Star Wars: The Last Jedi
After two years of waiting, episode 8 The Last Jedi is finally out! I have seen quite a mix of opinions on this movie. As for me I am leaning on the unsatisfied side. I did enjoy the movie but some things did let me down. This is coming from a fan of the original trilogy, and I didn't have expectations or predictions for this movie. Its hard for me to say whether I would recommend this movie or not. Read from some people to recommend seeing it more than once since it seems seeing it a second time you may see things differently. Definitely not a movie to start the franchise with though. There will be spoilers in the remainder of this post!
Spoilers will begin now! One of the things I disliked was the amount of humor going on. Sure, the humor got me most of the time but it was starting to feel like a comedy movie than a serious scifi film that I mostly associate Star Wars with. BB-8 had mostly comedy scenes though the bot is adorable so its hard to hate it though how it survived through it all is very odd. There were a bit too many Porg scenes for my taste, more specifically in the Falcon. I was fine with them on the island, but they were a bit distracting and unnecessary in the Falcon scenes. The caretaker creatures hating Rey is rather entertaining and Luke's humor was great but it did feel like I'm watching Mark Hamill than Luke Skywalker. Luckily the humor died down by the latter part of the movie.
Speaking of Luke, I did see people find him to be a bit of an asshole in this movie. I didn't think he was like that, but I can see how they would see that. Luke refused to help Rey, and he didn't tell her everything that happened between him and Kylo Ren at first. Also the first things I've heard from people when the movie came out was Luke milking and drinking milk from a alien creature. That detail in the movie was weird. The Force Awakens ended with Rey handing the lightsaber to Luke, and having Luke throw it over his shoulder seem to upset some people. That move was unexpected but I can understand why people would hate it though it does clearly set how this older Luke is going to be like. He thinks the Jedi should die and thinks he's a failure since he failed to help Kylo. Rey gave him some hope that Kylo can still turn back. Luke did give her a lesson on what the Force is. Even Force ghost puppet Yoda came to tell Luke to learn from the failures.
The island scenes had this weird odd balancing act between Luke's development, and the development of Rey and Kylo. It felt awkward to me so I didn't find it be that well executed. I did see people say it didn't make sense for there to be a map of where Luke was which was an important thing in the Force Awakens. I do agree with that its weird that Luke didn't want to be found yet there's a map to him. Though I hardly hear anyone complain about Luke in this movie so I won't focus too much on it. People do seem to like the Rey and Kylo scenes. There's a number of new Force powers in this movie and I'm not a fan of any of them. This mind meld or projecting thing that happens between Rey and Kylo felt weird to me. Its definitely a weird level up from the how Luke and Leia can sense each other kind of thing. It did build on the relationship between these characters though it felt kind of intimate so no surprise to see people wanting to ship them after this movie. It did had a bit of fanservice when Kylo had no shirt on.
Poor Finn seem to have to most disliked story plot in this movie. I personally didn't hate it, but it did have too many plot armor BS. I was excited to see more Asian characters in Star Wars so I was looking forward to this new character, but it is disappointing that people hardly remembered what her name was which is Rose. I didn't think her character was bad, but the story they had them go through wasn't impressive. They went to this planet that have rich people at a fancy casino to find a codebreaker which they need to sneak into the enemy ship and stop the tracker that's tracking the rebellion's ship. I did enjoy that this gave a idea of a side outside that isn't the Empire or the Rebellion. Some people find this story point unnecessary which is understandable. It is a lot of time to spend just to get a guy which they didn't even get. They found someone else in a jail cell called DJ. He's all about money so he sided with Finn and Rose for a bit till he sold them out.
This DJ character would've been interesting though that dick move was hard to swallow. Not sure if he'll come back at all. Phasma with the cool armor was about to execute Finn and Rose till an attack somehow wiped out most of the enemies and Finn and Rose magically survives and no longer handcuffed. Finn ends up defeating Phasma which sadden me because I really wanted to see more of her. Now I know how disappointed people felt about Boba Fett. General Hux is another character I felt bad for how the story treated him. The silly prank call with Poe at the beginning of the movie, and later Kylo gets rather violent with him for protesting. It really makes the Empire look silly at this point.
