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The Last Jedi: A Spoiler-Filled Discussion
In 1977 my life changed. I was seven years old, and fascinated with dinosaurs. Then one day my parents took me to see a new movie that had just come out about a galaxy far, far away. I left the theater that day and started reading all about space and astronomy. And I was hooked. I even ended up getting a degree in space physics (which I haven’t really used, but that’s another story). It’s not an overstatement to say that Star Wars, which lead to a love of science fiction and then science, was a major factor in my life.
Yesterday afternoon I got to see The Last Jedi. As they say, I have thoughts. Feel free to share your own. All this is before reading any other reviews or discussions, so it may be that all the ground here has been covered elsewhere. And if the title of this didn’t make it clear, what follows is one giant spoiler of everything in the movie. Don’t read on unless you really want to know.
Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t perfect, and there are definitely some parts I wish they had done differently, but I think it’s a better movie than The Force Awakens. I know some people found it unpredictable and said that the whole movie was an exercise in doing the unexpected. I disagree with that assessment. I found parts of it were extremely predictable. For example, when Rey handed Luke the lightsaber at the beginning of the movie, I just knew that Luke would look at it and throw it over his shoulder. Which is exactly what he did. Let’s look at the story by character or plotline.
Rey:
I liked what they did with Rey in this movie. I’m particularly glad they didn’t try and make her Luke’s abandoned daughter. I know a lot of people were insisting she had to be a Skywalker, but I didn’t like what that would say about Luke. I thought that particular scene with Rey and Kylo Ren was powerful, with Rey admitting that her parents were drifters who had abandoned her and Kylo saying “You have no place in this story. You’re nobody … But not to me.” At that moment I could almost believe that there was a path to redemption for Kylo Ren. (More on him in a bit.) One bit that I thought was confusing was how Rey ended up on the Millennium Falcon at the end of the movie. She and Kylo Ren were fighting for the lightsaber on Snoke’s ship, the lightsaber blew up and knocked them both out. Clearly, she awakened first, but how she got from there to the Falcon isn’t explained. That aside, Rey is the character who shows the most growth in the movie.
Luke:
First, Mark Hamill has definitely improved as an actor from the first trilogy. But that’s not a high bar to cross. His crazy eyes in the flashback scene where he’s tempted to kill Ben Solo are a bit over the top. As for Luke’s story here, he doesn’t do much productive. He doesn’t teach Rey anything she hasn’t already figured out, and once Yoda comes back to talk some sense into him it’s too late. She’s taken off to confront Kylo Ren. His scene where he’s “fighting” Kylo Ren out in the desert is the best part of his story. They made it really obvious that he wasn’t really there though, focusing on how everyone else was leaving blood-red footprints except him. What I don’t get here is why he dies after the fight. Are we supposed to think that projecting his image over all that distance is so draining that it killed him? And why show us the X-wing sunk in the water next to the island if he never uses it? Talk about Chekov’s gun not getting fired.
Kylo Ren (Ben Solo):
Emo Kylo was by far my least favorite character in The Force Awakens, and it’s not just because I wanted to be Han Solo as a kid. Kylo is better in this movie, but not by much. In the scene where Snoke is telling him to kill Rey, I was completely unsurprised that he turned on Snoke instead. Sith lords always die when they’re betrayed by their apprentice. Now that Luke is dead (and with Carrie Fisher’s death in real life), Kylo Ren is the only Skywalker left in the story. So I suppose that means the whole next movie will be his redemption. How they’ll square that with the idea that the Force requires balance and there will always be dark to balance the light is going to be interesting. I’m… less than enthused. The Skywalker story is the biggest part of Star Wars, and the only Skywalker left is an unlikable brat with very few positive qualities.
Poe:
This part of the movie, along with the Finn/Rose storyline, was the weakest part. Why did Leia and Admiral Holdo keep secret the plan to abandon the cruiser and sneak over to the abandoned base? And when did they come up with the plan? If they didn’t know they were being tracked through hyperspace, why did they come out so far away from the planet? The plan only makes sense if they did know, and it still doesn’t explain why they kept it secret from him. Unless they were afraid they had a spy aboard who would reveal the truth to the First Order, there’s no point in not explaining the plan. And if there is a spy, they’re still screwed as soon as they land and the spy reveals the hidden base. The whole point seems to be to let Poe’s character grow from hotshot pilot to true leader, but it fails miserably. It drives him to mutiny and they just smile and pat him on the head for it. Poe is best as he starts. The smart-ass pilot taunting the First Order by “holding for General Hux” and then blowing their dreadnought’s cannons away.
