The Dreadful “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2018) is Bad Enough to Kill the Franchise
4/10
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2018) is stunningly bad. It’s the worst outing in the Star Wars franchise, and the race to the bottom isn’t even close.
What exactly is so bad? Let’s start at the very beginning, with the opening crawl. We are told that the evil First Order has exposed the Resistance, and the rebels are amidst a desperate escape from their base. If this story sounds awfully familiar, that’s because you’ve seen it at the beginning of “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1980). And this isn’t the only deja vu moment you’ll have.
The previous installment, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” was criticized for a plot that resembled too much of the original “Star Wars” (1977), but at least “The Force Awakens” had a sense of parallelism. In “The Last Jedi,” there is only a stench of unoriginality. Not only does the film liberally borrow storylines from its predecessors, it also lifts many lines verbatim. No, the most famous line “I am your father” does not appear, but I suspect it’s only because the movie couldn’t find a way to force it in. I was appalled by this film’s relentless, shameless bastardization of the classic trilogy.
The redo may have been forgivable if it was at least done well, but director Rian Johnson’s approach in the “The Last Jedi” can only be categorized as the Michael Bay version of Star Wars. Random characters appear with little set-up before they quickly die off in the next series of explosions. There are no battle sequences with any sense of care in the visuals or art in the CGI. There are simply bombs, explosions and gunfire (but shockingly little lightsaber), with the result that everything gets destroyed. In one scene, First Order’s General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) orders his gunmen to stop firing by yelling “That’s enough,” which perfectly summarized my sentiments about every battle scene in this film.
But at least Michael Bay films have the courtesy to keep the explosions going endlessly so the audience’s brains never have the opportunity to function. The most inexplicable thing about “The Last Jedi” is that it simply grounds to a halt for about a third of the movie, at which point it becomes quite a bore.
During most of “The Last Jedi,” there are two storylines that really never come together–one involving the rebels led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) trying to outrun the First Order, and the other with Rey (Daisey Ridley) trying to convince the last Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), to return and join the Resistance. About half way into the film, the former story breaks off into another storyline involving stormtrooper-turned-Resistance-fighter Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) searching for a codebreaker in a casino colony. This unnecessary detour could have been cut to spare the audience the 152 minute running time, but at least the scenes involving the Resistance contain some action.
The same can’t be said for the scenes involving Rey, who engages in lots of dialogue with very little payoff. She talks with Luke, who babbles on about the history of the island they’re on and blather about why the Jedi must end. At the same time, Rey is chatting it up intergalactically with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) of the First Order, sharing how she’s always felt lost and how she hasn’t found the answers on the island with Luke. So much time is dedicated to all this talking, yet none of this is particularly revealing, deep or relevant to most of the plot. Away from the action, Luke and Rey waste their and our time away as the Resistance fades away.
The screenplay of the “The Last Jedi” is a mess, relying on maddening plot devices to drive the story forward and coincidences to fill in continuity errors. This script takes the always-snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory approach to storytelling. All anyone in the Resistance can talk about is having Hope, and every time it appears that the faith in Hope is going to be rewarded, the worst thing imaginable occurs to push the Resistance even further down despair. But it’s not like the Resistance has no luck: when Finn and Rose need to escape the casino colony or Rey looks to reunite with the Resistance, these things just conveniently happen.
When’s it coming out on digital streaming/DVD?
I have no interest in watching a new director take a giant dump on a legendary canon in a selfish attempt to make it his own only one time for $20 when I can own it and watch it forever on repeat for the same price.
A reboot is a reboot; it barely deserves the respect you gave it by writing such a detailed review, mainly because everyone already has their opinions on it already. That’s likely why this movie was such a huge success; the fan boys love having ANY re-envisioning shoved down their throats while real movie critics are looking to watch, at the very least, a well made film and instead get swept up onto the bandwagon by the hype like rush hour in a train station.
