I’m so bored of space battles in Star Wars movies. I thought Rogue One was going to skip all that with a fun raid on a tower to get the death star plans… but it all devolved into a space battle at the end.
SPOILERS FOR LAST JEDI BEGIN HERE
I kind of guessed that, due to the big space battle at the start of Episode VIII, there wouldn’t be a concluding space battle at the climax. And there wasn’t. Thank goodness for that. Of course they did a Hoth invasion battle instead, but on salt instead of snow. And, thankfully, the climax wasn’t about a large scale battle at all, and the personal light vs dark jedi stuff that made the end of Empire Strikes Back and (some of) Return of the Jedi so compelling.
You are gonna tell me those melodramatic, poorly acted, boring plod-fests of the prequels are better than The Last Jedi? When did you last see them?
Also, I don’t understand why people hate this new movie for having jokes. Is Star Wars something we can’t poke fun at for now? Probably the biggest fandom people have been poking fun at for decades? I laughed at the jokes, other people laughed at the jokes, most of them weren’t even big punchlines. I feel like people want to hate jokes because “Ugh, that’s what Marvel Blockbusters do…TELL JOKES.”
Right. It’s a funny moment, but I’m not sure it’s a joke as such.
The weird thing about this movie is that I have something like 200 small things I really didn’t like about it, but overall it came together into a movie I very much enjoyed.
And that’s different to The Force Awakens, which had way fewer things I didn’t like, but, most importantly, one of those things was the FUCKING STORY.
Even though both were utterly slavish to the formula of endless references to the original trilogy at the expense of anything new, The Last Jedi put it all together to tell a story I found exciting and compelling. The Force Awakens was maybe a better made movie where I loved the first half, but then the second half was nothing more than “remember this bit? yeah, we’re doing that again”.
Luke Skywalker: Where are you from?
Rey: Nowhere.
Luke Skywalker: Nobody is from nowhere.
Rey: Jakku. I’m from Jakku.
Luke Skywalker: [pause] Yeah, that’s pretty much nowhere
or
Leia: I know what you’re gonna say…I changed my hair.
or
Poe demeaning Hux by not taking him seriously when he talks to the Imperial Bridge.
I am a TFA apologist comparably, and kind of don’t give this movie a pass for its structural problems. I knew it was going to copy Empire, but certain taken aspects were annoying, and I could not turn a blind eye to a couple of plot contrivances this time.
It’s harder to call which is better, because TFA is a tighter film but is far too familiar in story-beats and conflicts. TLJ is too long and drags out certain subplots (Like Rose/Finn) but it has genuinely incredible moments that address what Star Wars is all about.
That’s another reason I think fans see The Last Jedi as a betrayal, because it says “Fuck this” to a lot of the old ideals of the universe like the Jedi, legacies, the noble war, etc…
What I like about Rogue One and now The Last Jedi is that they acknowledge the world building and storytelling of the prequels in a serious way.
Of course everyone who insists that the prequels don’t exist only see Ben Kenobi’s one-sided recruiting pitch for Luke Skywalker, and hold that as the truth. But the prequels make it very clear: the Jedi WERE arrogant, overly powerful, unaccountable and, above all, incompetent. They DID fail everyone. Palpatine played them all for fools. There is a reason Yoda went into hiding.
If ever-increasing reliance on organised Light Side Jedi brigades is always countered by a powerful Sith rising up and taking over, then Luke and Yoda are right not to try to rebuild a new training temple and start a whole new Jedi Order.
And, on the other side, Kylo Ren is right to not be beholden to a Sith Lord. He makes a clear decision not to kill his mother this time, as killing his father didn’t get him the power he wanted.
Neither giving in completely to the Dark Side nor striving exclusively for the Light Side are winning strategies. A mix of both is more important.
You mean this wasn’t a plod-fest? The movie spent almost an hour on Rose and Finn’s silly adventure to and from alien Monte-Carlo. Or how about Luke and Rey’s plodding first 30 minutes where its just Rey following Luke around and looking at poorly thought out CGI monsters that add nothing to either of their characters. Or the horrible introductions and resolutions of side characters like Captain Phasema or the Code-breaker?
Or just the entire premise of the movie where you have to buy that the “Rebels” that have in power for 20+ years, and just destroyed the Starkiller base of the First Order has somehow been outnumbered 20 to 1 since then? And no, the destruction of 5 planets in TFA isn’t enough of an equalizer when the Galactic Senate had thousands of representatives. The writers are hacks that refuse to allow the good guys to not be underdogs. If they wanted to subvert expectations by showing that the Jedi were arrogant and complacent then they would have made Kylo and the First Order the underdogs.
