not a review and it isn’t meant to rain on anybody’s opinion of this movie – it’s simply an attempt to articulate my own feelings about it. Your mileage may most definitely vary.
I remember seeing The Last Jedi at the theater and coming away conflicted. I’ve watched it a few times since then and I’m still conflicted.
Warning! Spoilers Below (if there can be such a thing as spoilers for a movie released in 2017).
What I Liked
Visually Striking. If there’s one thing that stands out about The Last Jedi, it’s how beautiful it is. There’s a lot of red in this movie, but it’s (mostly) used effectively. And the scene of Admiral Holdo’s suicide by lightspeed collision with the First Order ship is stunning.
The Acting. There may be a lot of problems with this movie, but the acting is not one of them. The actors do a good job with the material they’ve been given.
What I Was Ambivalent About
Rey and Kylo Ren. The Force bond (or whatever you want to call it) between Rey and Kylo Ren had possibilities – which were mostly wasted.
What I Hated
The Plot(s). The first problem I have with the movie is it felt more like Rian Johnson wanted to make his Star Wars movie, and wasn’t bothered with the fact that it was the middle act of a trilogy. That is, he didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t creating a standalone movie, or that there were things set up in The Force Awakens that needed to be continued/followed up on. Nor did he seem to care about where the story would go after the end of his movie.
That said, taking the movie as it stands, there were too many subplots (four, I think): 1) Rey and Luke, 2) the fallout from Poe’s Idiocy (disobeying direct orders + mutiny), 3) the Resistance trying to escape the First Order in a drawn out OJ-esque chase, and 4) Finn and Rose go to Casino World (I know some people conflate 2+3 – I don’t). All of these, with the possible exception of the escape subplot, have problems that stem from poor characterization.
So, let’s talk about #2+3 – the OJ-esque slow motion (because that’s what it felt like) escape chase and Poe’s mutiny. Oh, how I hated everything about this. I especially hated that the conflict within the Resistance boiled down to the completely unrealistic notion that Vice Admiral Holdo would withhold the reasons for her decisions (why??). It’s bad writing when the audience can reasonably ask, why didn’t she just explain? If there’s no reason to withhold information, it’s only done because the plot (as envisioned by the author) demands it.
Structure + Pacing. The Last Jedi is too long, or maybe it just feels too long because the structure and pacing don’t work. With too many subplots, there are too many cuts, losing whatever interest the audience may have had in each subplot (I heard Rian Johnson state in something – the director’s commentary, maybe? – that he’d originally intended to use even more frequent cuts – gah!).
Luke’s Characterization (aka the character assassination of Luke Skywalker). Luke’s characterization in The Last Jedi completely contradicts who we know Luke to be from the original trilogy. To me, this is yet another indication that Rian Johnson was hell-bent on making his Star Wars movie. It felt like he pretty much just wrote the character he wanted to write but left the original name tag attached because he was required to use the character of Luke.
Characterizations in General. I thought about labeling this section The Idiocy of … (for example: The idiocy of Poe; The idiocy of Holdo, etc.), but there are just too many of them to detail. I didn’t believe Poe would act as he did (nor Finn, nor even Holdo, who we only got to see for a few minutes – talk about a criminal misuse of Laura Dern). Suffice to say, I simply did not believe the majority of characters would act as they did.
Egregious Misuse of Finn (and Rose). That ridiculous Casino World subplot was an injustice to Finn and a terrible way to introduce Rose (who I actually like). I can’t even.
Inappropriate Humor. Humor is an integral part of a well-made Star Wars movie, but most of the humor in The Last Jedi just didn’t fit. Yes, I laughed the first time I saw the “I can’t hear you”-shtick between Poe and Hux – but even then, it was a pained laugh because I would have expected to see a bit like that in a parody like Spaceballs (which I loved) and not in an actual, you know, Star Wars movie.
Stupid and/or Plot-Device Tech. WWII-style bombers in space? WTF? A hyperspace tracker that’s only necessary (because we’ve already seen different trackers in previous movies) for two reasons – to make Poe defying orders end up being a “good thing” and to justify sending Finn and Rose to Casino World? These kinds of choices are made for one reason – because the writer needs a plot-device to make his plot work.
I’d bet anything that Rian Johnson needed WWII-style bombers because he’d visualized a certain scene and it was the only way he could think of to make it happen the way he wanted it to (the scene I’m referring to is the “sacrifice” scene of Paige Tico in her bomber). Forget that the bomber design is utterly stupid – it gave Rian Johnson his cool visual reminiscent of WWII bombers dropping their payloads.
Kylo Ren. I didn’t hate him so much as I felt his lack of presence in most of the movie was part of the movie’s overall problem. Most of The Last Jedi lacked a credible primary Antagonist. Yes, it’s supposed to be Ren (and/or just the First Order as a whole, I guess), but there isn’t enough of a push to make the conflict feel immediate (another problem with the whole slow escape subplot) even with the destruction of multiple spaceships. Kylo Ren could have been put to much better use.
There’s more, but thinking about it is exhausting.
Conclusion
The Last Jedi is a mess of missed opportunities. On the one hand, there are some visually spectacular scenes and the acting is good. On the other hand, the movie makes no sense from the perspective of being the middle act in a trilogy (especially in a trilogy that’s meant to tell a sequential, coherent story, rather than comprising three standalone movies).
So, after all that, why am I still conflicted? Unlike the prequel movies, which I’ve only been able to stomach re-watching once each, I’ve managed to watch The Last Jedi multiple times. For all its flaws, the writing isn’t clunky, the acting is decent and there are some really good bits. I’ll probably watch it again in the future, but maybe I’ll just fast-forward directly to the few good bits.
