Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) Review

"Impressive.  Every word in that sentence was wrong."

-Luke Skywalker

Just after the destruction of Starkiller Base, the Resistance is forced to flee their base, but the First Order is in hot pursuit, having figured out how to track a ship through hyper-space.  Low on fuel, the Resistance can only hope to stall and keep out of range of the First Order long enough for a miracle.  Finn (John Boyega) and BB-8 team up with a Resistance Maintenance worker, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), to recruit a codebreaker to help them stop the First Order from tracking the Resistance.  Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and R2-D2 (Jimmy Lee) travel to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who refuses to cooperate and help the Resistance.  But when a psychic connection is opened between Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the truth forces them and Luke to think seriously about their next moves as the fate of the galaxy is in their hands.

What Works:

First off, The Last Jedi is a beautiful movie.  I love the look of the film and it has probably the best visuals of the series.  The 3rd act battle on Crait looks great with all of the white and the red, Laura Dern's character, Vice Admiral Holdo, has a stunning death scene, and the battles on board Snoke's (Andy Serkis) ship definitely stand out in positive ways.  No matter what your opinions are on the movie as a whole, I think we can all agree it looks fantastic on a technical level.

I love the Rey/Luke/Kylo storyline.  It's by far the strongest of the three stories in this film and it isn't even close.  Ridley, Hamill, and Driver all give fantastic performances.  The chemistry between them is great and I love the dynamics between the characters.  I know the direction they go with Luke's character is controversial, but I love it.  We get the best of both worlds with Luke, as we get a warrior's death, but also a Jedi's death.  We get some Obi-Wan and some Yoda.  I love his final duel with Kylo, but I also like that he fades away peacefully.

Rey and Kylo's dynamic is really fascinating and their conversations throughout the film are some of the strongest scenes.  I was really curious to see how their relationship was going to finish by the end of the film, and while it was exactly what I was hoping for, it still worked and was interesting to watch.  Best of all was their fight in Snoke's throne room, which is my favorite sequence in the movie.  

I know some people are mad that Rey's parents were nobody important and that we didn't get more information on Snoke, but I liked both those things.  It shows that the Skywalker's are not the only important people in this galaxy and that greatness can come from anywhere.  And Snoke's death was totally unexpected and awesome.  I loved it.

What Sucks:

I have three major complains about this movie.  First and foremost is all of the scenes on Canto Bight, the casino planet.  These scenes are the biggest waste of time and among the most irritating moments of the entire series.  The social commentary is so blatant and ham-fisted that I could not stop rolling my eyes.  Rose and Finn saying it was all worth it because they caused some chaos in town and freed some animals is the worst dialogue since Anakin talking about sand in Attack of the Clones.  Trying to make us care about this planet was just sloppy on every level.  And to make things worse, Rose and Finn almost immediately abandoned their plan to recruit the master codebreaker.  Instead they grab Benicio Del Toro, who they meet in a prison cell, who claims that he can do the job.  They have no reason to trust this guy or believe he can do what he says he can do.  And of course he ends up betraying them, so none of it matters anyway.  This entire sequence was incredibly stupid and cringe and ultimately had point.  It's fine to have our characters fail, that's the theme of the movie, but at least make the journey to the failure enjoyable and make sense.  It's not that hard.

Next up, we have Rose, who is the second only to Jar Jar Binks as the worst character in the series.  This isn't Kelly Marie Tran's fault, so everyone LEAVE HER ALONE.  This is due to poor writing and directing, but DON'T HARASS RIAN JOHNSON EITHER!  BE NICE PEOPLE!  Rose is an irritating character.  Her dialogue is mostly cringey, she has basically no purpose in the film other than to be there, and her saving of Finn's life at then end was incredibly stupid.  It could have easily killed them both.  Finn's suicide run made complete sense.  Would it have worked?  I don't know, but it makes way more sense than what Rose did.  Her final line to Finn before she passes out, "That's how we're gonna win.  Not fighting what we hate; saving what we love", is the single worst line of the series and I wanted to barf when I heard it.  It's incredibly stupid, cringey, and the kiss is extremely forced.  Remove her character from the film and it's a major improvement.

Finally, as much as I love Laure Dern, Vice Admiral Holdo is not a smart character even though the film wants us to believe she is.  Her plan to save the Resistance is fine, but there is no reason not to tell Poe (Oscar Issac) what is going on.  Her being so secretive leads to unnecessary conflict.  Poe even says her plan is decent when he finally learns what it is.  Had she been upfront about it she could have saved us all from the Rose/Finn storyline.  This isn't unreasonable to ask, the Resistance was in a dire situation with all of their lives on the line.  Of course they would want to know what the plan is.  And by not revealing you actually have a plan, it makes you look like you don't and are therefore unfit to lead.  Poe and his mutiny was completely justified, but all of this could have been avoided if Holdo would have actually communicated.

Also, while Holdo's death scene was cool, why haven't the Resistance been doing that for years?  Why didn't they do it with the smaller ships before they ran out of fuel?  They could have evacuated everyone and had one person stay behind and hyper-sped right through the First Order.  Major plot hole.

Verdict:

The Last Jedi is simultaneously very overrated and very underrated.  There are a lot of people out there that are pissed about this movie, but a lot of their reasoning is flawed.  This movie did not do what people thought or expected would happened.  It's the same mentality people have with finales of TV shows.  If they don't do exactly what I thought would happen it's automatically bad.  On the flip side, a lot of people who defend this film, especially critics, have been overlooking the flaws.  As this film came out, critics gave this film too much praise which led people, myself included, to feel it was being overhyped.  The Last Jedi is a good film, but it has some major flaws.  This film is very polarizing with the extreme love and hate for it.  The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the movie.  

This film, and the endless shit-storm that has surrounded it has pretty much sapped me of excitement I had for the Star Wars films and I am very apathetic about episode nine.  It's really a shame.  This film is good, but it has brought out the worst aspects of fandom resulting in both sides being overly defensive.  It's a movie.  You can like a movie while admitting it has flaws.  You can be critical of a movie without being a complete a***ole.   You don't have to like it.  The Last Jedi is a good but flawed movie, but the overhype, the backlash, and the worst fans of all time have made me really not care about Star Wars anymore.

 7/10: Good