Think the biggest disappointing character is probably Snoke. He finally got some in person screentime only to get killed off. I mean he was killed off in a neat way, but we hardly got to know much about him that the kill almost made it felt like he was just some nobody. Like a pawn that Kylo used and disposed of. Some people find Kylo interesting, but I don't. He has this teenager in his rebel phase to him that I'm just waiting for him to grow up so I can take him seriously. That didn't happen at all, and he just grew worse. I get that this is a character that's blossoming into a villain, but it is somewhat similar to Anakin in the prequels where they hate that others are afraid of their power. We struggle watching that with Anakin for three movies, but with Kylo he just get flashbacks of that. Kylo revealed that Rey's parents were nobodies. They sold her for alcohol, and I get that people got upset about this too. I get that people rather have an explanation for all the power this girl has, and it seeming to be random because the movie says the Force has to balance out a powerful dark with a powerful light isn't as satisfactory as having a special lineage or whatever. Personally I don't mind that she's a nobody, but it would've been more interesting if she wasn't. She was very hung up on who are her parents as she seems confused on what this power and her place in this story for quite a bit of the movie. It does feel a bit anticlimactic that she's a nobody and it is a rather boring answer to that. I mean she even went into this weird perfectly round hole on the island, and saw some weird mirror effect thing. She seem to move on from her parents and just focused on getting Kylo to turn away from the darkside. I mean I do get that people find it weird that she's this powerful even though she didn't appear to gone through training. She could swim despite growing up on a desert planet. Not sure how not training her to going to help with Luke's whole ordeal. Having her not know anything may seem like a clean slate for future Jedi, but how would they prevent the same mistakes and failures if they didn't know them?
I get that this movie was about failure, but there's too many failures. Its almost depressing in a way, and perhaps that maybe why there's as much humor in this movie to balance it out but it didn't work for me. I did like that they wanted to show that being a hero isn't all that good with Poe's storyline. The only way I can make sense of Holdo not telling everyone the plan is preventing chaos within the rebellion. They may find it cowardly for them to sneak an escape to the planet and they wouldn't follow orders. Rose did say some people tried to escape. Not a good defense for it, but the movie seem to just do it so Poe can learn a lesson on trusting Leia's decisions. The last battle where they returned to that snowy planet from the original trilogy, I thought it was going to be like The Two Towers where the enemy had the advantage and the good guys suffered great losses with no escape. They win anyways because reinforcements arrived. No one came to help the Rebellion despite going through most of the movie to get there to send out a signal for help. They did end up escaping, but it didn't leave me with any sense of hope. It didn't help that Luke seemed to have died from this new Force projecting magic. Its a little hard for me to find it satisfying. Though having him go with the two suns is poetic. Sure, his fight with Kylo was neat, but that Matrix dodge made me laugh so I can't look at this fight as an awesome fight. I mean it is a very Jedi way of dying because of their student. People seem to see this and convince themselves Luke will appear as a Force ghost in episode 9. That's hard for me to imagine since they hardly appear in the other movies. If Luke does appear, it'll probably be very small. If Luke were to be in episode 9 I would rather he be alive or in a flashback than a ghost. He hardly seem to have a meaningful impression on either Kylo or Rey to ghost visit them. Its clear to me they want to kill off the old trilogy to get them out of the way.
Not sure how episode 9 will be like, but The Last Jedi has left me with little interest in it. It didn't make me more interested in the new characters at all. There was some neat looking visuals especially with the hyperspeed attack. Didn't expect it to be dead silent. The red salt make a really striking look to the battle. The people in red that Kylo and Rey fought against looked neat. No idea who they were but their weapons caught my attention since they were different. Wish that scene was a little longer so I can see these weapons a little more.
Overall, I can't really say the movie is bad but my disappointed feelings are trying to tell me its bad. It really makes me wonder what George Lucas would've done instead.
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