Finn and Rose:
I liked Rose, but everything they did with these two was a waste of time. If the Resistance can’t broadcast their distress signal to the allies from the ship, how are Finn and crew supposed to be able to contact Maz Kanata (in the middle of her “union dispute,” which totally cracked me up)? And the idea that they can sneak off the ship, find this code breaker, end up with some other master thief codebreaker instead, and then get back in time to sneak onto Snoke’s ship to disable the hyperspace tracker that they just figured out must exist and therefore they know everything about it is stupid. As is the idea that the codebreaker somehow betrayed them. They were caught red-handed. Did he somehow betray them before they even got on the ship? And how did he know to suggest the “decloaking scan” that caught the Resistance ships sneaking to the abandoned base? And if they have a “decloaking scan,” why isn’t it standard practice to continuously run it to detect cloaked ships? This whole plot line just falls apart if you spend any of time thinking about it. One good part out of this part of the movie is that they got rid of the stupid Captain Phasma. She was a complete waste of screen time and won’t be missed.
Princess Leia (General Solo):
As cool as it is to see Carrie Fisher in the role this one last time, I was underwhelmed by her character. She’s passive, letting events control her and not taking any action to change what’s happening. The scene with her surviving being blown into space and using the Force to fly back to the ship was one exception. Beyond that, we see the rest of the galaxy ignore her personal distress code, clearly indicating that no one else thinks she’s all that important anymore.
Vice Admiral Holdo:
What is the point of this character? Other than to let Laura Dern have a role? She’s just there to act as a foil for Poe, and I already commented how that whole plotline made no sense. And then there’s this:
I can’t endorse this enough. That would have been perfect. What a wasted opportunity.
After all this, you may be questioning my assertion that I liked the movie. After all, I’ve torn apart every storyline except Rey’s. But that one story is enough. Rey going from a girl just looking for her place in the galaxy to one ready to take on her role as the next Jedi is what matters. And even though the rest of the movie disintegrates upon inspection, it’s still enjoyable if you don’t spend time thinking too much about it. Just let it be Star Wars and have fun.
Published in Entertainment
As a kid, I was a Star Wars freak from 1977-1983. I had the John Williams LPs, the Han Solo paperbacks, the special edition magazines, posters on my wall and all. As a young adult, I never saw any prequel in its entirety. (I tried, but George Lucas is a terrible writer!) As a middle aged adult, I have enjoyed the nostalgia of the new movies. The Last Jedi was underwhelming. Rose and Finn’s scenes could be cut completely, (SJW scenes – barf!) Luke could teach Rey three Jedi lessons in 3 minutes and we wouldn’t be subjected to watching Luke milk a creepy sea cow. I wanted to rip Laura Dern’s head off – any real leader like that would have been mutinied earlier! Carrie Fisher gets a pass because she *is* the nostalgia of the piece and she *is* now dead and she *still* can’t act. Poe and Kylo Ren were the only interesting things going on. Rey….meh. Glad I saw it to have a time with my family to share, but will never watch it again and basically do not care about Star Wars any more. If this movie was not a Star Wars property, it would be universally panned. Bleeck!
My best friend and I went to see TLJ on Saturday. It was entertaining, but the more I think about it the more flaws show up. I mostly liked the main characters, and I quite liked Adam Driver’s portrayal of Ben/Ren. I tend to give the technology and Force powers a pass because I don’t think they should be taken that seriously. The comic moments were sometimes tonally misplaced. The biggest problem was that there were several plot points that were just not justified or given any grounding.
For instance, I had hoped that we’d get some reason for the First Order to actually exist, and an explanation of who Supreme Leader Snoke is, and so on. Nope. He only shows up to chew some scenery and then die. The First Order just exists to fill in the role of the Empire’s heavies from the original trilogy.
I didn’t care for Yoda showing up. I think that Luke’s epiphany should have been handled differently. Inserting CGI Yoda just feels cheap and unearned.
