I watched The Last Jedi on Tuesday, and since then
I’ve been looking closely at what the fans have been saying about this film. I’m
surprised to hear about all the criticism this film is taking. It only seems
fair then to start this review off by looking at what the general criticisms
have been and my take on them, and then we’ll move on to the rest of the
review. And for anyone who hasn’t seen the film, most of what I’ll talk about
can be gathered from the trailers, and I’ll save any spoilers for the end and mark
them off clearly, so you can read on without a nervous eye. With that said, although
the trailers don’t ruin the film, I was glad I avoided them before watching the
film (and the first thing I did after watching was go back and watch the trailers
to see if I did in fact make the right decision).
Fan Criticisms:
·
Rian Johnson ruined the character of Luke
Skywalker!!!
What’s been
getting publicized is Mark Hamill’s comments about his character, the director’s
vision, and the film itself. And it’s interesting because his comments actually
kind of relate to how I felt while watching the movie. Hamill reportedly told
Johnson (the writer and director) that he fundamentally disagreed with him on
his character, but he would go along with his vision to the best of his abilities
because that’s his job. Under speculation is how a jedi master from The Return of the Jedi became a cynical
hermit that was on the breach of murder. Now then, everything from that previous
statement is blown out of proportion and not well thought out. After 2 years of
waiting what Luke will do when Rey extends her arm out to offer his lightsaber,
his reply I find to be both awesome for the film, and a great way to almost
undermine J. J. Abrams. Before anyone gets too upset, I’ll be coming back to
the transition of Jonhson from Abrams’ The
Force Awakens. But after this quick exchange, Luke exclaims that the jedi
must end. If you leave it at that, well, that does sound kinda cynical and
cranky; and at that point, all we still know is that Ben Solo turned evil
sometime while training under Luke. I feel like fans became toddlers once their
beacon of light hero suddenly has a conflicting outlook, and the toddlers tuned
out the rest of the movie afterward. If you actually watch the film, I think
the character motivations are explained and work well, and it presents
interesting themes that result in new territory for this historic saga.
Mark Hamill later
regretted his public disagreements because his goal was to make a great movie, and
he believes Johnson achieved that and more. And I think he might have said that
he was wrong. I was hesitant at the beginning of the movie, but this new Luke
Skywalker is a deep, unique character that is played wonderfully by Hamill’s
talents. We could have taken The Force
Awakens approach and just ripped off like Ben Kenobi from A New Hope and have Luke be that, but
this film shows that even he in his wiser years still has stuff to learn. I
mean, Luke is the best part about this film. He’s awesome, Hamill’s awesome,
and I’m about to start fanboying so let’s move on.
·
We still didn’t get the background stories we
wanted from the big characters.
Most of the
question marks apply to Supreme Leader Snoke. Who the old bloke is, where he
was during the first 6 movies, the scar on his forehead, how he turned and
trained Solo into Kylo Ren, yada yada. Everyone knows The Force Awakens is a copy of A
New Hope, so it seemed reasonable enough to receive an Empire Strikes Back treatment from The Last Jedi. To me what we receive instead is a combination of
elements from episodes 5 and 6, and even parts from the prequels, and it’s
blended together and poured over a new dish entirely. This film does a great
job of limiting the times it hearkens back to the previous films, and it builds
on what exists so nicely. Snoke was such a boring character in 7, and with the
help of the magical Andy Serkis, I think the character is worked into the story
in a surprising way. It won’t answer fans’ questions about him, but who cares
because I think it worked well from a narrative standpoint.
Other questions
are how Maz got Luke’s lightsaber in the first place and who Rey’s parents are.
For the former Maz only has a limited role in this film, and I find that to be
the better. She doesn’t fit into the story all that much, so I’m fine with it.
Plus, there’s like a visual novelization that explains how she got the
lightsaber. Remember, The Last Jedi
is 2 and a half hours long. I’m fine if we don’t get scenes of pure exposition
regarding the new characters brought in from 7. Staying true to my word, all I’ll
say is I’m happy with Rey’s background. I don’t want to say I knew it, but I
think my primary guess is what she ends up figuring out, and it again unveils
strong themes for the characters to work with.
