FIRST OF ALL, THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS POST. SO IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN “THE LAST JEDI” YET, STOP RIGHT NOW, BOOKMARK THIS POST, AND COME BACK WHEN YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE.
Someone’s finally done it. The Empire Strikes Back has been topped, in my opinion, as the best Star Wars movie ever. The apprentice is finally the master. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi is an absolutely cracking movie, far better than I expected, and full of twists and turns that I never saw coming. Some movies show you everything in the trailers; director Johnson is a master at keeping you off-balanced – even during the movie you had no idea what was going to happen next. And nothing in the show felt really contrived or fake. There was no “oh, this is the big hero moment where one person will save the day”, or “yes, if you do this one little thing, the big bad whatever will be defeated even though it is so powerful.” That kind of crap is thankfully completely missing and not missed in this movie. I was wondering what Johnson had done to impress the bigwigs at Lucasfilm so much, that they handed him creative control over a brand new future Star Wars trilogy. And now I know. The movie he made was unbelievably good on so many levels. How so? I’ll mostly be comparing the most recent Star Wars effort, The Force Awakens, by the also very talented J J Abrams, against this latest movie.
Before I go further, I feel that I need to address something. It seems like a lot of “hardcore” Star Wars fans were angry with the movie. Not all, but a fairly sizable number. Some are even saying that Star Wars has been “ruined” and that they will never go back to Star Wars again. I’m sure they won’t be carrying those threats out. That’s the problem with social media – people post all sorts of angry stuff online in the immediacy of an experience, without stopping to give it some further thought. Most of these people I expect will wake up a few days later and realise that they over-reacted. Unfortunately, their initial, really nasty, feedback will remain on the internet for a long time.
Let me take one example of a place with lots of negative fan feedback. Many of the fans on Rotten Tomatoes were disappointed, even angry at the movie. It’s quite bizarre, in that I’ve never seen a movie where the reviewers have given such a high score (93%) but the public gave such a low score (58%). OK, comparatively low; some movies will kill for a 58% approval rating. Reading through the comments by the public, it appears that many of them don’t just think that the movie isn’t good. They actually feel that the movie is horrible.
I have to say, I completely disagree with that (duh, see the title of this post). These fans have their opinion, I have mine. And the majority of the fans who posted there (58%, maybe more, if you disregard the people who posted multiple versions of their negative comments) agree with me. The ones who said the movie was bad were mostly angry that the movie wasn’t made according to their expectations. Many of them used a variant of the line “I’ve been a Star Wars fan for xyz years and this is the first movie I was disappointed in.” Really? Then they’ve got quite a short memory because the prequels were mostly terrible. From Jar-Jar Binks to Hayden Christensen’s acting to Anakin becoming a child-killer because he wants to save his wife, there was a lot of garbage. If they say they loved the prequels, no wonder they can’t appreciate The Last Jedi.
Most of the hate for this movie can be summed up as “I wanted Luke to be the new Yoda, and the director didn’t give that to me, so now I am pissed.” I get it. The ending of The Force Awakens teased people about this, and the hard-core fans must have spent the past two years debating about what kind of training Luke was going to give Rey when they finally met. After building up that kind of thing in your head for the best part of twenty-four months, it’s hard not to get upset when Luke basically tells Rey to get lost. But here’s the thing – if you say you hated TFA as well as TLJ, that makes sense. But these same people who have basically lost their shit over this movie say that TFA was great, JJ Abrams did a fantastic job, and Rian Johnson/Kathleen Kennedy has completely messed it up. Let me first debunk this utter nonsense:
(a) JJ Abrams was the one who put Luke on an uncharted planet, running from his responsibilities and trying very hard not to be found. So stop blaming Johnson for this, the story was set in motion by JJ in the first place.
(b) Kathleen Kennedy was the one who hired JJ Abrams in the first place. If you have an issue with her, then you should have an issue with TFA as well.
(c) Some people were saying that the female characters were all strong and the male characters all weak. Firstly, that’s garbage, it shows they don’t understand the story at all, or they just want people to hit each other over the head with light-sabers. Secondly, even if they interpret it that way, what’s wrong with a show where female characters are stronger than male ones? How about the occasional movie where guys aren’t the strong ones? Why can’t they accept that? And thirdly, JJ Abrams was the one who made Rey the main star, the new Jedi, and left Leia alive and a General but Han Solo a smuggler again, and eventually, dead. So what the heck are they on about, that Johnson’s movie was bad and Abrams’ was good?
