Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

I actually got to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi on its premiere here where I live. At five in the afternoon on a Thursday though, the theater was half empty and there were almost no kids around. Interesting.

Anyway, I saw the movie. I think it was worth €9 for a ticket. There’s no need to see it twice though. I wouldn’t say that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was mind-blowing or anything like that. It was a good action flick with some drama and better dialogue than most other Star Wars films. There’s also a LOT going on in the movie, way more than all that was happening in the other films. It makes The Last Jedi actually a little bit hard to follow. The pacing is all over the place, but there’s some awesome battles and it looks really cool, so there’s that.

There’s plenty of drama, but also some nice, light hearted scenes. Some people might have thought it was too much, but it certainly didn’t bother me. After all, the original trilogy had a lot of lighter scenes and humor.

Mark Hamill though, fucking hell, he was really good. Best character in the movie.

So basically, if you’re a casual Star Wars fan or just a casual action movie goer, you’ll probably like the film, it has a nice bit of everything in it. Hard core Star Wars fans might not enjoy it so much.

Anyway, onto the plot and things like that.

SPOILERS START HERE.

LAST WARNING FOR THE SPOILERS

Okay, story-wise, it starts off pretty much where the Force Awakens left off. The Resistance is fleeing the First Order (who are apparently rich enough to conquer the entire galaxy with ease even after their not-Death Star blew up). The majority of the tension consists of the last few ships of the Resistance slowly being worn down by the First Order, as they’re low on fuel and have somehow been tracked while they were traveling at light speed. The pretty neat space scene in the opening is kinda ruined by how pointless and futile their escape was.

Meanwhile we have Rey trying to convince Luke to train her. He doesn’t want to. He wants to be left alone. Rey literally says “you have to train the jedi because the first order is bad”. She’s an annoying Mary Sue and continues to be a Mary Sue throughout the whole movie. Luke eventually caves, but refuses again when Rey pretty much almost blindly walks ‘into the dark side’. Somehow, during this time, Rey and Kylo Ren magically begin to have long distance telepathic chats. For some reason, Rey seems to believe a lot of what Kylo tells her.

Then it’s back to the Resistance on their ships. The First Order are still following them. It’s literally just a long death where everything seems hopeless. Finn and new person Rose embark on a journey to find a hacker who will help them disable the tracking device the First Order are using. A brief space battle ends with the bridge of the main ship being blasted out by minions after Kylo Ren hesitates to fire, and all the captains/generals/etc. die apart from Leia, who somehow uses the Force to pull herself back to the rest of the ship. It’s a good scene but what the fuck, Leia, why have you never done this stuff before? Would have worked way better if we’d had more of Leia using her powers, because as it stands, the scene felt out of character.

The entire time though, the Resistance’s plan is to run away, and nothing seems to be working. Every plan seems to fail and break and simply not work. Rey’s not managing to convince Luke.  Finn and Rose find a hacker but shocker, this super sketchy guy betrays them. Po, who is on the ship, is being a pain in the ass. Holdo, the new captain while Leia is recovering, is made out to be a jerk when in fact she’s trying to save them all. Somehow, the First Order is failing to destroy one ship.

So it’s back and forth again between the Resistance and its dwindling numbers trying to escape, and Rey. Rey’s decided that she can try and convince Kylo to turn back to the light. So she literally goes and gets captured. The scene between Kylo, Rey and the new Emperor-Palpatine-Esque Snoke is probably the tensest in the movie, but it’s actually really brief. Kylo and Snoke find out that the Resistance are fleeing on a bunch of small ships while the main Resistance ship is just bait.

Spoiler, Snoke dies. Kylo kills him, and, after a neat fight with Rey against Snoke’s guards, he wants to make Rey his apprentice so they can rule the galaxy together. But Rey doesn’t want to.

While everyone else is being useless, Holdo does something amazing, turns the Resistance’s last ship around, and jumps to light speed THROUGH the First Order’s ships so the Resistance can escape to a nearby planet. That was a fucking awesome scene.

Then we have a random ending showdown on a planet made of salt and ice, that’s basically the battle of Hoth except crappier. It’s yet more failure for the Resistance, yet somehow the First Order still hasn’t destroyed them all.

This is where Luke finally comes in and makes a stand. Except he doesn’t. It’s just the final fight between Vader and Obi Wan. It’s a good fight, it really nicely cleans up and closes Luke’s story, and the Resistance, what’s left of it, can escape, but it’s short and sad. We did get to see how powerful Luke Skywalker actually is, because in the extended universe stuff he’s supposed to be immensely powerful but it wasn’t enough at all.

So yeah, basically, all that’s left of the Resistance is in the Millennium Falcon. While the First Order continues what it’s doing with Kylo Ren at the helm.

At the end of it all, it feels like nothing has really changed for the better, and everything was kinda pointless. Most of the film was just running away. And the most pointless thing of all was Rey’s ‘training’.

Seriously, she’s a fucking huge Mary Sue. She’s so fucking powerful, and apart from naivety, she has almost no flaws. And Rey’s had no training. Nothing ever seems to happen to her. We’ll be stuck with Rey and her endless fluke of powers for a long time, sadly.

But yeah. There was too much failure. There was no real sense of victory, just an escape. It just needed something more, something showing a slightly bigger Resistance victory and a more real First Order defeat.

I mean, The Last Jedi is still a really good action film, but you’re kinda left feeling hungry, even after two and a bit hours of movie.