·
Not enough Captain Phasma again!
Phasma has little
more to do than have a short but relatively cool fight with Finn. It gives both
of them something cool to do, but that’s basically it. I do understand how
after the promise to give her a larger role went sorta unfulfilled, but I’m under
more of the impression of eh, who cares. My issue with Phasma is how she managed
to escape a planet that was about to explode when she was thrown into a trash
compactor. She had a cool costume, but what else in the film would you want
from her?
·
The humor just didn’t feel right.
I wasn’t bawling
out from cracking up during this film, but there were some good jokes. Maybe it
was a different kind of humor, almost to a lesser degree the kind found in the
later Harry Potter films, but I wouldn’t call it an issue. Not all jokes hit
their mark, and I can agree that some were placed in a couple strange moments,
but I feel the ones that did work stand out more than the ones that didn’t.
And now that we’ve
addressed most of what is already being talked about, time for more of my own
take. I wrote my final persuasive essay for my ENGL 336 class on some themes
and and issues I had with The Force
Awakens, and I received an A on the paper. Just like his Star Trek films, The Force Awakens looks nice from the onset, but it doesn’t hold up
under scrutiny. And Abrams loves those light flares on the camera too much.
That boy really does love his flares… Anyways, there are 2 points to this. One
that people will probably like, and one that they won’t. I felt that Rian
Johnson took all the right measures in disregarding some of the ideas Abrams
presented in the new trilogy. From the opening with Luke to the character arcs to
the story progression in general, it’s a much different take. Johnson took the
existing world and expanded both in scope and in technology in a great way in
my view. And the second point is that since The
Last Jedi is the first sequel to take place immediately after the events of
its predecessor, I still would recommend watching The Force Awakens before seeing The
Last Jedi in theaters (where it’s meant to be watched).
With the possible
exception of Finn, I enjoy the direction all the characters took. I can’t praise
Luke enough because he’s awesome in this film, and Kylo Ren exemplifies the
ways Johnson takes this universe to surprising grounds, and I think it works.
For as long as the film is, we don’t get that many scenes of Rey training and
honing her abilities. It’s one of my criticisms, but she’s still an enjoyable
character besides that. I think they went too much of a “princess power” image
for Leia (I’m talking about the scene near the beginning that just looks
weird), but it’s still nice to see Carrie Fisher’s final role. And to my
knowledge she is getting the Heath Ledger treatment for episode 9; her family
gave the studio the rights to use her likeness, but I think they’ll just avoid
it altogether.
As for the new
characters, they come with some of the highs and lows. I enjoyed the porgs, and
those that didn’t are just part of the toddler group of fans. I loved Benicio
del Toro, and he’s a godsend for this franchise. But my least favorite part of
the entire film is Rose. She’s annoying, boring, and I was hoping for her death
in the climax.
Unlike Maz’s
cantina hideout temple whatever, the casino in this film is awesome. It
highlights the great ways the universe expanded, John Williams has fun with it,
and I believe Mark Hamill even does some CGI work for one of the creatures in
it. I was hoping for some pod-racing, and even if those fathier horse creature
things look pretty fake, they’re still fun. And the casino works well for both
the cinematography that is some of the best, and the costumes that are also
some of the best. Like what stuck out in my mind were the updated palace guards
that surround Snoke. Those guys are cool. And I haven’t talked about Luke
enough, so I need to mention that his costumes are awesome as well. The subtle
switches made to Rey work well too.
Much of the
tension of the film is supposed to be created by the necessity of Poe, Finn,
and Rose to work out their own plan without Laura Dern and her purple hair
finding out, and they must accomplish it under I believe 16 hours. I actually
liked Laura’s character, but she did make things unnecessarily difficult. And
people give Finn and Rose’s mission flak, but I think it serves well in both
expansion and in tying in with the central themes. I must say, however, that I find
the 16 hours pretty arbitrary with how long I feel the mission would actually
take. I guess a time under a day creates more tension, but with many of the personal
complaints I have, it’s whatever and not all that big a deal.
