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The Last Jedi: Lightning Doesn’t Strike Twice
Two years ago, the world was set alight when The Force Awakens was released. The movie was a mega-hit, in no small part because it stood astride two worlds, the old and the new. It gave us new characters, new worlds, new adventures, but it was grounded in and was respectful, even reverent, of the original trilogy. And, as the first of three movies in a new trilogy, it set up larger questions to be paid off later.
The movie still holds up two years later and I stand by what I wrote about it then.
The new Star Wars flick, The Last Jedi, just opened and picks up where that last movie left off. I’ve been eagerly anticipating it, so I went to the first showing Thursday evening. This is the third new Star Wars movie in three years. Between The Force Awakens and Rogue One, my expectations were high. And, in all honesty, I was disappointed. The movie has several problems.
First, the humor. I read a few early reviews that mentioned it. Yeah, it’s there, or it tries to be anyway. The problem is twofold: not only do the jokes not land, but they don’t fit the tone. The humor was part of the fun of The Force Awakens, but it always fit seamlessly and matched the film’s reverence for the source material. The Last Jedi doesn’t do that. Sometimes the jokes connect, but the tone is always off.
Second, the plot. There’s a main plot and two secondary plots. But the two secondary plots don’t really do anything to progress the main plot. It’s like they had characters and were trying to figure out something to do with them. Compare this to The Force Awakens, where we had a clear plot, we knew where we were going, and everything was, again, seamless.
Third … how do I put this? I don’t want to go so far as to call them “plot holes,” because I feel people misuse that term. But a lot of the characters do stuff that doesn’t make sense, often from a practical military point of view. I’m willing to forgive some things, like in Rogue One where they use the mechanical claw to get the tapes. It’s a little silly, but I’ll forgive it. Fine, the Star Wars universe has its own rules on certain things. But “they can’t shoot us because they don’t see our small ship” isn’t consistent with our understanding of in-universe practicalities.
Fourth, some of the CGI goes too far. I’m going to use that word again — The Force Awakens combined practical and computer effects seamlessly. I didn’t know which were which and, more importantly, I didn’t care. In The Last Jedi, there are a few scenes that are obviously gigantic piles of CGI. Kids may enjoy watching our heroes ride a herd of strange creatures, but I just don’t care.
Fifth, it’s slow at times. The Last Jedi is literally the longest Star Wars movie, but it doesn’t need to be. I still don’t know what the battle in the final act adds to the story. And when part of your plot involves how slow-moving ships cannot catch other slow-moving ships (while other ships somehow can whiz in and out), that’s both problematic and annoying.
Sixth, the payoffs aren’t very good. The Force Awakens sets up a lot of things for future movies — several mysteries and things left to be explained later. Well, later is now. We get to see some of those payoffs and … they just don’t get there. Wow, we get to see Snoke in person and … meh. That’s the thing. There’s lots of “meh” in this movie.
And those are just a few of the problems. There’s plenty more. But there’s also a lot of good stuff in this movie.
First, you’re gonna want to see what happens to these characters. This is a continuation of the story from TFA. You could read a recap to find out what happens, but why read a recap when you can literally watch a Star Wars movie?
Second, there are a lot of surprises in this movie. Over and over again I sat there wide-eyed and open-mouthed because something happened that I did not expect. With some recent movies (Batman vs. Superman comes to mind), the trailers give away all the good stuff.
So should you see it? Yes. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you should absolutely watch this movie at least once. Just know that there are better Star Wars movies out there.
Published in Entertainment
I loved Rogue One, but have very mixed feelings towards The Force Awakens. I was somewhat nervous about whether or not I was going to dig Last Jedi or not (I held onto hope, though, as it was Rian Johnson helming this one).
Having now seen Last Jedi, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I quite enjoyed it. Not a perfect film, but it did a better job than Force Awakens of getting me to buy into the new characters and it took the story in new and different directions instead of just rehashing OT stuff with diminished dramatic returns (see Force Awakens).