(d) People complaining about Rey having no training and suddenly lifting rocks. So how come they are ok with Rey having even less training in TFA but being able to defeat Kylo, the same guy who is stronger than Luke Skywalker, underwent proper Jedi training, and can freaking stop blaster bolts in mid-flight? If they have no problems with this from TFA then they should have no problems with Rey lifting a few rocks in TLJ. Sheesh.
(e) People complaining about new Force powers being introduced in TLJ. Excuse me, Kylo freezing people completely and stopping blaster bolts in mid-air was all in TFA – why no issue with that? Again, they should either hate TFA and TLJ for this kind of thing, or they should be fine with both. They can’t say they like one and hate the other for it.
People who brag about having read all the canon and followed the shows from young, are basically saying that their vision and their vision alone must be followed. They are basically saying I can’t get enough of this stuff, after forty years and a billion movies/books/comics/toys/games/costumes/conventions, and you must make me another movie that is just a rehash of all the old ones but with new special effects. That’s ridiculous. Canon is made up, fictitious back story. It’s all made up. Get used to the new direction, or don’t watch the new movies, whatever. Star Wars doesn’t belong only to people who have spent their lives sleeping in Chewbacca pyjamas. It is a fantasy movie universe and the new team have to make it work for this generation of viewers, not just the older ones. People who complain about Disney/Kennedy ruining Star Wars seem to have forgotten that Star Wars before Disney was not going anywhere, no new movies were on the horizon, Lucas was basically enjoying his retirement, and the canon was contradictory and an overblown mess. These fanboys celebrated Disney when they announced a new trilogy, and now they complain that Disney is ruining Star Wars. Whatever.
Rian and Disney took the film in a different direction rather than roll out a long homage to the original trilogy like TFA did, and some are throwing their toys out of the pram. By the way, if you look carefully, you’ll see that a lot of the negative reaction is from people posting their same angry comments several times. You don’t like it, we get it, we heard you the first time, no need to double, triple or quadruple post to skew the scores, thanks. When Daniel Craig was first announced as the new bond years ago, people were up in arms over the same kinds of thing – “canon”. Bond was supposed to be blonde. Bond was supposed to like his drinks shaken, not stirred. Bond wasn’t supposed to look so rugged, like a construction worker. Yada yada. But in the end, Craig turned out to be one of the best Bonds ever, if not the best. And the same kind of courage is being shown here by Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, in departing from the shackles of thirty years of other people’s ideas, and daring to chart a new course to keep Star Wars fresh.
Let me jump into why I didn’t think The Force Awakens was such a great movie, and why The Last Jedi avoids those very same pitfalls, and therefore rises above it as the better movie. TFA felt completely contrived, with lazy and nonsensical plot devices. People saying that it was good and TLJ had “plot holes” are clearly so blinded by their excitement at the return of the franchise in 2015, they completely overlooked all the gaping holes in TFA. Here are ten reasons why I didn’t think TFA was that good:
(1) It felt like a complete rip-off of Episode IV. It was shameless fan-service, where everything the fanboys were desperate to see after so many years was crammed into the movie, even if it didn’t make sense.
(2) Why was the Falcon on Jakku, conveniently? Why was it not guarded or disabled, if it was so precious? Why was it in plain sight even though Solo would be hunting the known universe for it, and could have paid for information from anybody who had seen it in the past thirty years?
(3) Why does Maz have Luke’s lightsaber, the one that fell into a cloud planet with no surface? Is there a garbage collection unit at the planet’s centre that sends such stuff up for people to re-use?
(4) Starkiller base, really? A big planet-sized thing that completely dwarfs the second Death Star, but was kept completely secret from the Republic and the Resistance for years while being constructed? A big base that zaps entire systems out of existence, but can be destroyed with a few well-placed laser blasts? Not just a copy of the previous two Death Stars, but an even more ridiculous version of them.
(5) The awful fight between Kylo, Finn and Rey. An ex-stormtrooper with a lightsaber can hold his own against Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren. The one who was trained by Luke and Snoke. Who can freeze people, read their minds, stop blaster bolts in mid-flight. That guy. An ex-Stormtrooper fought a few rounds with him. And Rey, with zero Jedi training, can out-force-pull a lightsaber from him, and then beat him when she’s never before wielded a lightsaber in her life.
(6) A huge crack that appears exactly between Rey and Kylo just as she is about to kill him, which doesn’t swallow up either of them? How convenient. How crap.
(7) Captain Phasma and her ridiculous role in lowering the shields instead of fighting back or just simply dying for the cause.