The whole subplot with Rose, the casino, the hacker, and the hyperspace tracker could have and should have been cut entirely. I’d be happy to see a Rose/Finn relationship, but this is just terribly conceived. This whole sequence is just overstuffed padding.
The star destroyers slowly chasing the remains of the rebel fleet: So, so dumb.
How did Rey get off the command ship? How did the hacker cut a deal with the First Order so fast? How many plot holes would I spot on another viewing?
It was entertaining, but so much of it seems like a wasted opportunity. It’s like the movie is using the same road map and the same directions as the original trilogy, but they aren’t getting to a real destination. They just seem lost.
It’s a good thing I’m not that invested in the franchise, and that my expectations are so very low. At this point, I consider the Star Wars universe to be so much bigger than the films that I regard them as a sort of fan fiction now. I’ll enjoy them for what they are, but I’d be just as happy to wander off to my own little corner of the universe and make up my own stories. And that’s probably the best thing that Star Wars can do for its fans.
I saw the very first SW when it came out, the second one, then the one where Han Solo dies. I saw none of the others.
If the beginning movies were about the bloodline of the Jedi, then movi g on, it seems important to show bloodline doesn’t matter.
The tree and the books are burned, Luke is dust in the wind, as is Leia.
What we have is the last Skywalker the villain, and any number if upstarts with no lineage ready to take power.
No one mentions the young broom boy at the end…he is the new Skywalker, with the ring and the force to prove it.
It was good family fun. My fave part was when Ren “gave everything” in the arsenal against Luke, and he couldn’t even beat a shadow. Then the shadow spit in his face, and left him. He didn’t bother to end Ren.
Excellent point. That was a cool scene.
Luke’s X-Wing fighter was shown to demonstrate that he went there and had no intention of leaving.
My family saw the movie this weekend. We all enjoyed it. It started out weak, and the plot holes were gaping, as is usual for Star Wars. The fat-faced girl that commits suicide to prevent Finn from destroying the Monster Battering Ram was just absolutely stupid. What justifies that treachery?
So we’re stuck with another Star Wars movie that could have been better. I think they rank this way:
Rogue One: By far the greatest of them all, hands down, no debate allowed.
Empire Strikes Back: Strongest plot and best crafted until Rogue One came along.
Phantom Menace: But only if you go back and delete the pod race and any scene with Jar Jar. Darth Maul was the only good villain after Darth Vader. They should have kept him on.
The others are so incredibly mediocre as not being worth distinguishing from each other. Except the last one before Rogue One, which shall not be named, was so bad that it has to be last no matter what anyone thinks of the others.
I believe they had already filmed everything they needed with her. Supposedly the third film was supposed to be hers, which makes sense. Han for pt 1, Luke for pt 2, Leia for pt 3. Whatever big moments were being planned for her will never come.
His last x-wing was dumped in a swamp and he still got out. Something designed for hyperspace travel might have been able to survive sitting in the water for a few years. I think the reason it was shown was so that the audience would not question how Luke got from Ach-to (bless you) to the salt world.
We later see the books are stashed on the Falcon. Rey took them. Yoda alludes to this when he says to Luke she has everything she needs.
I don’t think he’s a new Skywalker. That was one of Luke’s lessons to Rey. The force is not about Jedi and Sith (or we can extrapolate, Skywalkers). It is what exists between all living things, including stable boys.
It was puppet Yoda.
That’s not the vibe I got at all from that scene. To me it felt like a call back to Empire Strikes Back, where Luke’s X-Wing is underwater in the swamp and Yoda uses the Force to lift it out. I was fully expecting Luke to do the same thing here at some point.
Now you’re just trolling. The only way to save Phantom Menace would be to cut everything from minute 2 to minute 136 (with the possible exception of the fight with Darth Maul). And now that I think about it minute one had some problems too.
Really? I missed that. Does help for the future episodes to explain if she grows in her powers.
Puppet Yoda was very welcome, CGI Yoda would have given me shudders as I remembered the prequels….:(
Not trolling at all. Darth Maul alone makes that movie, and his light saber duels are the best.
Darth Maul reminds me of Boba Fett, very little screen time and he lives on in legend. His were the only really gripping scenes in Phantom. Other than his fight scene I skip anything that happened on Naboo.
