Worst Star Wars movie ever! Well... On the other hand, it could be brilliant. So there's that. Why everyone is wrong to hate The Last Jedi and why it's still just, "Meh." (...but I could be wrong.) Think again. It took me three times to realize how good Rogue One is, and now I relish every viewing. It grew on me and now I can't imagine the franchise without it. I loved The Force Awakens instantly and no matter how valid that *one* criticism of it may continue to be (okay, two), I can't help but fall in love every time I see it again. It still captivates me. Then again, I'm also the only one I've ever met who calls Attack of the Clones the "good" prequel. So when I say that I sat through most of The Last Jedi wanting to check my watch, daydreaming of walking out, and by the time it ended feeling cheated out of my half-priced-Tuesday admission fee, bear in mind: I could be wrong. There are two reasons to dislike The Last Jedi. And both are fundamentally different in nature. The first is that you simply don't like what happens. If a movie has enough things happen in it that you just don't like, well, I guess you have a fair excuse to dislike the whole movie. Maybe you don't think a girl can be the main character in a heroic adventure. Maybe you think the bad guy is too sniveling and emo. Maybe you think one particular twist should've been a different particular twist. Either way you are judging the film based on whether you like the ideas at face value. And The Last Jedi has a lot of what you might call overtly controversial ideas or plot points that are kind of hard not to notice and have an opinion about. The second entirely different kind of reason you might dislike this latest installment is that you understand proper narrative technique, at least on an intuitive level, and you can tell the difference between legitimate film-making and building blockbusters by committee. This is the camp I fall in. I could take or leave any given plot point, and that's not to say I like most of them. I agree, many of them are pretty dumb creative choices, but I'm willing to tolerate even the worst of them if they are set up and developed properly and executed with style and poignancy. Unfortunately, this is where I think The Last Jedi fell short. Had it done this part well, I think a lot of people would've found the other part, the bad-ideas-and-controversial-decisions part, at least begrudgingly tolerable, if not reluctantly entertaining in spite of itself (like Interstellar, for example). Then again, a lot of people did like the movie, so who's to say. There's still good inside. Let's start with that. Like Darth Vader (and maybe Kylo Ren?) there is still plenty of good hidden in The Last Jedi. Right off the bat, you have a beautiful red motif floating through the marketing material and the film's best scenes. In terms of sheer aesthetic, The Last Jedi is striking. Even if I never watch the film again, I could still hang a poster in my bedroom and stare at it for the rest of my life... Ya know... If I wasn't mostly grown up. And married. There were really just two scenes that carried any dramatic weight for me. The throne room confrontation in Act Two between Rey, Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke felt like the film was finally going somewhere. Like The Force Awakens, it's a complete retread of similar scenes we've seen in Return of the Jedi, and Revenge of the Sith, but the value is not in its originality (something Star Wars hasn't honestly had since 1980). The value is in the execution and this scene was structured, paced, and plotted with perfect precision. Director Rian Johnson uses the audience's anticipation of certain instabilities to his advantage and builds great suspense out of them. We feel Rey's naive confidence undercut with fear. We feel Snoke's verbal abuse and intimidation. We feel Kylo Ren's struggle to suppress his internal conflict. Both Kylo Ren and Rey claim to have seen visions of the other switching sides. Snoke claims he manufactured those visions, and staged this very confrontation. Everyone refuses to yield. No one takes what the others say at face value. It's beautiful in it's asymmetrical unpredictability. If it was a Western, it would be a three-way Mexican standoff. As a writer, I appreciate how difficult these scenes are to create. The twists that follow cut to the heart of the characters and everything they value. You can like or dislike the idea of who Rey's parents turned out to be, or what happens to Snoke or what Kylo Ren and Rey choose to do in the aftermath, but the scene in its entirety, taken on its own, is foreboding and fun. That being said...