I second everything Valiuth said. Lots of good subverting of tropes and cliches, and Mark Hamill/Luke (who from the time they announced the new trilogy was always who I was most excited to see back in action) got some great moments.
I agree about the opening gag- my friend loved it, but I thought it was lame. Too much like a Marvel Movie take-a-dramatic-villain-moment-and-then-turn-it-all-into-a-joke bit. And I like my Marvel movies, but I don’t really want that same kind of humor in a Star Wars movie (plus, I already think that type of humor’s being overdone now in the Marvel universe). Fortunately, most of the rest of humor worked for me.
One other thought *SPOILER WARNING* while I really like that they had Kylo kill Snoke, only for Rey to realize that he’s not turning to the light side, but that he’s just taking the throne for himself, I’m going to be very annoyed if we never get an explanation for where the heck Snoke came from and, given how incredibly powerful he was, why he was never a major player during OT events.
So if I watch the new Red Letter Media video or other videos about it that have spoilers, without seeing the movie first, would I be having anything major ruined?
If you’re not really invested in these movies at all, knock yourself out with spoiler-reviews. If you are invested at all, I say see the film first. The story does take some pretty surprising and divisive turns that I think it’s best to experience cold.
If you’re talking about RLM’s Nerd Crew review, I don’t think they were real spoilers. You can watch that one.
Yes. Stoklasa makes me laugh.
There are a lot of suprises in this movie. I wouldn’t want them spoiled.
I checked on reddit and someone was asking if there are really spoilers in it. The first comment was, “Just finished it and there are no spoilers, but they do make up some spoilers that are so stupid they could end up being true.” So I watched it and the first spoiler was <MAJOR CHARACTER> is killed by <MAJOR CHARACTER>, but then they go into things like Snoke steps on a porg and we see its purple guts; it’s now canon porg’s guts are purple.
There are a few times when Jay almost loses it during a rant by Mike’s character and he covers his mouth to hide the laughing. Stoklasa makes me laugh too. A few times in this Nerd Crew Jay’s character says, “I’m dead inside.” and no one responds to it. Great stuff.
Come on, that series is one of the best written SF series out there. Even if you dislike aspects of the plot, and I did, it’s worth reading just for the sheer quality of it.
By the way, I think the bit about “not being able to hit small ships” was a reference to the first Star Wars film, I think it had a similar line (about why the Death Star couldn’t hit small X-wings).
I watched the video last night, and assumed their “spoiler” was probably a joke.
Well you’ll find out about the Princes Leia lightsaber fight against a ten armed digital monstrosity.
Frankly not being able to hit small ships with big guns is the one thing that is realistic about Star Wars space combat. While on the other hand the idea of dropping bombs in space is so ridiculous it defies practical scientific knowledge.
The Nerd Crew episode is all fake spoilers, since the show is a parody of other internet nerd commentary shows. They haven’t done an official review. So for those people who want to watch it before the movie I say do it. I did it and it really spoils nothing, because the guys haven’t seen the movie yet, if their tweeter feed is to be believed.
As is the idea that the payload is delivered by pressing a button on a single remote control, instead of programming the target; after all they do have targeting systems in this world for all of those pilots not imbued with sufficient midichlorians to rely on the force. At the very least they could have multiple triggers including one near the pilot just in case the superfluous bombardier is incapacitated. Ah, but they needed some way to introduce the Asian market fan service more explicitly than the sumurai/kung fu elements already running throughout the universe.
Not to mention the distractingly dumb tactical decisions/indecisions whose only conceivable purpose was to clear writers block.
Don’t get me wrong: it was enjoyable and better than the The Force Awakens and both are way better than the prequels. Some interesting developments, but I wish they would stop making unforced errors on basic elements of good movie making and good writing. Perhaps the original trilogy was full of holes like this too – if so then the rest made up for it. That is no longer true.
My biggest problem with the movie, is that they take the most interesting of the new characters Fin, and make him into a Uncle Tom. Looking back on its, its pretty disgusting.