Liam Neeson and Ewan Mcgreggor seem to be standing around much of the time wondering what they were evn doing cast in a Star Wars movie, such a waste of acting talent demonstrates that Lucas was right to hand over the reigns to somebody else.
Well they actually do a pretty good job with Darth Maul in the animated series, and I thought old Darth maul in Rebels is quite an interesting character. Yes, Maul survives! Spoilers.
FWIW, Ross Douthat has a good review over on NRO.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454743/star-wars-last-jedi-review-lost-space
I think he sees too much in the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey, but he makes a good argument that other then their scenes the movie stunk. Which is pretty much the conclusion I reached as well.
Random thoughts about TLJ:
They mention Ren left the Jedi training with a couple of other jedi – are they still alive? Allies? Competition?
5 planets were destroyed in TFA – was that the extent of the New Republic?
I think Snoke was that little kid Anakin encounters in the Jedi Temple after General Order 66 – “Mr. Skywalker, what should we do?”
They’re gonna bring Phasma back.
The only thing that spoiled Jar Jar Binks was George Lucas’ cowardice. The reaction to him in The Phantom Menace was so bad, that ol’ George was afraid to go on with his planned role as a Sith. Sith Lord Jar Jar was awesome.
They made Finn in the Jar Jar of The Last Jedi.
Sorry, Jar Jar was at least effective in the Phantom Menace. Finn was not in the Last Jedi. He was made into a Uncle Tomfoolery. For those who don’t know this is a racist type character, a minority who is played straight for laughs in order to make the hero character look better. The fact that the director chose to do this to one of the two Main Lead protanists of the FIRST MOVIE. Was disgusting.
Every single thing Finn does in this movie fails. He is either blocked by Rose or rescued by BB-8. He is allowed to accomplish nothing ever whatsoever.
And worse his sub plot doesn’t just fail. It directly leads to the death of Hundreds of people. The lesson I learned from that plot. If you never try, no one will die.
Rose existed to keep Finn away from Rey. Cause the director wanted to kill that plot line. Rose is just a *blank* block, and basically spends the entire movie undermining Finn from the moment they met. Her supposed romance is designed to keep a black guy from hooking up with a white girl. I am sure the director would say that wasn’t his intent. But it was the effect.
Laura Dern’s admiral is being used by a lot of SJW types to talk about Toxic Masculinity. First off how are you fighting Toxic Masculinity by doing all the worse things a man would do. But ignoring that, the fact is by holding back she leads to the Finn plan that leads to hundreds of people she tried to save as Finn is captured and Del Toro sells them out. If she had just trusted and confided with her crew and let them all in on her plan. Then Fin and Rose would never have run off. But I am sure those kids being inspired was worth losing a couple hundred people who had lives, families and were experienced in running guerilla operations.
Probably. They clearly like marketing her for no reason whatsoever (except possibly toy sales).
Jar Jar was so annoying that … I can’t find words to describe how annoying I found Jar Jar to be. I’d rather listen to a all day gender studies lecture given by the Intersectional Socialists Society while eating vegan food prepared in an elementary school cafeteria than watch the scenes of TPM with Jar Jar. I might, might, have been able to forgive Lucas for creating the character if the Darth Jar Jar theory was correct and Jar Jar was the Sith Lord over Palpatine. The best thing about that scenario is that Palpatine would have had to kill Jar Jar to advance.
Flat characters elevated by shallow fanboys purely because they looked cool.
And looking and fighting cool is bad because . . . . ?
Being interested in military history and tactics, I’ve always been disappointed in how movies handle military battle tactics. And this ties in particularly with how Star Wars handles the intersection between technology and battle tactics. This is a civilization that has concurred [Edit – conquered] light-speed travel, but that has a bomber force that moves slower than WWII bombers, so that as they advance slowly toward the First Order ships, they’re picked off one-by-one. An advanced technology that can put up massive force fields, but cannot protect against small, one-man fighters. They can track rebel ships through hyper space based on … what?? A device that has no apparent connection with the ship being tracked. Hmm, why has this never been used before? And the rebel “army” tactics are consistently pathetic. The rebel base is attacked by the slowest, least maneuverable devices ever made, the AT-ATs, and the rebel fighters (on skids, no less), driving at the speed of a fast car, choose to attack straight ahead – the very direction the slow, barely maneuverable AT-ATs are strongest and most lethal – instead of attacking from the flanks or from behind? The only things the rebel fighters lacked were big signs saying, “Just kill me now!” Of course, given how the First Order systematically wiped the fighters out, the signs weren’t necessary. [The same holds true for rebel attacks on star destroyers – where are those ships most vulnerable? From underneath where they have big, flat bottoms with no guns. So where do the rebels attack? From above where all the guns are located.]
