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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
You really think so? She doesn’t do anything for me. She’s better looking than fat-faced girl or purple hair woman, but that’s not saying much. I can accept that women aren’t supposed to be supermodels, but she just doesn’t convince me that she is a character that deserves notice. I’m with the bad guy (who also fails to sell his role) that she’s a nobody and doesn’t really seem to matter one whit to the story.
Yeah, I’ll agree she’s not conventionally beautiful, but there’s something about her I think is really cute. Can’t put my finger on exactly what though. Probably her smile. I’m a sucker for a girl with a pretty smile.
Well the question of why no one uses near light speed WMDs is a good one. Accelerating a massive sheep at relativistic speeds and sending it into a planet, death star, what have you would generate tremendous energy. probably on the order of Gigatons of TNT.
My complaints about military tech and tactics are endless when it comes to Star Wars and Star Trek (which is as guilty). But, I can forgive both for these issues, because they aren’t stories about battle tactics and wars. Star Wars is at its best with personal struggles and confrontations. To that end they need to make sure those that they do work into their movies matter. So while Rey, Luke, and Ren were interesting and relevant, the others got short shrift. Its okay though they can correct in the next 58 movies they will make.
Agreed. It didn’t have to be this way, and it’s sad that doing it now tarnishes the originals too.
Personally, I think BB-8 is the real Mary Sue in this new trilogy.
I agree. Exactly what you said, the stable boy has the force, Jedi or not. I was not clear.
That’s because there isn’t much of a story anymore. The originals had a recognizable and definable goal – defeat the evil empire so good people can live free. Mission accomplished. Everything that follows (and and all that precedes) is mush, nothingness, doesn’t make much sense, and is not nearly as interesting or exciting as the originals. Back in 1977 I think we as a culture had a more unified view of what an evil empire meant and what living free meant. Now, it’s a distinct possibility that those conceptions are reversed for a large portion of our culture.
This is a little unfair to the actor who played Palpatine. I thought he was consistently good in the series.
As is the question, why don’t these Jedis just use the force to disconnect their victim’s aorta?
I actually came away from this one thinking he(?) was a bigger Mary-Sue than Rey.
I’m fairly certain the Force vision that Kylo Ren had about Rey (“You’re a nobody. Your parents sold you for drinking money.”) was something planted by Snoke to manipulate Rey. We know that her vision, of Kylo turning to the light, was planted there by Snoke, so I don’t think we can take his at face value.
Anyway, other than Leia’s strange space voyage, I enjoyed the movie. As a movie. Like the Marvel movies, they’re comic book films (and all of the issues y’all have with tactics derive directly from Lucas’ original inspirations: drag racing, WWII war movies–all of the X-wing/TIE dogfight scenes in Star Wars come directly from prior films (http://www.starwars.com/news/from-world-war-to-star-wars-dogfights)–and Buck Rogers, so just roll with it).
But Disney and Marvel have excelled at tying their films together. Hell, Thor Ragnarok is basically a throwaway entirely to get Thor in space so that he can be introduced to the Guardians of the Galaxy!
So, I have a certain amount of faith that this movie was meant to tie up loose ends and set the stage for new stories in the way that they simply couldn’t with The Force Awakens, because that movie had to wash the bitter taste of the prequels out of millions of mouths and show that they were serious about making fun Star Wars movies. Which they’ve done, far better than George was able to do for over thirty years!
As for Finn/Rose… it’s obvious that Poe’s going to be making moves on Rey. And that she’s still interested in Finn. So we’re in for some romantic tension without overtones of incest.
To address your complaint about Luke dying…. When Kylo and Rey are having their Force-discussions, Kylo tells Rey “You can’t be doing this, the effort would kill you.” So yes, we are supposed to believe that Luke’s projection would kill him.
To address your complaint about Rey getting back on the Millennium Falcon… Hux tells Kylo Ren that Rey stole a shuttle amongst the chaos. So….it is explained.
My comment was that I skipped the happenings on Naboo, outside of the Darth Maul/Jedi duel.
Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) is wonderful, even compelling to watch in the later movies, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. However, in Phantom he’s just sort of…there, his character isn’t central to the plot in Phantom. And from what I recall we’re not even sure he’s a bad guy till the very end of the film. In the later movies his character gets to do some REAL preening and he chews through his dialog in wonderful fashion. I really like him and thought he did a wonderful acting job.
My thinking exactly: Kylo Ren was telling her that to manipulate her. I’ll be very surprised if it actually turns out to be true. [Remember, Luke was a nobody, too – until he wasn’t.] Of course, it’s also a very easy detail for the writers of the next movie to simply ignore if they don’t feel it’s necessary to the plot; that is, they’ve told the audience that there’s nothing special about Rey’s background, so no need to explore it further. And this does tie in with the stable boy at the end of TLJ: he’s a nobody, too, but it’s apparent he’s got the force (although it would have been cooler if, instead of just “summoning” the broom, he made it do the sweeping by Force control while he stared out into space and contemplated his future).
I think the small summoning of the broom was a subtler use of the force by a novice. One might even say he might not have noticed it, or even did it without awareness.
But I noticed it, and that little move of the broom is a symbol of hope.