What I would've done, is have Rey accept Kylo Ren's offer of partnership, but secretly assuming she can still pull him the rest of the way to the light side, a new kind of non-Jedi light side that is precarious and wishful at best. And Kylo Ren secretly assumes he has superseded the binary light/dark sides of the Force altogether and brought balance to it himself by defeating his master but not exactly converting to the Jedi either. The two push and pull against each other, compromising along the way until we're not sure who the good guy or bad guy is anymore. It would change the ending and set up a very interesting Episode IX, but no one would say it borrowed from the originals anymore. Plus in terms of breaking Star Wars out of it's own typecast pigeon-hole, it advances the same theme Rian Johnson was wrestling with in the first place (but better ;) ) The second scene I liked was Luke Skywalker's sudden appearance on Crait in Act Three to save the day. The landspeeders hopelessly confront and fail to defend against the mighty Imperial walkers. Visually stunning as that might have started, it turned out to be bland and uninspired. But Skywalker's subsequent solitary stand against them was curious and unpredictable. So strange and unlikely was it that I doubt very many people truly anticipated the ultimate twist even if they knew something seemed amiss. Maybe you noticed he had no red footprints. Maybe you noticed his clean haircut. Maybe you asked yourself where exactly did he get that blue lightsaber or get inside the impenetrable base with no exits. But the truth is that it was so well executed that I for one, having noticed all of these, was still sucked into the moment too deeply to actually do the math until the twist was thrust upon me. And as his Force-illusion is shattered, Director Rian Johnson delivers the one original moment he truly contributes to the franchise (even if he stole it from The Dark Knight trilogy). Both of these scenes highlight the core theme and message of the film and it's no surprise that they resonated more deeply than the rest of the overly long two-and-a-half hour run-time. The first theme is that even people who come from nothing still matter. And the second is that the idea of a hero is more powerful than an actual hero. Put the two together and you have exactly the scene the movie ends with: a small boy who comes from nothing, yet who is inspired by the idea of what he thinks Skywalker did that day. It's a good American theme, a very popular egalitarian idea, and an appropriate addition to the rebellious saga of Star Wars. And yet... Liking an idea in a movie doesn't make the movie good. Hating an idea in a movie doesn't make it bad. Here are some of the things that made watching The Last Jedi a completely un-entertaining experience. You can like or dislike these ideas, but the reason I think they don't work is their lack of proper setup, execution and follow-through. They were underdeveloped, uninspired and ultimately arbitrary. Opening space battle. I actually like little vignettes or short-stories in movies that tell a small tale and then go back to the rest of the movie. The 2009 Star Trek reboot is the best example, with the opening scene of how Kirk's dad died while he was born. You have an entire emotional experience before the main narrative even begins. It's brilliant. Another is Christopher Walken's famous monologue in the middle of Pulp Fiction where he appears for only one scene to explain to Bruce Willis as a child how he smuggled his dead father's watch out of a POW camp to give it to him (hint: up his @$$). The opening scene in The Last Jedi depicts a less than harrowing escape by the Resistance from The First Order. Hotshot pilot Poe Dameron gets a few laughs prank calling the enemy General Hux: "Holding for Hux." "I will destroy you!" "I'm still holding..." "Can he hear me?" It's goofy but it earned a chuckle and it parallels his humor from the opening of The Force Awakens ("Who talks first? Do you talk first? I talk first?") I accept it because it is consistent with his brazen characterization and his lack of respect for authority. But then he: 1) Uses turbo-boost to sneak up on the bad guys; 2) Must shoot all laser towers to make way for bombers; 3) Must disobey retreat orders because that's how courage works. It's childish and resembles a video game animatic. It's only redeeming value is the Resistance bombers look cool, and as they very quickly get blown up, only one remains, with one operator left aboard to release the bombs, if she can! As she sacrifices herself at the last second to release them and destroy the First Order's giant dreadnought, the scene suddenly becomes focused, succinct, and gut wrenching. Too bad it's so brief and predictable. After the battle, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher in her last appearance before her death) slaps Poe for disobeying orders and demotes him for destroying their bombers and leaving the fleet defenseless as the First Order continues their pursuit. Finn wakes up from his injuries in the last film and asks, where's Rey? She went looking for Skywalker and last we saw them they were standing on an island outside Ireland--I mean--on the planet Ahch To, at the first Jedi Temple where we she held out his father's lightsaber and he stared back ambiguously at the end of The Force Awakens. It was my favorite scene and like many fans, I've been eagerly awaiting his response. So what happens? Luke unceremoniously throws the lightsaber over his shoulder. C'mon! Really? It's not done dramatically. It's not performed with pathos. It's reduced entirely to bathos. Bathos is when, at the peak of a dramatic moment, instead of being actually dramatic, you undercut the moment with a joke. An emotional reversal. Sometimes this can be hilarious in the right film. Joss Whedon and James Gunn popularized this in the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, respectively, and