"Let the past die."

This is not going to go the way you think!

Luke Skywalker, The Last Jedi

(Nota bene: There are some spoilers in this posting.  Some people might consider them to be large spoilers, but from a certain point of view*, they're actually quite small.  Regardless, they are spoilers.)

So, at last**, my comments on The Last Jedi. 

It was okay.

For a Star Wars movie, that's an epic condemnation. This is one of the longest running and certainly the most profitable franchises in the history of franchises - in fact, you can almost consider it to BE the history of franchises - and as such, the expectation is that it will entertain, astonish, and touch the audience.

Which it does, from time to time. Sadly, it also confused and irritated, which is not a good combination for any movie.

To be fair, there were parts of this movie that I loved. It's full of excellent performances and great bits of sly humour, much of which comes from Luke Skywalker.

I was unexpectedly touched to see Luke return to the story. It’s been 34 years since Mark Hamill last played this part, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of the naïve farm boy from Tatooine remained in his performance, and disappointed to discover that he's unlikely to appear in the next film.  It would have been gratifying to see Luke's character develop based on his experience in this episode, perhaps finally fulfilling his destiny and bringing balance to the Force.

In his absence, there are other candidates for the role of redeemer. The Force-powered long-distance relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey was brilliant, and the chemistry that builds between the two characters bodes well for the conclusion to the trilogy.  Kylo Ren is one of the better parts of the movie: the character showed unexpected depth, and in some ways I'm finding his story to be more interesting than Rey's. And, yes, the question of Rey's background is answered, in a fashion that perfectly matches the theme of this movie and sets the character free.

In fact, that's the most unexpected thing that this film does: it deliberately cuts ties to the past.  As characters from the other movies become fewer and fewer***, we are presented with a story that, as Luke says, will not go the way that we think.

However, the good parts of The Last Jedi are strongly overshadowed by the flaws, large and small.

The plot has a terrible Rosebud**** error, where a character has knowledge that he is explicitly unable to have based on the timeline of the film, and a pointless subplot regarding an authority struggle in the Resistance that seems to take place only for the purposes of conflict between characters.  People have done their best to explain these problems, but really, if your plot points need defending after the event, something has gone a bit wrong with your story.

Similarly, the Canto Bight sequence has been strenuously debated after the fact. I appreciated the points being made in the segment, but let's be honest, it did nothing to advance the plot - if anything, it took up time that could have been better spent elsewhere, perhaps with Luke and Rey.

 

There are also a lot of little problems, things that don't quite work:  Maz Kanata's odd cameo (who IS holding the camera for that?); the sudden discovery that light speed vehicles can be a weapon, Phasma's wasted potential as a character; Snoke's back story; people flipping over between shots; and a score of other flaws and missed opportunities.

And, last and least, the blatant children's-toy-marketability of the porgs was almost insulting.  Ewoks were bad enough, Jar Jar Binks is legendary for the negative fan response that he received, but porgs were such obvious product placement that they might as well have been drinking Coke™.

Large and important things happen in The Last Jedi, and it beautifully sets up the question of what will happen next.  And it's already made well over a billion dollars - $127 billion at the time I'm typing this, a huge success by any standard.  I just wish that I'd liked it more.

  - Sid

*  Did everyone see what I did there?  If not, Google away, it's an Obi-Wan Kenobi joke.

** https://theinfiniterevolution.blogspot.ca/2016/03/is-it-okay-to-call-you-bill.html

*** With that in mind, I was surprised that they didn't take advantage of a clear opportunity to remove Leia from the story.  Shooting for The Last Jedi had finished several months before Carrie Fisher's death at the end of 2016, but post-production on the film didn't finish until September of this year.  That would have given them lots of time to do a minor rewrite, one that would have actually made a lot of sense, building on the events of The Force Awakens to further establish Kylo's desire to turn his back on the past and be his own person. It's admirable that instead of taking the easy way out, the producers decided to leave Ms. Fisher's last performance untouched.

**** In case you're not a movie scholar, in the film Citizen Kane, a reporter spends the entire film trying to determine the significance of Kane's final word:  "Rosebud".  Unfortunately, he dies alone, and as such, no one would know what he said.  Various people have tried to explain this in various ways over the years - and various people are trying to explain the flaw in The Last Jedi in a similar fashion.