(8) Kylo thrashing computer consoles when he’s pissed. If you think Anakin’s teen angst was bad, how can you excuse this nonsense?
(9) Starkiller base blows up the Republic, conveniently removing ALL meaningful opposition to the First Order except the puny Resistance, so that we can return to a Return of the Jedi state of the heroes being underdogs and on the run. That was the most lazy and cheap way to deal with the fact that the Rebels beat the Empire in the last movie.
(10) What the heck *is* the Resistance, anyway? Why do you need a “resistance” when you are on the side of the Republic? Why aren’t you part of the army of the Republic and hunting down the First Order as part of the established new peaceful system that was put in place after the fall of the Empire?
Despite all this, I enjoyed TFA. Not as much as Rogue One, and certainly nowhere as much as Empire Strikes Back, but still, I enjoyed it.
Nonetheless, there are huge, gaping, unbelievable plot holes. And they spoil the movie as a movie. It’s just a big love letter to hardcore fans, who understandably drooled from the start to the finish. But it’s not a great movie.
The Last Jedi, on the other hand, is so much better, as a movie:
(1) It doesn’t feel contrived. There wasn’t any big freaking killer weapon. There wasn’t any big freaking killer weapon with an insanely stupid weak spot that could be hit. There wasn’t any hero-saves-the-day-against-infinite-odds moment.
(2) The movie is funny but not at inappropriate moments. People who say that Luke would never “brush his shoulder off” are talking nonsense. How would you know? Have you spent the last ten years with an old Luke on that island, so you know what he would or would not do?
(3) The characters are believably fallible. They all make silly decisions sometimes. They give in to their fears and prejudices occasionally. They all want the best, but don’t always see eye to eye about how to get there.
(4) The movie is gripping and tense. I was genuinely surprised at the way the storyline could not be predicted. What you think was going to happen, didn’t, and what you didn’t predict, happened. And that, for me, was a plus. But I know a lot of hardcore fans were upset because they had “predicted” many things and hoped that they were right, and were proven dead wrong. The irony is that Johnson basically acknowledged that fact, by having Luke twice say that “everything in that sentence is wrong.” He was almost poking fun at the people who spent the last two years speculating the plot, and now they are mad at him for that.
(5) Rey is much more interesting now. She was rather bland in the first movie, which was basically a Han-Leia tribute film. This time, we see her grapple with moral issues, and which side of the Force does she stand on. She even confronts Luke himself over what she perceives as his moral failure.
(6) Kylo Ren, against my expectations, has somehow become a fun character now. I actually like him. I hated him in TFA, a whiny, bratty, self-absorbed kid with serious daddy issues. But now, they’ve gone into his motivations for joining the dark side, and shown him unwilling to go all the way with Snoke. He is still too far gone to be redeemed, much like Vader in Return of the Jedi, but you now see that he is not such a plain, one-note villain. That sets up a very interesting Episode 9, where Rey is a foe/rival/kindred spirit, a completely new dynamic never before seen, not even with Obi-Wan and Anakin.
(7) The customary cutesy crap is kept to an absolute minimum. No Jar Jar rubbish, no Ewoks. Just a few penguin-like creatures that don’t have much screen time.
(8) The First Order actually looks half decent. No repeat of the invasion of Hoth, where it was a proper Rebel base with clear defensive preparations in place. This time, rusting vehicles and insufficient time to properly dig in made for a completely one-sided battle, as expected. Not a single assault walker was taken out, which made sense.
(9) The unbelievable way Snoke’s huge-ass ship was taken down. It was spectacular and worth the admission price alone. It had been foreshadowed though – Rogue One already gave two different hints that something like this could happen (Vader’s Star Destroyer jumping in just as rebel ships were jumping out, leading to a couple of crashes; the hammerhead corvette being used to crash two Star Destroyers together, the first time an intentional capital ship collision was shown).
(10) The skilful way the Falcon’s save-the-day moment was done. The ship was kept out of mind and out of sight until the final battle, where it not only saved the day, but fittingly became the vessel upon which all the hopes of the Resistance were carried. It was a worthy tribute for the ship that started the entire saga, forty years ago.
(11) Laser bolts on starship shields. The shields on Leia’s cruiser absorbing laser blasts some distance away from the actual hull – beautiful.
(12) The death of Snoke. Great way to end a villain. So much better than the way Darth Maul, Count Dooku or even the Emperor died.
