Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

2017 sequel to a sequel to a trilogy with a prequel

Rating: 12/20 (Dylan: 13/20)

Plot: The Resistance is in a predicament as the First Order is hot on their trail. On the verge of being completely snuffed out--a term this movie really likes apparently--they look for some sort of new hope. Or maybe it's an old new hope.

I might end up really liking this installment, but I came out of the theater and told my son that I "kinda hated it." And I still might kinda hate it.

Oh, I wanted to start by warning you not to read if you've not seen the movie. There will be lots of spoilers although I'll try my best to be as vague as possible.

Anyway, back to my conflicted feelings. Now that I type that, it seems completely appropriate. For a movie--and really, an entire franchise--that has so much to do with duality, conflicted feelings seem about right. My expectations were high going in. This, after all, was supposed to be the Attack of the Clones of the trilogy! Or the Empire of the series. And don't get me wrong. I enjoyed lots of stuff in The Last Jedi. However, there's just so much idiocy mixed in that I found it difficult to just let myself go and love the thing.

And I want you to keep in mind--I unapologetically enjoy the prequels and frequently find myself in situations where I have to defend them.

But my first thoughts were filled with confusion. The first scene of the movie forced me to check my ticket stub to see if I'd accidentally stumbled into a sequel to Spaceballs as Poe prank phonecalls General Hux. For a movie that I expected to deliver the darkness, this was setting the wrong tone. There's an ensuing space battle filled with glorious space battle imagery, but the stakes never felt as high as they actually were, and I felt unengaged. I started wondering early on if I even really liked Star Wars movies anymore. From there, the characters from The Force Awakens are taken to places that either didn't make sense or seemed utterly pointless. I didn't like a single moment of the storyline that involved Finn. Poe spends most of the movie running around arguing with people. Kylo and Rey seem to only be in the movie to be dicked around with. Chewbacca is background. General Leia (I think she's a general in these, right?) does something so perplexing that I heard people audibly sighing behind me. Luke doesn't seem like Luke. Snoke isn't developed at all. General Hux isn't developed at all. And on and on.

After thinking about it for almost a full week, I do get what Rian Johnson was doing, and it's something I can appreciate. Johnson, because it has to be done at this point in a franchise that can't survive just regurgitating the same ideas over and over again, is making an attempt to reinvent Star Wars. He plays with almost every expectation any fan of the series could have had going in.

Want to find out who Snoke really is? Want to find out who Rey's parents are? Well, we're not going to give you answers that are going to leave you fulfilled. Want Luke to jump in and save the good guys by being a total badass? No, that's not what is going to happen? Want Poe to replace Harrison Ford and be that rogue anti-hero type that you love to root for? Well, we're going to turn that trope on its head. Want Kylo to really grow as a villain and evolve into a true successor to Darth Vader and all the other Darths who came before him? No, he's still going to be that tortured, whiny emo kid. Want Captain Phasma to have inexplicably emerge from the garbage before the big death-planet thing exploded and somehow justify her existence in this new trilogy? No, that's not going to happen. Want C3PO to say have some stupid lines like he did in the other movies? Ok, we'll go ahead and give you that one.

What Johnson seems interested in doing is turning everything on its head. There are a lot of lines, mostly delivered by grouchy Luke, about the need to let go of the past. And as risky as it was for Johnson to write and direct a Star Wars movie that so intentionally defies expectations and makes the attempt to start a transition away from any Skywalkers, it's something that I really want to applaud. Johnson isn't afraid to do some dirty work with this franchise, trash a few legacies, and leave some loose threads. In many ways, he's doing something much more interesting with the Star Wars universe than Abrams did.

However, he does it so clumsily. If you want to accuse The Force Awakens of being nothing more than a copy of A New Hope, you're probably still going to say that it was a well-done copy. Sure, it had its problems, but it was competent storytelling and brought new characters to life almost effortlessly. This one's a bit of a mess and doesn't seem to know what to do with all of these characters. Part of the problem is that the movie is overly ambitious. It was like giving a kid a bowl of soup filled to the brim with all sorts of fun little noodle shapes and vegetables and CGI effect capabilities and saying, "Here ya go, kid! Enjoy that soup, but I'm not giving you a spoon to eat it with!" The soup's just going to end up all over the table and very likely the kid's lap. And The Last Jedi also has moments where it just sploshes all over the place, some ending up all over Rian Johnson's lap.

