Star Wars The Last Jedi: How Movie Magic Dies
This is a bad movie. There are barely any redeeming qualities, and it manages to take a huge dump on everything that came before it and everything that will come after it. If the first movie was about a ānew hopeā, then The Last Jedi is about āno hope at allā. And I say this not just as a fan of Star Wars, but as a fan of cinema in general, including the previous films from director Rian Johnson. Make no mistake, I am not alone on this, many feel the same way about this movie, but for the sake of this piece I will write solely on how this movie affected me personally, and to do that we have to go back to the beginning.
It was the fall of 1986 or maybe it was 1987, I donāt quite remember, but I think I was 7 years old. At this point I had a pretty good idea of what movies were, I had already seen both E.T. and Back to the Future. This time, however, the local tv network was announcing a Star Wars television event, all three original films were going to play continuously starting on a Sunday afternoon. The movies Iāve been hearing about from older people were going to be accessible to me. My cousin, who is 5 years older had a really cool collection of Star Wars toys, the original ones created by Kenner. I loved playing with them.
Watching the original trilogy at the age of 7 has become one of those memories that has never faded. I canāt tell you exactly how I felt in each particular scene, but I do remember where I was and I remember acting out some of the scenes between commercial breaks. Now, stop and think about that for a second. For a 7-year-old boy to be that engaged and excited itās almost magical. This is why Star Wars has transcended cinema and has become an iconic piece of pop culture. And at the center of this phenomenon stands one of the greatest hero archetypes ever created, Luke Skywalker.
Fast forward to 2017, and Luke Skywalker has been replaced by a weird parody version of himself. Heās an old hermit, whoās constantly angry, doesnāt give a fuck about the force, doesnāt give a fuck about his friends or family, and above all, is a complete coward. What happened? How did it come to this? Well, rather than dive into the complexity of these questions, writer/director Rian Johnson creates a half-baked excuse for his exile and concludes that he simply left everything to go die in some planet that contains the oldest Jedi temple. And thus we are exposed to this mess of a film.
But this isnāt how the movie opens, even though The Force Awakens ended in that very epic shot of Luke receiving his fatherās lightsaber. The movie opens with some crap jokes and a battle in space that doesnāt really make a lot of sense, the ships are slow and they drop bombs in spaceā¦WTF? Ok, I get it, this is Star Wars and its meant to be fantasy, so letās have bombs that drop with no gravity and a remote detonator that also falls in space when the shipās hatch is open. I accepted it, even the slow motion was welcomed. The problem is that literally 10 minutes later they blow the bridge of general Leiaās ship and sheās floating in space. So which one is it?ā¦ how does space work here?
I could end my review right there because everything that follows is these weird random moments that contradict or neglects what was said or happened a few scenes before. Iāll try to continue. So, after the space battle the rebels jump to light speed and vanish, but 5 minutes later the first order arrives and begins an assault that has Kylo Ren considering if he should kill his mom, and thus we get the scene I described before, followed by some force voodoo shit that Leia pulls off. Yes, we know the force is strong in her family but again, they never alluded to this kind of ability in any of the other films. So Leia is literally a god who cannot die in space, donāt question it, its meant to be metaā¦ bro.
The rebels are stuck in this poor excuse for a plot, they have enough fuel for one jump but they canāt because theyāll be tracked, so for the next few hours/days (thereās really no sense of time in this movie) theyāll fly with the big bad ship chasing them. Even though a few scenes before, the first order unleashed an assault that almost killed them, why isnāt the first order keep doing this until theyāre wiped out? Wellā¦ maybe because theyāre a bunch of morons, for example, General Hux is portrayed like a buffoon in this movie, while in the force awakens he was menacing and almost had this Nazi behavior about him. But in The Last Jedi, heās become a character from Space Balls and that only ruins the movie because he ceases to be a threat.
After Finn wakes up from his coma, in what looks like a giant leaking condom, he notices the situation that theyāre in, and rather than join the fight, he once again decides to make a run for it. However, his character arc already demonstrated that in the previous movie, he was a trooper than ran because he was scared but developed courage to go up against Kylo Ren and The First Order. Now heās reverted back to being a coward?ā¦ I donāt know why they did this, perhaps it was to build the scene where he meets Rose Tico or what has become the most pointless character in cinema. The entire scene when she meets Finn is awkward and written horribly. But sheās there and she knows whatās causing the first order to track them and suddenly Finn knows too. Then, they communicate this to Poe who then decides to call Maz Kanata, and she tells them to go to the nearby planet where theyāll find a codebreaker that will help them infiltrate the enemy ship to deactivate the light speed tracker. FUCKā¦ Iām pretty sure thatās a run on sentence. This movie is so frustrating that writing a review for it is painful, and thatās how watching the movie feels. I wonāt get into this part of the movie because it really doesnāt amount to anything.
Soā¦ Luke Skywalker, lol. While all this non-sense with Finn and Rose is happening we get cuts back and forth between Rey and Luke on the island. Thereās no training but rather 1 and a half lesson that Rey gets from Luke. She then begins to telepathically connect with Kylo via the force, so at this point, Iām thinking theyāre siblings since Luke and Leia did that in Empire, but Iām not sure thatās the case. To be frank, at this point I donāt care. We are now two movies into a new trilogy that follows another trilogy where the heroes won and defeated evil. Yet we have no information about how the first order started or where Snoke appeared from. And to give Luke āfuckingā Skywalker this role is just a fuck you to everyone that has enjoyed these films. The man barely knew anything about his evil father and he was ready to die to save him. He gets a quick glimpse of his nephewās dark side and has a thought of killing him??? Sorry, I donāt buy it. Thatās not Luke and even if it was, the reasons for his exile would have to be much more dramatic than that.
This decision in the writing is bad, just as bad as giving Batman a gun or making Harry Potter a rapist. It simply doesnāt make sense with the behavior of the character. Mark Hamill said it himself, and a good director shouldāve listened. As for Snoke getting killed and the matter of Reyās parents, sure it was a wasted opportunity and no, it wasnāt mind-blowing. I wasnāt one of those people that started to theorize, I just wanted a solid movie. Also, to all those defenders out there that are claiming that this movie was feminist and it was about women power, youāre all wrong. Let me break it down for you, Leia, Holdo, and Rose were all written in such a forced matter that you can feel their propaganda behind their actions. Yes, its good to be feminist, but do it with respect, make it part of an engaging story. For example Rey, during the Force Awakens, she was introduced as an independent strong young woman, who happens to fall into this larger than life adventure. But in the Last Jedi she was written off as the girl from Twilight, suddenly she has to help the boy, and suddenly she finds him attractive because of his nipples. Iām sorry but this is the opposite direction of feminism.
The Last Jedi is the mutant child of Empire and Return of the Jedi. Nothing in this movie works, even at its very last few minutes when I said to myself āif they pull off a great battle between Kylo and Luke I may forgive everything that happened beforeā. But that was once again a let down, Luke pulls off some Matrix moves and its revealed that he is actually not there but still stuck on the island from Lost, then he looks at the two suns on the horizon, much like in A New Hope and then he vanishes, I guess becoming one with the Force. The scene felt rushed and out of place; I wonder if Mark Hamill even knew that it was going to go down this way. But fuck it, thatās it for me. The last Star Wars movie I watched was Revenge of the Sith. For all the shit the prequels get, I still enjoy watching them, sure theyāre flawed, but never to the degree of this garbage. If you had asked me back in November I would have said The Force Awakens is the last Star Wars movie I watched. But The Last Jedi is so bad that it ruined the movie that came before it.
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