I had some small
editing qualms with the opening sequence, and the film also suffered slightly
with tonal issues in the first third of the film, but all things considered, I
personally only have small gripes with the film. It’s 150 minutes long, and it
will have you engaged the entire time. The climax is just awesome, and that’s
where John Williams shines the most. Finn didn’t really have too much a place
in this film, but I liked all the existing characters more this time around;
they finally felt like their own characters with their own motivations instead
of just copies of characters from A New
Hope. This might be best seen by the new force connection stuff with Ren
and Rey. I’m really shocked with all the backlash the film is dealing with, but
I highly recommend anyone that hasn’t seen it to go watch in theaters. I’m
saying it’s worth it, so obviously that’s all that matters. May the Force be
with you and all that jazz, and to close out, here’s a great spoiler free clip
of Kylo Ren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyzUG2nyf5k
And now I have thoughts on super major spoilers! Please
don’t read on if you haven’t seen it and plan to, but if you have, feel free to
comment if you have a different take on something or flat out disagree with me
To get it off my chest, I wish so badly that Rose had died
when she “saved” Finn. I was first fine with Finn sacrificing himself, and then
I was even fine with Rose stopping him because it meant her death; alas, we
come to realize that she only majorly injured herself. Which, if you’re a major
character not named Snoke (who got Darth Mauled—although Darth Maul technically
lived but anyways), then you’ll probably have a death scare, but don’t fret! We
know there’s an episode 9 and we’re still marketing to kids, so no major
characters are allowed to die. Leia almost died at the beginning, but then she
Supermanned her way to safety. Finn and Rose were about to be executed before
BB-8 even stepped in. It was a nice save, I guess, but there something justttt
a bit off seeing BB-8 drive that. Heck, for a brief moment, we think Luke is
going to go full-out Obi-Wan in the climax only to have great illusion reveal
only to actually die like peacefully at the end. But his whole Matrix dodges
were cool, and you gotta love Hamill when he shrugs off the AT-AT blasts. Still
not sure how I feel about Luke becoming one with the Force at the end, but as
long as he comes back as a ghost in 9, I guess it’s fine.
The first shot of Yoda looked really ugly, but I’m not
sure if it was just the angle or what, but he looked fine afterward. And boy
was it great to see him. One of my favorite things that really convinced me
about Johnson writing the right Luke was showing that he still had stuff he
could learn from Master Yoda. The whole build something new mentality—which flows
nicely through Ren as well—was a cool idea to see especially when Yoda brings
the lightning down on the temple. But I did in fact notice when Finn grabs a
blanket for Rose that it appears the ancient texts made their way onto the
Falcon.
The 16-hour conflict deadline didn’t help Rey’s character
in seeing her training pay off. That’s just not enough time from her on Jakku
to save the resistance by lifting the rocks out of the way. Remember, 8 takes
place immediately after 7, so she literally didn’t have any time in between
movies to train. But I guess she can be the most powerful jedi we’ve ever seen
or something.
If Abrams remains on as director for 9, I’m betting he
brings Captain Phasma back. I’m really happy with where Johnson took all of the
characters initially handed to Abrams, so hopefully they’ll remain more in the
vision that Johnson took them when Abrams does 9. But at least for now Johnson
still gets his own trilogy to handle. All this stupid fan backlash worries that
future for me, but we’ll see. I didn’t want to say in the review above, but I
felt it was so perfect the way Johnson told audiences that this would be a
different Star Wars from Abrams when Luke tosses the lightsaber behind him at the
beginning. I guess fans did not appreciate that “cynical” move, but I loved it.
I don’t want to say I predicted it, but I had a feeling
Rey wasn’t related to any previous character. And the whole comes from nothing
background works well too. So I’m happy with the parents reveal; I guess it is
worth mentioning that Ren could be lying, but he seemed pretty believable to
me. And Rey traveling down into the cave was a nice throwback to 5 when Luke
strikes down Vader to reveal Luke underneath the mask.
Phew, well, this is easily the longest review I’ve done,
but I felt there was just so much too talk about. I still have plenty more
reviews coming, so here’s to hoping that returning to school soon won’t slow me
down.
