Star Wars: The Last Review

So during the closing credits, Ron’s first comment about Star Wars: Last Jedi was, “Why are they listing Carrie Fisher?  She wasn’t in the movie.”  I had to think about that for a moment, “Ron, they finished shooting her scenes before she died.”  He had a quick burst of insight after that and acknowledged it.  I pressed further, “Did you think she was CGI for the whole film?”  Ron must have been damn impressed with the computer graphic’s animated acting.  I almost hated to spoil it for him. 

If you’ve somehow been immune to the marketing, your kids, or the forced march of nostalgia making you go to this movie, I have no qualms about spoiling it for you.  It’s a bunch of scenes from the previous Star Wars movies put in a blender.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t come out as a delicious smoothie, more like chunky vomit, where you can still identify the last meal in question in a pool of foul miasma.  I knew this movie was in trouble when my friends Ron and Mike, who like just about everything, were somewhat apathetic after having seen it.  People in my audience were heckling it.  I wasn’t mad at them; I was half-tempted to join in.  I can’t understand it.  Every review of this movie, professional and fan, loved this movie before it was released.  Hmmm.    

I’m not even angry.  (If I’d paid for the tickets, this might be a different story.)  I’m more appalled and saddened by the pure waste of this movie’s existence.  It wasted the time and money of everyone in the theater.  It wasted the Star Wars mythos worse than bad Internet fan-fiction.  It wasted the immense effort of everyone involved in the production.  Finally, while it’s going to make money, the studio wasted a whole lot of money to make what they going to consider to be a paltry profit on the movie itself.  They could have likely slashed the budget and made the same amount on it just because the movie has the words “Star Wars” in the title.  Now the merchandising and tie-ins and such, that’s the real money.  I can discern no creative impetus that mandated this movie be made apart from that.               

Unlike my review of The Force Awakens, there’s not going to be an accompanying piece where I explain how this could have been a better movie.  The only way this movie could have been better would have been if everyone in the charge of the production was fired and it was handed over to Marvel, who at least know how to make an entertaining movie.  I can see it now, a fleet of Star Destroyers and yet another Death Star fight Galactus.  (If Marvel does actually own the rights to him.)   And then the Guardians of Galaxy show up to save the day!  (Rocket: “You losers take a back seat.  The real heroes are here now!”)

Everyone questions the plot logic of this movie.  Surely this flaw was apparent from just reading the script.  The Prequel Trilogy actually had a better plot!  Why didn’t somebody in charge, who presumably had to okay this, throw it back at the writers and tell them to go back to the keyboard and come back with a decent story?  (It’s probably too late to get actual worthwhile characters for this series.)  There must have been some powerful forces at work that pushed this turd out.  Time itself might have been the biggest motivator.  These films are on a tight schedule and there’s only so much time for the writing.  Again, since there’s clearly no creative spark in this trilogy’s storytelling, the writers are just hitting plot points, tossing in some personal agenda, and introducing new toys for merchandising.  After big budget battles and effects are shot, there’s not much changing them.  (Not to mention, a main character actually passed away in real life.)  I suspect socio-political forces were at work too and some people in charge were not allowed to say “No,” to certain people making the movie. 

Was there really a “rebellion” going on in this movie?  They started off with four or five ships in the beginning and ended up with just enough people with make it a little crowded on the Millennium Falcon.  I’ve seen bigger protests with a bunch of snowflakes over a Milo Yiannopoulos speech.  The rebellion in the Original Trilogy was an actual credible threat.  The Empire should just be laughing at this rebellion and telling them to do their worst.  Their poor use of military resources to put down this minor uprising is actually a strike against them being allowed to run the galaxy.  (Meh.  It’s not like any of the other big governments of this series have done any better in that department.)

Why was Leia mad at Poe for wiping out their bomber force (all five or six of them)?  They basically had nothing to fight with anyway, may as well go out in a blaze of glory.  (And those bombers were so slow and big, they may as well have had bulls-eyes painted on them.  Even Imperial pilots could shoot them down.  And were they really “dropping” bombs in zero-g outer space?)  Poe seemed to be getting schooled a lot in this film, but I didn’t see anybody else in leadership displaying much in the way of brains or courage.  (They did have heart, so a trip to see the Wizard wasn’t necessary.)    