(13) The fight in Snoke’s throne room. Awesome and fantastic to watch. The only fight that looked better was Darth Maul vs Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon. Vader and Luke was iconic, important and the original thing, but really, not very impressive. Understandable though, since it was 1977-1983 standard of movie making. Anakin & Obiwan versus Dooku, over-the-top and ostentatious, Anakin vs Obiwan was just rubbish.
Let me say I can see where the fanboys got the most pissed, even if I don’t agree that they should be so upset about it:
(a) Luke, Luke and Luke. The hero in people’s minds, who was supposed to teach Rey to become a Jedi, who was supposed to come and save the day and kill/maim/kick the ass of Kylo Ren, was instead a tired, angry, conflicted, regretful man who threw his lightsaber away, abandoned his droid, ditched his X-Wing and called his weapon a “laser sword”. Honestly, I think that is completely believable. Plus, this is Luke thirty years later. People who want him to be Luke from Return of the Jedi, with just a bit more facial hair, don’t get the plot at all.
(b) Poe, Poe and Poe. He’s the best pilot in the Resistance and he gets demoted, grounded and proven dead wrong in his instincts. Fans are up in arms about that. So what? I thought he was cocky and arrogant in TFA, nice to see him brought down a level or two. I think he will be awesome in Episode 9, having gone through all that. And his fall from grace in the show actually made him more relatable – I was rooting for him much more in TLJ than in TFA, where he was just a hotshot in a fightercraft.
(c) Leia’s little superman act. Ok, I’ll give the fanboys this one. It was crap.
(d) Finn and Rose, the “useless side story” and “pointless mini love interest”. For people who wanted to see Finn and Rey kiss, they were pissed. For people who wanted to see Finn do something heroic and not get tased by a female mechanic, they were pissed. I just don’t see the fuss. And oh, their adventures were not useless or pointless. They were genuine attempts to save the fleet, though ultimately they were undone by betrayal. Those who don’t get that, should just go and watch looped clips of Luke and Vader fighting, and stop commenting on the new movies.
(e) Burning the ancient tree and the Jedi texts. Yeah, that got people upset. But really, why? I guess that’s what separates the casual fans from the hardcore fans – this kind of thing doesn’t bother us, it’s not like somebody dug up the graves of your ancestors, so I think some people need to chill a bit.
(f) Snoke dying. Again, why should that be upsetting? Hoping that he would be Palpatine V.2? Get over it, stop asking for rehashed characters from the earlier movies.
(g) No lightsaber duels, only a duel over a lightsaber. But really, after seven freaking movies, you still need to see more lightsaber duels? That’s sad. I enjoyed Rogue One thoroughly, no lightsabers in sight at all (not counting the Vader fan-service moment at the end). I thought the Last Jedi’s new take on the Praetorian guards was awesome, especially the thing that can grab lightsabers.
(h) Female characters strongly portrayed, male characters weakly portrayed. See earlier comments on this.
(i) No repeat of the Hoth speeder-vs-walker battle, even though it was teased in the trailers. Yeah, so it was a head-fake. But again, unless you are just hoping for Empire Strikes Back with new special effects, why can’t you appreciate the new battle for its merits? Loved the salt/sand colour thing, loved the intervention of the Falcon, loved that the door went down but the Resistance still “won” by escaping.
(j) The “slow-motion car chase”. Common complaint – why couldn’t the First Order jump to a location in the path of the fleeing Resistance ships and just cut them off? It’s actually not as silly as it sounds, if you bother to think about it. The First Order are also conserving fuel. They know that if the Resistance ships jump to lightspeed, they will be able to follow, so no worries there. The Resistance ships are lower on fuel, so it’s just a matter of time before they fall behind and enter the range of the big dreadnought cannons. There’s really no risk here. Technically, one or two First Order ships could have jumped ahead, but they chose not to, thinking that victory was assured and more or less on its way. That’s not as crazy as some people make it out to me. I think the “huge super weapon that can destroy entire planets but has a glaring weakness” is the dumber plot device, one which has been employed in so many previous Star Wars movies. I’m glad they went with this one instead, while not watertight, was at least novel and interesting.
(k) Finally, the biggie. Luke not actually turning up to fight Kylo, but only sending his hologram and then dying on the deserted planet. I thought that was a great scene, made the invulnerable Luke moment make sense, and was a great way to deal with all sorts of problems like how did Luke come back without the whole First Order fleet noticing, how did he get into the base, etc.
There’s actually a lot more I liked about the movie, but this post has gone on far too long. I’ll stop here. I need to get some sleep, and then maybe go watch the movie a second time.