movie: Star Wars The Last Jedi

[mellowtigger]

I went to see this new Star Wars film on Friday morning, and I even got cheap matinee prices. Good thing, since I walked away disappointed in the film. I do think it was better than any of the recent George Lucas films (Episodes I, II, and III), but I liked it less than the prior film, The Force Awakens. It's getting terrible audience scores at Rotten Tomatoes that I think are semi-undeserved. It isn't a terrible film (like the first 3 Episodes), but it isn't what I expected or wanted.

Everything below will contain big spoilers. Skip it now, if that sort of thing matters to you.

The new film certainly had its good points. Even without the Jedi Order around, people still manage to find noteworthy personal insights. And that's kind of the point of this whole film.

That's how we're gonna win - not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love. - Rose
Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be. - Kylo Ren
We are the spark that’ll light the fire that will burn the First Order down. - Poe Dameron
I’ve seen this raw strength only once before. It didn’t scare me enough then. It does now. - Luke Skywalker

The most important characters in this film are: Leia, Rose, and Rey. All three of them are good at what they do. If their successes are enough to "carry the day" for you, then you'll probably walk away from this film quite enjoying it.

Leia	We learn just how powerful she is with the Force. Very powerful. Surprisingly (given Carrie Fisher's death) Leia does not die in this film. Neither does she turn to the Dark side, given the many significant losses that she has suffered throughout her character's life. She is a woman with a strong will.
Rose	Rose is significant because she should be a minor non-soldier character but her dedication, humor, and affection raise her to one of the main figures in this film. She is symbolic of what the Resistance is hoping to preserve.
Rey	It turns out that Rey is nothing special, and that revelation is special. Like Leia, her life has been a series of awful events, yet she manages to keep a spark of herself alive. Once again, she gains great Force powers with little-to-no formal training. Once again, we see that the old Jedi Order training is obviously pointless.

What's disappointing in this film is what's done with every single one of the other characters.

Poe	He is unnecessary in this film. Where he plays a significant foil, any other character could have stepped in for the same goal. Instead, they took lip-biting (and apparently flirting) Poe Dameron from the first film and gave him a tummy-rub with BB-8 in this second film. Utterly disappointing. He lost all romance and sex appeal. Is this Disney's handiwork? Where is the man of Poe's dreams, the man that he was supposed to get because Poe is one of the good guys?! Or, he was a good guy in the first film anyway. In this one, he gets very appropriate scolding from his superior officers for his failure to follow orders. I hope writers treat this character better in the third film of this trilogy. They emasculated him in this one.
Maz	Instead, who got the sex appeal in this film? Maz! She's definitely my favorite minor character from the last film, but she gets a only very brief appearance in this film, and even that is only remotely via comm link. I don't object to her sexuality (gotta love Maz!), but that it was delivered to us at the expense of Poe's is quite annoying.
Finn	He was really just a time-consuming placeholder in this film. He didn't contribute much except as an excuse to introduce us to Rose. Also, he firmly shot down any thoughts of he and Poe becoming "a thing" someday: Poe Dameron: "You must have a thousand questions." Finn: "Where’s Rey?" Poe (in my imagined script): *crushed heart break*
Luke	We learn that he hid from the Force in his exile, so he doesn't want any part in this war. He's finally convinced, though, to do a very impressive Force trick to protect the cornered Resistance... and he dies after the effort. Sort of an exhausted disappearance like Yoda. I liked it. I expected it, given the name of this film, after all. But Luke doesn't really do anything plot-changing. The main characters were doing that already.
Yoda	Speaking of Yoda... he makes a cameo appearance. He shows up to set fire to the last of the Jedi Order, literally. Um, ok. He's spending his afterlife becoming a mischievous prankster, apparently.  It's not a terrible way to spend your ghost years.
DJ	Benicio del Toro's character makes an interesting appearance, and an unsatisfying disappearance. Why did we need DJ instead of the character that Finn and Rose intended to find?
Ackbar	The Admiral dies. I wouldn't have known, except somebody mentions it in the film. How utterly unsatisfying treatment, a quick elimination for such a well known character.
BB-8	He gets some of the "comic relief" that's effective in this film. (The rest of it wasn't. Some of the audience laughed at the other stuff, but I thought it was cringe worthy.)
R2D2	Our old friend is the one who finally convinces Luke to join the effort. Nothing else happens with him.
Kylo Ren	I do like this character, although I know that others dislike him. I call him Darth Emo to succinctly capture his petty rages and damaging self pity. We get a gratuitous sexy shirtless scene, and Rey appropriately asks him, "Could you put on a shirt?"  At least he has a convincing rise to power.
Snoke	He talks, he manipulates, he dies.  Moving right along.
Phasma	Brief appearance. At last, somebody for Finn to fight in the film.
Holdo	Admiral Amilyn Holdo also dies. Not a good film for Admirals. She might have been an interesting character, but we barely meet her.

