Star Wars: The Last Jedi

TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion

…because film is largely subjective

 by Frederick William Springer III

 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Release Date:  15 December 2017                                                       Runtime:  152 Minutes              

Review Date:  1 January 2018                                                              Rating:  4 (of 6)
 

     Another mediocre outing.

     Our bad guy Kylo Ren is still weak and poorly fleshed out.

     And most of the movie felt like needless exposition.

     *Allow me to preface the rest by noting that vague and specific SPOILERS abound henceforth.

     Like the last film was a (poor) remake of the original, from the start this seems like a (poor) remake of The Empire Strikes Back.  Empire begins with Imperial Forces discovering the Rebels' hideout and going in to destroy it.  The Last Jedi, likewise, has the Imperialist replacements having located the last of the rebels and going in for the kill.

     Supreme Leader Snoke--by the way, what is the purpose of having him be computer animated when there is nothing about his design that prohibits practical makeup for a more realistic portrayal?--is supposed to be the ultimate baddie.  But he fizzles too quickly (and easily) (ditto Captain Phasma), and we're still left not knowing who he was or where he came from.

     The major cameo was cool but leads to a major plot problem--Obi Wan was the first we saw returning from the dead to mentor Luke.  By the end of Return of the Jedi, we saw that Yoda and Anakin had this ability too.  So when Kylo Ren went down the twisted path he chose and started worshipping at the altar of Darth Vader, why didn't the ghostly form of Anakin appear (repeatedly as necessary) to set his grandson straight?  If they're saving this for the final installment, it's a little late, both on the storytellers' part and the part of Anakin.

     In addition to the cameo (cheesy as it may have been), Luke's battle against Kylo Ren was probably the highlight of the film.  But only because I used the same tactic in an unrelated screenplay I wrote myself over 7 years ago.

     I foresaw the lame Obi Wan ending coming for Luke but was still surprised (and disappointed) when they actually went through with it and how it was executed.  Harrison Ford at least looked like he was having fun during his return (as poor as the role was), while Mark Hamill was just brooding what screen time he had.

     And with Carrie Fisher's untimely death, it makes for all our heroes now out of the picture.  Also untimely.

     Maybe with Princess Leia out, you can carry on with your cameos and have Lando take her place.  Just because, fuck it, that would be fun.

     Nitpicking, after making a big (unexplained) deal about C3PO's arm being red in the last film, it's back to normal now without so much as a word.  [You were forced to read a one-off comic to find out the history of the red arm.  And once you had, as cliché as it was, the sentiment behind it seemed like it would have been a permanent replacement--it was a robot friend's arm that died saving him--instead of disappearing as fast as you bat an eye.]

     Then there was the ridiculously bonehead occurrence of Rose Tico stopping Finn's sacrificial suicide run, moments away from him surely succeeding.  He was going to SAVE EVERYBODY.  Instead, she just about commits suicide herself just to save him alone, only to put him and everyone else back in harm's way moments later; take a page out of the Star Trek playbook here, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". 

     Or stick to your own franchise--in A New Hope, the pilots all knew it was a suicide mission going down the trench to try and blow up the Death Star, but they did it for the wellbeing of others and were heroes for it.  Can you imagine some knucklehead pushing Luke's fighter off course moments before he fired at and destroyed the Death Star?  Or, even better analogies from this film, someone stopping Vice Admiral Holdo's final assault or Rose Tico's own sister's attack!  The Rebels would have been in a worse dire straits, shit storm than they already were!  (Ultimately, because of Rose Tico's selfish act, Luke Skywalker is dead.  That's right, connect the dots.  Had Finn been allowed to complete his kamikazi flight, the resulting damage would have held the First Order off rather than Luke having to expend all his energy doing so.)

     There are so many other issues, just rewriting history between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi --like totally reshooting the final scene of the former or changing Kylo Ren's injuries--that I won't dive in any further. In any case, I'd almost rather sit and watch the prequel trilogy again instead; I had no love for them.  And in comparison to Adam Driver, who thought we'd ever be heralding Hayden Christensen's acting chops?

     I don't know how they selected writer/director Rian Johnson from obscurity or know what hell froze over that Disney has since given their blessing for him to helm a whole new trilogy in the Star Wars Universe.  I'm just glad he won't be involved in the final installment of this one.  (Seriously, it's like he was invited into a prestigious, exclusive sandbox, asked "What's sand?," and then proceeded to dump all the sand out.)  Hopefully, J.J. Abrams can salvage this mess.

     [For any naysayers, I'm not some Star Wars super fan.  Far from it.  What I am a fan of is good writing (characterization, dialogue, continuity and plot all included) and entertainment.  While I didn't enjoy either of these Star Wars installments, I did like Rogue One which was a story that no one (myself included) even wanted.]