But they can’t because they are bad writers that don’t think about the universe they are creating. What kind of scifi universe are you creating when doing a kamikaze hyperspace jump from a cruiser can take out a capital ship?
And the jokes aren’t bad because they are jokes, they are bad because they are poorly timed and kill whatever tension of the scene they were attempting to build.
I totally agree with all of your complaints. I thought it was too long, too plodding, and really dragged at points. If this was up to me I would have cut the entire story of Finn and Rose. I didn’t need either. I didn’t remember that Finn was injured at the end of the previous movie… and if it was up to me I’d rather him not be in the movie at all rather than give him a side adventure for… reasons? I guess to give him something to do? He could have been in a coma for this entire movie.
I don’t like that the rebels are the underdogs. However, that is my complaint about the previous movie, and this one had to do its best with that setup. It certainly made the situation seem desperate and dangerous (despite casino adventures).
The kamikaze shot breaks the world in the same way that the Millennium Falcon being able to come out of light speed inside the shields did in the previous movie. If it could do that with a good pilot, why didn’t they do that in Return of the Jedi? It’s annoying.
The alien designs are very not good, and very distracting. It seems like, with both these episodes, that when filming they say “And we’ll put the monsters in later” and then its passed off to an entirely different creative team to insert the aliens. They feel like something out of a different movie.
And yes, the attempts at some humour undercut the tension in many places.
However, after all of that, I found this a much more satisfying movie than The Force Awakens. As I said earlier, my list of complaints and niggles is looooooong, but the overall story resonated with me, and the rest was mostly competent.
I think the messaging in this film is stronger. This movie is about the Force not belonging to the Skywalkers, or the Jedi, or the Sith. This movie is literally about how the hopeful messages of Star Wars belong to the people it inspires, which is of course going to resonate with most of the audience.
The reason a lot of people hate it is because they were invested in the factions, in the families, in the drama, and they wanted it to be connected. It bothers them that there’s no lore behind it, that it’s about the emotional aspects. Of course, Star Wars was never meant to be about lore, but many have been spoiled on this by 30 years of expanded universe material.
I think the themes of TLJ is definitely more interesting, failure as a teacher, legends being seen as infallible when they are just human, and calling the Jedi out on their dogmatism. These themes are definitely long overdue in the SW universe but the vehicle these themes were delivered in overshadow the ideas.
I also don’t think the bar should be TFA which had less glaring structural story problems but I agree with you, had soulless storytelling. I’ve disliked all three of the new trilogy, TFA, Rogue One, and TLJ, so much that I’m almost appreciative of the prequels now. Partly that’s just because they failed in spectacular fashion, and that’s worth a re-watch whereas I don’t see myself ever re-watching the three new movies.
Again, I’m with you on most of this. While the prequels are so bad that they spawned an entire new hobby of fan editing, they do stand apart as movies with ambition. The reason why people want to fix them is because there is a lot there that is interesting.
Personally I’m mostly over Star Wars as a series I care about more than any other series. If you asked me if I’m more excited/interested to watch the next big movie in various current franchises instead of a new Star Wars movie, I could name many. The list would be something like, in rough order:
Mad Max
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Mission Impossible
Toy Story
Lego/Lego Batman
21 Jump Street
Star Wars
Star Trek
Jurassic Park
James Bond
Aliens
18 year old Luke and even 35 year old Luke would be very surprised Star Wars has fallen so far down the rankings in my ongoing-movie-series enjoyment/anticipation list.
I don’t disagree with the complaints of the movie, it has too many for me to rise above that Force Awakens/Return of the Jedi level. Still, what Rian Johnson is doing with Star Wars feels like a very necessary change other than following too much in what’s happened in the past. That’s why Rogue One was pretty superfluous where we knew most of the characters would die so they didn’t spend a lot of time developing any of them. I appreciated the time they spent with Rey and Luke to know what’s changed Luke and how Rey is the deciding factor on how the concept of “Jedi” should live on.
None of the sci-fi “Why didn’t they have this planned already” bothers me because I understand that’s the setting they need to tell the story. The new power shift was something already established in The Force Awakens. That fault falls on Kasdan/Arndt/Abrams not Rian Johnson. I haven’t seen other writers explore the idea of doing hyperspeed into another vessel.
The Prequels may be fascinating as failures but they have insufferable glaring flaws including the same types of plotholes and plot structure stacked on top of terrible acting and dialogue beyond what Star Wars does now.
Luke, where would you rank the new Planet of the Apes trilogy? That feels like the last great one.