And then we come to the lavender-haired Admiral. First – why the colored hair? Because it coordinated well with her uniform? Others have noted her inability to divulge her plans to others. In some circumstances this would not be unusual. Overall commanders seldom share tactical plans with the foot soldiers. However, why, when everyone is escaping according to the Admiral’s plan, does she stay behind? First, we come back to technology. These ships can travel at light speed, but they have no automatic pilot? They require someone to remain aboard to “steer” them? And that person should be the overall commander of the rebel forces? Because she would be most familiar with how to operate the ship? Because the rebels aren’t going to need her presumed guidance and experience anymore? This was a blatant plot device. When the First Order foils the escape plan and starts picking off the escaping rebels, someone had to be on the main vessel to come up with the suicide plan to turn it around and destroy the First Order’s battle cruiser. If it was on auto pilot, it presumably couldn’t have been turned around. But even so, there is no way that the person would be the overall rebel commander. It would have been some poor slob volunteer: “I’m the chief flight officer; I’ll stay Admiral!” The only reason for Admiral PurpleHair to stay on board is so she would die. Laura Dern got her chance to play in a Star Wars movie and her time was up! And, of course, the tactic used – accelerating to light speed through the battle cruiser – was so effective, it leads one to wonder why the rebels simply didn’t deploy smaller, pilotless drones that could be sent at First Order ships in the same manner and slice them to pieces. All of the Star Wars movies depend on constant action to keep people from considering these embarrassing questions. However, these problems build up from movie-to-movie and finally become impossible to ignore.
Also by making Rey’s origin story nothing, it means she is a) Truly a Mary Sue and b) undercuts Fin’s story of coming up from nothing. I swear its like the Director did whatever he could to drive Fin out of the story short of killing him.
I agree, Disney has as its main thrust to promote diversity in very strange ways.
But I have to ask, who is the “hero” in this movie? I didn’t notice one, except maybe Luke, who stepped up at the end, when it was too late.
Trying to find who the “hero” was makes me realize that this is another post-modern exercise in nihilism, where there is no hero, and anyone attempting to be a hero is flawed. Flawed heroes are not a new thing, but the flaws in these are not like superman with kryptonite, but more like Luke Skywalker giving up and quitting and letting the entire rebellion get extinguished because he wants to pout. He wasn’t even Achillean, dragging the corpse of Kylo Ren around the empire behind the M. Falcon. He just did a fancy light show. There is no competence in the Rebellion, they are all idiots.
Rey is a nothing. She does nothing. She suddenly acquires skills that took years for every other Jedi to master with just a brief thought and she’s doing it. She doesn’t work for her power. She doesn’t do anything with her power. She’s just a chick that Disney wanted to make the lead role, but as this is an exercise in nihilism, she doesn’t do anything but be a victim and foil for others.
OMG, your entire comment had me laughing in agreement, well said all of it! I thought the “attack” on the AT-AT’s was giggle inducing. I know I know, many will say it’s just a movie and that’s all well and good, but could they maybe hire a retired army officer to give them SOME type of realistic battle cinematography ideas? Still, the producers KNOW that the light-saber is just so damn cool we’ll end up forgiving everything else.
I’ve always though the combat was better thought out in Star Trek, with large ship-based energy weapons fired at each other, or Battlestar Galactica, with tactical nukes and missiles fired over short distances. Star Wars combat (other than the light saber duels) is on the level of being cartoonish, but still fun and the popcorn was very yummy. All the griping might make folks think I didn’t enjoy the film, I most certainly DID.
Yeah, but she looks good doing it. Hollywood rarely goes deeper than this.
Oh the Hero was clearly BB-8