And plot? I have a few problems with that.

1. The whole film is one long slow car chase. If they managed to evacuate people from the slower ships, then why didn't they move fuel as well? Or at least try to turn around a doomed ship and ram it? Oh, like... they finally did with the very last one left?
2. What is that porg doing on the bridge of the Millenium Falcon? Do they not have any pre-flight checklist at all?
3. Snoke. Who is he? How did he rise to power? What's going on? We'll never know.
4. Escape. So the Millenium Falcon is the only ship in the whole fleet that can jump to hyperspace and escape? Why didn't they offload a few refugees during their trip? Make repeated trips to evacuate everyone?
5. What is the First Order tracking, exactly? Why is the device on their ships the only way to stop the tracking? This is plot-breaking technology, so what is it? It tracks all ships, and that's why nobody in the fleet can escape? (Except the Millenium Falcon, obviously, because... duh!) If it's only tracking the main ship, then why don't they just all jump in other ships? Or jump in different directions?

One of the good things they did with the film, though, was quite subtle. "How did Luke get in here?" At least someone finally asked the question that was in my head. I dunno, maybe they thought asking it aloud was necessary to lead us to the next obvious plot question, "Where did the ice foxes go?" And then when we learn where the ice foxes went... it couldn't possibly be how Luke got in. It's a subtle ponderable related to Luke's busy fight scene. Well done, a great conundrum for the sleuths in the audience... until the big reveal.

There is no secret ending to the film during the credits, so you don't have to watch it if you'd rather skip that part. Early on, though, there's a farewell to Carrie Fisher. We'll miss you, Princess Leia. You changed entertainment singlehandedly. Thanks to you, we eventually got leading characters like Ellen Ripley ("Alien"), Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek Voyager).



So... The Last Jedi is not an awful film, nothing like the dreck that was Episodes I, II, and III, but it absolutely is not a great Star Wars epic film. I am very disappointed.

Comments

[foeclan]

I agree that there are some subplots that didn't technically need to happen, but I think they still served a purpose. Poe's distrust of Holdo ultimately comes back to bite them in the ass (if he hadn't sent Finn and Rose to get the code breaker, DJ wouldn't have been around to crack the cloaking on the ships and Holdo's escape plan probably would've worked), but their side trip serves to show Finn that the Rebels are fighting FOR something, not against it (through Rose), and that it's not always black and white (through DJ's revealing that the ship they stole belonged to someone who sold weapons to both the First Order and the Rebellion). Finn is sort of the Han Solo of this story, who just wants to get out of there and is only in it for his friends, but by the end is all in.

1, I don't have a good answer to. They mentioned transferring fuel to the transports, maybe the 2 smaller ones didn't have enough for a jump. Probably it's because it would have been narratively unsatisfying to do that instead of the single big one at the end that left the whole audience gasping in my theater, especially with the cool choice to just kill all the music and background noise when it happened.

2, they showed that the Falcon had become infested with the things while they were there, so I'm guessing it's not the only one. Chewie just didn't have the heart to exterminate them after the porgy dog eyes he got, I guess.

3, yeah, they really dropped the ball on this one. If it's like the last one, there's a visual dictionary or something out there that explains who Snoke was, because they didn't bother to explain it in the movie. Clearly Luke knew about him while he was training Ben, so was he another of Luke's students, or a former Sith sniffing around his students? Dunno. Probably not super important now. He's 'the guy that filled the void Palpatine left', which I suppose is all that matters in the end, even if it's a little unsatisfying.

4, the Falcon only shows up at the very end. It was still hanging out on Luke's island while the whole chase scene was going on. They had at least one ship that could go to hyperspace, which Finn and Rose took, but I think Kylo blew most of them up when he hit their hangar bay. Hopefully future cruisers will have more than one.