I don't think this review is going very well. Truthfully, this is one of the hardest out of the 3,200+ write-ups I've done on this blog. I kept putting it off all week because I just didn't know how to say what I wanted to say.

Maybe I should switch to the positives. I'll give ten positives and then ten negatives.

1) My new favorite scene in any Star Wars movie--Luke milking some sort of alien creature, taking a swig, and then looking directly at the audience like he's filming a commercial for the stuff. That was epic, and I don't just throw that word around.
2) I actually like Luke's story arc, and all the Jedi stuff. This movie does more for the force than maybe any other movie in the franchise.
3) Luke's big moment on the salt planet, shots that recall Eastwood as the Man with No Name, probably intentionally.
4) Those fucking red guys with Snoke, and that glorious fight scene that might be a preview of Tarantino's Star Trek movie. With the red background, it reminded me of a samurai movie. That was great watching Kylo and Rey do their thing.
5) This looks exactly as good as a really expensive movie should look. The special effects are mostly good with the exception of a scene I'll mention below. There are some really beautiful shots even. Luke's little getaway island is very pretty, and the reddening of that salt planet is a really cool use of color.
6) I really do appreciate the balls it took for them to do what they did with Snoke here.
7) Some of the humor might work? There's a problem when a guy whose impulsivity ended up costing a bunch of people their lives starts cracking one-liners, but there are some funny moments.
8) I like the theme about how anybody, regardless if they have the surname Skywalker, can be be somebody special in this universe.
9) There's the return of a special character. No, not Nien Nunb although he's in there, too. No, the return of another favorite who gets to say some cool things.
10) Oscar Isaac is a good actor, and I think I like his character. I also liked the additions of Benicio del Toro's Tom Waitsian character and Laura Dern.  And speaking of Dern, here's a bonus thing that I liked: There are some strong female characters in this movie.

The negatives?

1) I hated the creatures. The Porgs gave people seeing them in the previews some concerns, but I figured those fears were silly. They ended up being in this thing way too much. And those shiny wolf things on the salt planet looked stupid. At least they served some kind of purpose.
2) I hated every minute showing Finn and the new gal's adventures on the casino planet. I hated those horse things, I hated the over-abundance of CGI characters, and I hated the improbable chase sequence.
3) Pretty much everything to do with BB-8 was stupid. I know these movies are really for children and that children probably loved that little robotic ball's shenanigans, but things got a little too ridiculous for me.
4) A shirtless Kylo Ren, obviously just an way to get another action figure on the shelves. Or maybe give female Star Wars fans some spank bank material. He also wears his pants too high.
5) There are big things that happen in this movie, but the story goes from point A to point B by hitting points M, D, S, Q, V, O, F, T, and probably a few others. When you look at how much the plot was actually advanced, you might wonder whether it was worth a 2 1/2 hour movie.
6) Leia. She actually feels superfluous here. I believe she was supposed to have more to do in the third movie (with the first one being Solo and this one being Luke), and we'll probably not get to know what that would have meant unless they do a CGI Carrie Fisher again. But there's something that happens with Leia in this movie that makes me angry just thinking about it.
7) An explosive action sequence on the bad guy ship with Finn, BB-8, and the new girl is about the silliest thing I've seen in a Star Wars movie since the clone factory scenes in Attack of the Clones.
8) The demise of one very important character without much commentary at all. It's just like he was an action figure tossed out the window of a moving car. Actually, you could argue that there's no weight to any of the deaths that occur in this movie.
9) The fact that Finn or Rose (that's the new gal's name--I looked it up because I'm serious about my blogging) don't need to be in this movie at all. I mean, I guess you're not going to decide to just not have Finn in the second movie, but they run around a whole lot and only actually accomplish a single thing that I can think of. And that's not even a good thing.
10) There's a scene with Lupita Nyong'o's character that was really dopey. It was one of many silly missteps that wouldn't have annoyed me nearly as much if they had just appeared as deleted scenes on the dvd.

I'm going to see this again and will let you know if my feelings change at all.