Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) Movie Review
Star Wars: Episode VIII- The Last Jedi (2017) Movie Review
The Last Jedi, aka the new Star Wars movie, is neither one of the best films in the series nor is it a real disappointment. I will say that I liked it better than Rogue One, which I have reviewed as well. Rogue One was good overall, but felt too militaristic and mean-spirited for me. This movie was actually pretty fun, yet it also had some irritating problems.
After the events of the first movie, Rey (Daisy Ridley) meets with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to restore peace to the galaxy or whatever. Luke does some bizarre comedy, then finally agrees to train Rey in the ways of the Force. Finn (John Boyega) is back with a new sidekick named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) who is a mechanic for the Resistance. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is here as well, and he seems a lot more spunky and angsty than he did in The Force Awakens. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is even more angsty than Poe, and finds himself starting to question whether he wants to be a good guy or a bad guy. The Resistance, led by Leia (RIP Carrie Fisher), is struggling to battle the massive armies and fleets of the First Order. C-3PO, R2-D2, Laura Dern, and Benicio Del Toro make cameos. A big (now that I think of it, it’s more medium) final battle between the Resistance and the First Order happens ft. Luke, and that’s pretty much the entire movie.
It’s good. It really is. But it has some serious problems and seems to get worse and worse the more you think about it. There are lots of small storylines, and I’d say about half of them don’t even have a proper conclusion. The movie ends on a “what will happen next?” note, but meanwhile, the audience is left wondering what has already happened. Or at least it was that way with me. Finn and Rose have this strange adventure where they travel to a casino to find a codebreaker for a reason I don’t quite remember. They don’t find the right codebreaker so they get a discount codebreaker (Benicio Del Toro) who (spoiler alert) ends up being a traitor. All this 20-minute long casino-codebreaking stuff really only leads to one cool fight scene and an interesting final scene where some mistreated kids we see near the casino area look to the stars and wish to be Jedi when they grow up.
Speaking of cool fight scenes, there is this awesome battle where Rey and Kylo Ren are battling First Order guards (I’m not going to talk too much about this or else I would spoil a pretty big surprise). It’s in this scene when one of my favorite movie kills of all time happens. Kylo is being trapped by a First Order guard in what the US Marines website calls a “rear choke.” Then he grabs his lightsaber from his little belt, holds it up to the guard’s head, and opens it, stabbing the guard straight through. I know that sounds kind of aggressive but I loved that moment.
Another part of The Last Jedi I really liked was the connection scenes between Rey and Kylo. At one point I thought to myself, “Someone should make a rom-com with these two people.” Rey has these weird Force hallucinations where she somehow connects with Kylo Ren’s mind and then they have these conversations and end up bonding through these creepy mind arguments. So all of that Rey-Kylo stuff was on the more interesting side of the movie.
One thing I want to talk about is the little montage showing how Luke has been surviving on his little island. It was weird, weird, weird, just weird. Luke does this thing where he goes up to these lazy cow creatures that look like suspiciously like the Eopie from The Phantom Menace and he just squeezes their udders. Like, what the heck. And then he uses some confusing fish-catching method that involves using a really long black pole that definitely wasn’t on that island before, and then shimmying down it to carry a huge fish back up the pole like a scarf. Look, none of this Luke-in-hiding stuff makes sense. It’s kind of surprising that he at first rejected Rey and Chewbacca’s (Joonas Suotamo) company because it’s not like he has had or ever will have more visitors. Stop acting like you’re too cool to train a new Jedi or something. Your life is like, over. Do something more instead of pretending that you’re cryptic and radical or something. Argh.
Um, I need a second to calm myself. OK. Anyways. Here’s another Luke confusion I noticed: if Luke just wanted to be left alone for the rest of his life, then why did he leave directions to his whereabouts in The Force Awakens? Surely he knew someone would find him someday, so why did he seem so irritated when it finally happened? And here’s another question: on Luke’s island, when he’s training Rey, he tells her that the Force is this feeling that surrounds every living and nonliving thing and is like, the essence of the universe. But in the prequels, Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson, tells a young Anakin, played by Jake Lloyd, that the Force is actually a chemical called Midichlorians. So is the Force a scientific term or is it a supernatural presence like we want it to be?
Safety Chart:
Violence: 6.5/10- Some violence. Expendable, nameless villain characters are trashed by more heroic and important ones, but not much blood is shown at all. Space battles with lasers and such. Some explosions. Brief animal abuse is also shown. Lightsaber fights, of course. People die. You know what’s up.
Language: 4/10- A little more than you’d expect.
Drinking/Smoking: 2/10- We see non-explicit drunk/drinking background characters at a casino.
Star Wars: Episode VIII- The Last Jedi is a slightly non-satisfying addition to the Star Wars saga, but it definitely has some amazing moments. I think The Last Jedi’s main problem is that it seems like it’s trying to copy off both The Force Awakens and The Empire Strikes Back at the same time, and it feels a little convoluted at times. When The Force Awakens took pieces from A New Hope, it felt like it had a more natural feeling. This time it feels forced (Get it? Go ahead, laugh, we’re all friends here) and isn’t as fun. But there are some truly memorable moments, especially with lightsaber and space battles. Space battles were totally missing from The Force Awakens, so it was great to see them included in The Last Jedi. In the end, I think I’d give this movie a B+ as a grade. I’m anticipating a slightly better third installment in this modern trilogy, but this movie is definitely worth seeing, and if you’re a big fan of the series, then you’ll definitely enjoy what it has to offer.