the whole world noticed and tried to copy it. But it usually doesn't work. It's trying too hard to jump on a bandwagon that won't last for much longer at this rate. It's doubly dangerous as a writer because if you want drama, the joke cuts the legs out from under it. If you want humor, the set up is too serious for the punchline to be any more than eye-roll inducing and forgettable. It ruins the drama and the comedy and it's really hard to train an audience to understand and expect it, which is why James Gunn and Joss Whedon got so much attention for it. If you want Luke to demonstrate that he's moved on from all that star-war stuff, and he's annoyed someone is trying to bring him back into the thick of it, then this is a moment you want to save for pathos, true drama, and put a joke in later. The rest of the subplot on Ahch To is disappointing as well, because of how obviously it rips off The Empire Strikes Back where Yoda trains Luke. Those scenes were spiritual and universal and timeless. These border on mundane and awkward and meandering. A brief moment showing Luke milking some sea-cows is gratuitously uncomfortable. If it's supposed to depict the earthy, agrarian lifestyle he's chosen in place of the adventurous mysticism of his former Jedi life, it fails because there is no such larger depiction to fit it in with. The puffin-like Porgs are too cute for Luke's cynicism and so every time things get serious on the island, we get more bathos. I'd tolerate them if they served some function in the plot, but they really don't. At the very least they could've been the ones to find the lightsaber in the water, after Luke threw it, and bring it back to land like a toy where Rey finds it. That would be something! On the other hand, they are at least brief enough to overlook harmlessly. It's the caretakers that came out of nowhere to ruin numerous moments with bathos, and they aren't even cute! Rey then begins a long-distance flirtation with Kylo Ren in which they bicker across the galaxy (please can I get a, "That's not how the Force works!" from someone?). It doesn't create romantic tension. It doesn't build up their rivalry. It doesn't advance the debate between the light and the dark sides. It doesn't even setup Rey and Kylo Ren's assumption that the other would turn. We only learn that from after-the-fact exposition. Luke's overall training of Rey is reluctant, mean-spirited and generic. It fails to offer any mystery or gravitas to the Force, fails to explain the unlikely strength of her powers, and fails even to actually train her in anything specific (where's the Rocky montage when you need it?). The only thing that any of this builds up to is the gradual reveal of how/why Kylo Ren turned to the darkside and Luke went into hiding. Luke's moment of weakness. I actually really liked the progression of this. Visually, Johnson makes it look truly ominous and Mark Hamill really nails the portrayal. I mean, Holy Kenobi, has Hamill been this good an actor the whole time? After discovering his nephew is super-powerful and dangerous, he looks in on him while he's sleeping. He has a vision of him turning evil and for a moment, succumbs to temptation, ignites his lightsaber and considers killing him in his sleep. Whether this was one of Snoke's manipulations, a random but fleeting temptation, or truly malicious intent, depends on who you ask. Kylo Ren wakes up, sees his uncle seemingly on the verge of murder, and gives in to his own fears and doubts, surrendering to the dark side to defend himself. He kills the other students and Luke goes into exile, blaming himself. Like I said, I like the idea of all this, but the execution was tenuous. Flashbacks are not typical for Star Wars, everything always occurs in the present. Did Snoke manipulate all of it? There is a hint that he did, but it's not clear if that was just someone making excuses. If it's true, then why go into exile when it was all a manipulation perpetrated by the villain? If it's false, and Luke really wanted to "kill Hitler" (in a sense) then why stop now? Keep after him till you squash the bugger! Don't let him loose on the galaxy and then abandon it to fend for itself! If it's neither, and it was just a misunderstanding, why give up and run away? Find the good in him like you did with Vader! None of it holds water, even if the idea of "certain points of view" is creative and compelling drama. It needed to be fleshed out more thoroughly and portrayed less haphazardly. It's hard to tell if some of the contradictions or omissions were the result of deliberate unreliable narrators or just sloppy editing. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren destroys his helmet to prove to Snoke that he's not a Vader-wannabe. I kinda liked the helmet, so it was too bad, in my opinion. Plus he finally had something to hide (his emo scar). Plus, I would've thought it would serve his character arc better to hold off on that until the Third Act when he "comes into his own" and steps out from Snoke's shadows. Becomes his own person. That sort of thing. Instead, he's as much a push-over and tag-along now as he was when he had the helmet, so what did destroying it symbolize yet? Good idea. Poor timing. Also, Snoke's manipulation of Kylo Ren begins to resemble more and more an abusive relationship. Too bad the writers and the directions didn't catch this, they could've really embraced that notion properly. I also thought it would've been a fun and dramatic twist if, when Kylo Ren tries to remind Snoke, "I'm tough because I killed my father, remember!" Snoke could've retorted with something like, "We both know he killed himself." And we'd realize that what we really saw in The Force Awakens wasn't Kylo Ren completing a rite of passage by killing his father, but his father preemptively killing himself to take the option away from Kylo Ren, so that he can't complete his turn to the dark side, and thus prolonging his hope for redemption. That small twist could've redeemed that otherwise unoriginal movie and made it even more profound, tragic and meaningful (and also more original after the fact). It also would've explained Kylo's continued internal conflict into this film, and added suspense about which way he would turn all the way up until the final confrontation with Rey and Snoke in the throne room. Then that's where he becomes his own man and leaves the helmet behind to pursue a path that is neither darkside nor Jedi and leave the audience in total captivated suspense for two years. But hey. That's just me. Instead he just busts up his helmet, jumps in a TIE fighter and goes to shoot up his mom. See how this would be better if it was in the context of his failure to kill his dad? Now his only way to complete his rite of passage is to kill his mom, and his inevitable reluctance and repeated failure would make sense. As it is, shouldn't he have no problem with this? Wasn't the whole point of killing his dad to secure his place in the dark side? Ah well, his wingmen do it for him. Leia is blown out into space. And we all think this is how they'll give a send-off to Carrie Fisher. Until... Leia uses the Force to survive being blown into space, and then unconsciously moves herself back to the ship. Oy vey. This was the last straw for a lot of viewers I think. Let me first just get out of the way that yes, this is actually one of the most realistic portrayals of science in Star Wars: you see NASA did experiments in the early days about space exposure and found that despite all appearances, exposure to outer space is actually biologically survivable for about 3-5 minutes as long as you get some pretty serious medical treatment like ASAP. And she does, so... cool I guess. Moving on. Okay, I get it. You want to fake out the audience. What better occasion then the fake death of Leia in the context of Fisher's last performance. We were waiting for something like this, so we're easy targets as an audience. Haha, you got us. Woop. Dee. Doo. But really? This is the best you can come up with? It's already a bad idea, and in dubious taste, but let's just assume you've made up your mind. A fake death and unexpected rescue using the Force is what you have decided. This version is the best you could come up with? Here's why it really doesn't work: No set up. We have no foreshadowing that Leia can use the Force. Not since some other movie in 1983! And even then, it has never been established nor teased that anyone can use the Force in this particular manner. Has Leia been training? Did she ever train with Luke? Even a long time ago? Did anyone ever whisper, "I'll bet Leia's the most powerful of them all,"? And wait, didn't Jedi have to train for years just to perform basic tricks? Since when did people with latent sensitivity suddenly know how to use the Force at an intuitive level to perform incredibly sophisticated maneuvers? What's that you say? Rey does that all the time? $&*@ you JJ Abrams! This overall trend to let complete novices tap into the most complex powers without any practice or training has been a real drag on these new sequels. Everyone has been hoping for a twist or explanation that justifies the new power levels, but it's clear with The Last Jedi that none is coming. Even little stable boys can use it! It's almost like the Force has, just, I don't know, Awakened, to a whole new level... Oh... @%&* you again JJ, you evil genius! Ah, but I digress. Isn't it fun to be a fan? Of course I'm being hyperbolic, but you know those folks on the internet sure aren't. (Wait, where are you reading this again?) Conclusion of Part One: The truth is, the film has good ideas, bad ideas, some excellent visuals, some sloppy writing, poor pacing, questionable execution and as I'll soon dig into, some very ham-fisted lip-service to social commentary that sounds smart on paper but rings flat and forced. On paper this this is the greatest movie since Empire Strikes Back. But actually watching it feels like The Phantom Menace. I see what they're going for, but geez, did it have to be so blandly thrown together? Where's the second draft? It just doesn't feel professionally produced at the writing level, the directing level or the editing level. Whose name comes up in all three of those categories? Rian Johnson. Sorry man. You dropped the ball. Then again, you chose some beautiful camera angles and art design, so... I'm back to mixed. Let's see, what happens next... Click Here to Read Part Two of my Complete Last Jedi Coverage!
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