Not My Jedi? – The Last Jedi Review

What’s this? Nick doing a Real People Stuff review? MERRY CHRISTMAS! Not only am I doing a RPS article but its on a topic very near and dear to my heart and that is The Last Jedi. For those of you that are living under a rock the newest Star Wars film came out a bit ago and I’m hoping most of you have seen it already as this is really just kind of throwing out thoughts of the show and assessing the deviations of Episode 8 from Episode 7. If you haven’t seen this fun movie yet, then leave a like and comment/subscribe and then come back later.

Spoilers Now!

So lets go onto the pros of this show that I really enjoyed. The space battle concept was rather good, if poorly executed. We start out and see an amazing fight that was started by an overtly comical and just stupid moment with Po literally trolling the commanding officer of this massive fleet moving to destroy the latest rebellion base. The battle kicks up when the massive capital ship is then crippled by Po in a brilliant show of fighter ace flying but is then proven to be roughly an idiot much like General Hux when he sacrifices every bomber the rebellion fleet has (mostly due to terrible design of the bombers). We then have the fleet escape and the movie begin proper. Then we have the most awkward attempt to maintain “tension” and a sense of “urgency” which is the few capital ships of the rebellion fleet escaping at sublight speed from the New Order. This comes off as impressive to me as my scale of ships is skewed by 40k where you have a 5 mile long battle ship that fires cannon shells the size of a skyscraper and fight with dozens and dozens of ships so the fact that the action parts are amazing is high praise.

Another component I enjoyed was the send off for Vice Admiral Holdo, making what is to us a logical maneuver but evidently a very solid thought process to sacrifice herself by using the final jump into Snoke’s ship. The moment and its entire set up was quite well done and we are just really shown well done damage. On the note of sacrifice is Luke, who in line with trolling the New Order (and Rey with the lightsaber), appears as if he was this singular individual who could hold off the firepower of an entire army. The scene with him dodging and bobbing and weaving was impressive as was his amended speech mirroring Obi Wan. Even the way they set up the discussions with Rey and Kylo were just rather well done from a narrative point of view and I couldn’t not feel there was a little something something there and if they make this a love story then I may just forgive some of these other issues I have with the film.

So lets go into a couple of things I have issue with. Let’s have me preface this with the statement that even though I’m going to list this rather critically I did enjoy this movie. With that in mind let the tirade begin. This movie was not perfect. It was better than 7 but beyond that it went off on a tangent a couple times, had entire planets and plot points that made no sense and were completely superfluous. The worst one would have to be what a co-worker of mine coined as “The Mary Poppins Cameo.”

Besides that we had planet Monte Carlo which accomplished literally nothing as well as a character that was indicated as an amazing fether of a code breaker, an individual singular in skill and knowledge was to be found and recruited in order to circumvent Snoke’s defenses and stop the New Order from destroying the rebellion fleet. Does this man come to their rescue? Does the wild run around get them some sort of plot advancement? No, we have Fin and a new token Asian girl (who may be the counter romance to Fin should Rey and Kylo get together) taken into prison, where they find Benicio del Toro with a stutter whom in a complete showing of Deus Ex Machina has the skills they need to break into Snoke’s ship. This entire section along with the other seemingly random plot points leaves me thinking that they had made certain scenes in mind then forced whatever events that would manipulate the movie in that direction.

This aside, I also disliked things like the lack of light saber fights and enjoyed deviations such as the kamikaze strike and the death of Snoke. All in all it was a great movie that entertained me even though it seemed like a strange combination of Disneyfication and counterpointing The Force Awakens. Magical Disney Princess moments? Check. Adorable borderline sentient animal companions? Check. Who is Snoke? Who cares, he’s dead. Who are Rey’s parents? No one important. Kylo’s mask? They even spend the first 15 minutes literally and metaphorically destroying his image as Darth Millennial. However all of the effects and acting were great and Star Wars tier, even if the intent and reason behind it was a bit pants on head. Did you also find this a good movie? Or do you think it should be stricken from the record and disregarded as cannon? Let me know in a comment and please don’t forget to subscribe and like, because not subscribing, the path to the Dark Side is.