5, they said it was 'active tracking', and at one point showed a range in which it was effective. So it could've tracked the 3 main ships if they jumped within its scanning range. Presumably if they jumped in multiple directions, they could've just sent another Star Destroyer after them, since they had an ample supply. I think they said something about cloaking on the ship Finn and Rose took, so presumably that's why they didn't track them. Cloaking tech must've advanced, since they said in Empire 'No ship that small has a cloaking device', regarding the Falcon.

I loved the scene between Luke and Kylo Ren. Not only the leadup to the fight, but during the fight when he mirrored what he'd said to Rey earlier ('Everything you just said is wrong.'), and the big reveal for it and how it effectively denied Kylo the fight he so wanted (and feared) to prove his superiority. Which is, come to think of it, exactly what Obi-wan did to Darth Vader in A New Hope.

I think Kylo has it right, in that they need to let the Sith and the Jedi die, but he killed Snoke for personal power, which is a very Sith thing to do. He thinks he's letting it go, but all he's doing is perpetuating the cycle. By burning down the Jedi Order and leaving Rey to find her own way, Luke and Yoda are more true to Kylo's philosophy than he is.

[mellowtigger]

4) Oops. I had it in my head that Finn/Rose took off in the Falcon from the fleet, but obviously they didn't. I had that very wrong, sorry. :( The confusion remains, though, if a smaller ship could escape detection, then why not just do that multiple times and leave empty large ships behind?

5) But only one "active tracker" at any time? I think I still don't get it.

6) Luke/Kylo. Yeah, I liked that scene too. It doesn't change the plot in any way, just delays it, but it was well done. Yes, it was yet another repeat of the original trilogy, but I think this copy is much more forgiveable than the repeats in Episode 7.

Yep, I agree. I approve Kylo's character, and I think the Adam Driver does a great job as Darth Emo.

[foeclan]

4) Dunno, maybe they only had the one hyperspace-capable little ship left? It was pretty tiny (just fit Finn and Rose). I doubt the transports had hyperdrives from what we saw.

5) It looked like some sort of field projected in front of the ship (there's a diagram on one of the panels, but I don't remember the context), such that if a ship within that area jumped to hyperspace they could figure out where it's going. Plenty of sciencey ways to explain it, but the mechanics aren't really something Star Wars cares much about. Presumably it was big enough that, by the time the Rebel ships got out of range by outpacing the Star Destroyers, they'd have run out of fuel.

Apparently there's foreshadowing of it in Rogue One when she's going through the list of projects at the Empire's storage facility.

[mellowtigger]

After earlier posts, I finally put together an overarching sentiment of why I disliked the movie:

Every major male character is a jerk to an important female character.

1) Poe: disobeys not just 1 but 2 commanding officers, and he gets people killed because of it.
2) Finn: when Rose is telling Poe her plan to save the fleet, Finn interrupts her verbally and then interrupts her visually by blocking her from view of Poe and the camera, as Finn continues explaining what is apparently now his own plan.
3) Luke: sure, he's meant to be cantankerous, but he's just a jerk when he teases Rey into thinking she was feeling the Force. Yoda was an annoying teacher, but Luke is just a jerk.
4) Kylo Ren: he actually negs Rey. "you come from nobody, you are nobody, except to me, so join with me". it's textbook negging, negating her ego in an effort to manipulate her.
5) DJ: he's a jerk to everyone.
6) Snoke: jerk supreme, until jerk-in-training chops him down. he manipulates everyone.

So, throughout the entire movie, there is not one trustworthy male lead character. The only truly likable characters are female. I like stories with strong female leads (so says Netflix in my suggestion queue), but only the female leads?

Which is a shame since this movie has the single best light sabre scene in the whole decades-long series with Ray and Ren fighting back-to-back defending each other, the red planet Crait with the salt dusting was cinematically beautiful and revealed plot secrets early to those with discerning eyes, Rose was introduced as a significant symbol in her own right even though she has no special Force talent or birthright, and Leia shows just the right amount of long-suffering hope that you'd expect a lifelong leader in the Resistance to offer.

The movie has so much to like... along with dissing the male sex throughout. Apparently that's the core of why I dislike it.