Karma Sai,
I love how you have an even lower opinion of this garbage than me… But I had to write a detailed review because, well, talking a lot is sorta what I do.
One thing I disagree with, though, is that I think this movie was a success because there were people who actually liked it.
I found this blog to be outrageous and frankly completely and totally wrong.
For a start, Force Awakens was a crappy remake of New Hope, this is true. Last Jedi however broke through and transcended the remake issue. Yes, it echoed both Empire and Jedi, but Kylo Ren made the point perfectly clear – it is time to put history aside. There were a series of double fakes inserted to undermine and eventually dispose of the echoing trend in Star Wars that you appear to have slept completely through.
The “I Am Your Father” key moment of Empire was echoed and twisted when Kylo revealed to Rey “Your Parents Were Nobody In Particular”.
Oh yeah, spoiler alert…
Then when they killed Snoke, and as Rey became self aware, and the final shot of the movie – the theme was very much of putting the old trilogy to bed. No more Skywalkers, no more repetition. Not even clear light vs dark (Rey showed us she has Dark and Kylo has light, both are far more intersting and nuanced characters than the one dimensional characters of the original trilogy). The movie gave the saga what it hasn’t had since 1976: fresh slate to look forward to new stories and episodes. Which is great to me, because I love it when they expand the universe like Rogue One did.
Yes, there were some let downs – the whole storyline around Fin was a disappointment – I like him and they could do far more interesting things with his character. Poe also. And Mary Poppins – but the Kylo Ren world got a lot better.
And Mark Hamil can act! Five words I never imagined I would write.
I find it amazing how wrong you are on this. You are welcome for the correction.
@Simon. Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.
(Sorry for the joke. I had to do it.)
Anon,
You don`t have to take it back. Just follow through on your initial response.
Every word of what Simon said was wrong, other than about the movie lacking any subtlety (which, incidentally, was probably not the point he was trying to make, but I am witty enough to use it against him)
Thanks for visiting.
Joe
Simon,
I find your comment to be outrageous.
Force Awakens was a JJ Abrams masterpiece done with taste and class. It`s obscene that you mock it.
Since your comment is utterly, entirely, completely and fully without merit on its face, I don`t think I need to spend another millisecond responding to even a syllable.
You are right about one thing, though: the Last Jedi did make things perfectly clear, being that it was a Michael Bay production that beats your head into submission with no subtlety.
Sincerely yours,
Joe
Check out Mark Hamil’s Joker. He’s an amazing voice actor. Seeing as he was only 25 when he did the first Star Wars, it was obvious he would have a stunningly vibrant career, so long as he didn’t get type cast, and that didn’t happen via voice acting and not coming back to the silver screen until his baby face disappeared.
I agree. Plus, I always thought that having the ability to use the Force would have been an advantage for Mark, competing for acting roles…
People overplay the “legendary canon” thing too much. It lacks self awareness.
The original Star Wars movies were great, but they have the mythical status they have with Gen X because we watched these movies as awestruck 7 year olds, and that’s really too high a bar for any movie to live up to for an adult audience.
Being a dumbstruck seven year old lets you ignore the teddy bear costumes, the “your worshipfulness” Lucas dialogue, and a rubber puppet Miss Piggy teaching Luke the Force, and makes it all perfect.
The original movies were great, and fun to watch. And as my son taught me watching as a seven year old, so were the prequels, so was Rogue One, and so was Force Awakens and Last Jedi. This was a spectacular, fun, flawed movie – just like the originals were.
I’m not beyond admitting that you can have bad spinoffs. Even as a nine year old, I remember sitting in a movie watching the Caravan of Courage thinking “what in the holy mother of blue milk is this?”
But Last Jedi is NOT a Christmas Special, and it is not an Ewok spinoff. It’s a spectacular fun movie, and the effects and action lend themselves to enjoyment on the big screen. If that’s not your bag, you should be able to download it to your smartphone before too long, when I will enjoy watching it one more time.