I kind of appreciate the limited scale of the space conflict.  The Prequels went way overboard in their fight scenes.  You couldn’t really follow what was going on.  The Original Trilogy probably had the right balance of action and scale.  Of course, this one went too far in the minimalism.  (Hey, maybe they actually did cut corners in production to save money.)  There’s that great scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when the company of elves shows up to help defend Helms Deep.  Peter Jackson’s commentary said they’d done too good a job in showing how hopeless the defense was.  He had to put in the elves to make the fight scene more believable.  If the producers of The Last Jedi were trying to make a point with this absurdly puny level of resistance, I don’t know what it was.  Maybe the next film will pay this off (or give us Ewoks and another Death Star).           

 Mike summed up his review with, “Its Empire meets Battlestar Galactica.”  This was cinema’s slowest chase scene with a handful of ships being chased by an enemy fleet over the course of two hours.  This led to one of the dumbest, logic-jumping schemes ever: “Let’s take out their tracker so we can escape. But first, we have to go to Space Monte Carlo to pass judgment on the rich Disney executives partying there . . . err I mean evil weapon dealers.  Then we need to have a morally grey philosophical discussion with a mercenary.  Finally, we’ll sneak aboard the giant Imperial ship and get caught.  Any questions?  Yes, Poe.”  “Should I mutiny in the meantime to support this hair-brained plan?”  “You bet.  Yes, Laura Dern.”  “Should I blow up our last ship and myself to atone my equally stupid plan that I didn’t tell anybody about, thus leading to this scheme.”  “Sounds like a winner.   Don’t worry, we’ll somehow make it off the exploding Imperial ship to rejoin what’s left of this rebellion.  Okay, good meeting everyone.” 

My biggest complaint: Rey should have said “Yes” to Kylo.  Realistically, she could have had way more positive influence over the Kylo’s new empire, than continuing with this “rebellion.”  Also, it would have been so romantic.  Why did he want her anyway?  She looked even worse in this film than the last.  He’s no prize either.  During the temptation scene, I swear he looked just like Ross from Friends.  (Then an irate Rachel shows up, “This is what you call ‘Being on a break?’ offering your empire to this unattractive space hussy!”)  And could Poe now be interested in her too?  Amazing, it only took nearly two whole films for these two main characters to finally meet.  That’s some great storytelling there.  And her parents were “nobodies.”  Mystery solved.  I hope nobody lost any sleep trying to figure that one out.  Further, is it really necessary for every other person in the film to have an English accent?  It’s like Space Downton Abbey.  (Ooh, that’s good.  I’ll start banging out that script right after this.)         

Was there anything I liked in this movie?  Puppet Yoda.  Thank goodness the real Yoda finally showed up.  (Granted he was a bit demented.  I don’t think I’d want to seek wisdom from him at this point.)  Cranky, bad-ass old man Luke was fun.  His “Three Lessons” were the only real tension in the movie as they were rolled out.  The preachy fat Asian girl did kind of redeem herself in the end when she made her move on Finn.  Some of the little one-liners in the movie were pretty good.  They were just badly delivered and out-of-place.  The Original Trilogy always had a bit of a wink and nod to it.  The other movies have been too serious.  Oddly, Rogue One is the only other Star Wars movie that had some sense of humor thanks to that sarcastic robot.    

At least there was more Poe Dameron in this movie, more or less acknowledging he should have been a main character in the first film.  Him and Kylo seemed to be the only characters with any real free agency and growth in this series.  These two characters make hard decisions and have to live with the consequences and learn from them, like what nut-bar Yoda said.  Of course all of the rebels take a backseat to the real hero of the story, BB-8, who was constantly saving their butts when they screwed up.

Much like the writers of this movie would apparently like to burn all religious books (great idea, let’s start with the Koran, let me know how that works out), I’d like burn all the copies of this film and pretend it never happened and spare anyone else from seeing it.  I know it’s probably too late to do anything about the next film.  The rails have already been laid.  I really hope Disney stops after that before we all get burned out on bad Star Wars.  It’s okay to commit to another trilogy after this, but don’t do it until you’ve put somebody in charge who has a real story that they’re desperate to tell.  No more fanboy caretakers of the franchise with good resumes.  The story of the making of Star Wars began one borderline obsessed individual with a vision.  Go back to that.