Isn’t that the point?
I kind of thought it was pathetic. There is no one now to save the day, only a kid with a dream that maybe someday, something will change.
It’s kind of like electing republicans. They keep losing no matter how powerful or popular they are. First the huge Republic, a vast system of law and order and freedom, was undermined along with the Jedi Order by one man and his minions. Then the Rebellion overthrew the Empire and not even a generation later the New Order comes out of nowhere and erases the Rebellion.
It’s starting to seem hopeless. No matter what the people do, their successful efforts to destroy oppressive regimes are quickly replaced by another repressive regime. Clones are good and on our side, now they’re bad on their side. This isn’t a balance in the force, it’s just losing over and over and over, with brief intervals of slightly not losing.
Just like the GOP. Yay, they have a big tax cut. But only for ten years. And Obamacare is still intact except for the admittedly very very bad individual mandate, which I think isn’t done away with so much as the penalty is simply zero until someone adds a penalty back in again. And that probably expires in ten years again too. Because the GOP isn’t about making things better, but it ensuring they keep getting elected from fear of the democrats.
I suspect JJ is coming back to Retcon a lot of this movie.
I think the movie was definitely too long. I mean how many climaxes can one movie have? The Finn/Rose storyline was pointless and unnecessary. Taking that out would have helped the movie’s length and flow. The Snoke’s resolution was anti-climatic and not in a good way. I enjoyed the Rey, Kylo, Luke scenes.
Regarding Rey’s abilities: I do think Disney deliberately wanted a female character, but I think she’s just female Anakin. Sure, he eventually had Jedi training. But honestly, I think untrained Anakin would have turned out the same way because he’s Jesus. Also MIDI-CHLORIANS.
You are mistaken, Comrade. You will be sent to re-education camp. Finn and Fat Face are most central part of the story. They are the non-white characters. Your white privilege, or the effect of others’ white privilege on you, has blinded you to the fact that only non-white or female characters can be important.
The main problem with Rose is when we meet her, she’s in a state of despair over her sister’s death. Totally understandable until Finn shows up (after about fifteen seconds) and she instantly transforms into Finn’s #1 Fan Girl. If that weren’t enough, another twenty seconds roll by and she turns on him. A quick cut later, and they figure out how to disable the hyperdrive tracker together.
That’s quite a range for a couple minutes of screen time. It’s all totally plausible, I suppose, just maybe not so easy to digest. It kills any audience connection Rose’s grieving might have created. A more sympathetic Finn could have redeemed his character a bit too (though his attempted escape is out of concern for Rey, so some good there).
There was one ripe moment where Luke comments that Rey didn’t even try to resist the dark side when it presented her with something she wanted. Wow! Pretty interesting, let’s explore this! Seems like she needs some character-revealing/building moments to sort this. Nope. Just a bit of flashy dialogue…nothing to see here.
There was so little realized drama in the film that I was rooting for Kylo to kill Rey. Nothing of real consequence happens to the (new) principals and there is no development of who they are.
What is it I heard some point out. The Rey/Kylo stuff has a narrative arc. But the chase has actually none. It serves to do nothing more to take an army of thousands of people and reduce it to something that can fit in the holds of the millenium falcon.
The begining of the movie, they are being chased, they are being chased in the middle of the movie, and the last scene they are still being chased.
These two movies last about what 2 weeks of time? So an entire Galactic Republic, loses 8 planets, and suddenly everything is dead. An entire regime falls apart and has no loyal or lasting adherents. Thats kinda depressing. All those people who died during Rogue 1 died for nothing eh.
I mean the Confederacy and the Nazis and Communists have more lasting loyalty than this crappy New Republic.
Say what you will about National Socialism at least it has tenets and ethos… what does the New Republic have? How can you be loyal to something so obscure?
Heh, then again The First Order seems to be just as obscure. There is no longer an identifiable basis for either side to be doing what they’re doing or to be viewed the way the filmmakers want us to view them.
I want a Kylo Ren redemption arc with a Kylo-Rey love affair.
They didn’t even give him a speaking part.
My biggest problem with the movie is that they focused so much on casting every conceivable minority race, that they almost completely ignored the aliens or planetary life.
My second biggest problem with the movie is that every little slightly amusing thing that goes on always has some ass sitting behind you guffawing and slapping his knee/the back of your seat.
What! But Rey and Fynn are so much better together…
Kylo can not be redeemed he is the only bad guy left. There is not badder guy out there since Snookie got killed. Vader redemes himself by saving Luke and killing the Emperor. What does Kylo do? throw down his light saber and walk away… I guess you could make that work, but it seems rather anticlimactic.
Kylo goes down in a fight with Rey, maybe defeated he can then earn redemption, but not in this series. And its not like we have to worry that they won’t make more Star Wars movies.
The benefit of a cinematic universe is that you can take your time and tell stories across several movies. They have to start thinking of these movies as a big budget TV show.
Well that isn’t really the movie’s fault. That is people being inconsiderate. I like to go see movies early in the morning and then I usually get a theater to myself.
I was half expecting her to bust out some of those angry-feminist oversized black glasses to go with that stupid purple hair.
I was not a fan of Rose. She wasn’t very bright.