Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Was: The Last Jedi

Finally saw this! I was very excited and had high expectations for it. Before the viewing, I tried very hard to avoid all promo and potentially spoiler-ish material. It worked. I came in the movie without a single idea on what to expect.

Well, what I am going to be say is going to very much all spoilers! So proceed with caution.

As you may recall, we learned about Supreme Leader Snoke last movie. Still, it was a little surprising to read in the opening crawl that the New Republic has been decimated and that the Resistance is all that’s left fighting!

Just to be clear - this movie is supposed to happen immediately after the end of the previous movie. The last movie’s opening crawl was talking about the First Order rising from the ashes of the Empire and The Resistance has the support of the New Republic. Things sure changed fast after that one attack from the Starkiller Base.

Apparently! This attack wiped out the entire government and essentially all of the New Republic Navy since they have been voluntarily demilitarizing. Such a sensible thing to do in the face of a new Imperial force. How would find out about this background without resorting to wookiepedia? Beats me.

Gimmicky problem 1 - hyperspace tracking. Brand new tech that allows the First Order to track the escaping Resistance ships. Why does the Empire always have better techs?! How does Resistance even know for sure this is the reason they are being pursued? (Seems like an insider/spy is far more likely)

Since we have this new tech to deal with, the entire movie has been reduced to a realspace chase where the empire’s capital ship can’t quite catch up the smaller Resistance ships, so they just keep following even though there are so many other ships in the empire’s armada! And this gives the rebels (sorry, resistance fighters) to come up with a plan to hyperspace away to a casino and hire a code breaker (Star Wars vernacular would be slicer) and come back to hack the empire.

Now, this is kinda a cool plan. But, it did NOTHING. Fin and Rose made this trip, which took over 30 mins movie time, and it might as well not happened. It did nothing to the empire. It did nothing to Fin and Rose (they got back to the resistance just in time). It did nothing to the slicer guy. The only outcome is that Captain Phasma might be dead.

Oh, and here is another fun fact (Gimmicky problem 2). The whole reason the Resistance is escaping is to find a place where they can send out a strong enough signal to get help. In the mean time, Poe and Fin are talking with Maz Kanata and flying out to a casino in the outer rim! Seriously? They couldn’t send out a scout ship to ask for help?

PoorCommunicationKills, why in the name of the ever living force would Vice Admiral Holdo NOT tell Poe, a hero just a few days ago and a high ranking officer, that there IS a plan!

Gimmicky problem 3 - If it’s so easy for ONE person to ram another capital ship by jumping to hyperspace in its direction and complete destroy it. Why is this NOT a normal tactic for those in a desperate situation? Why is there no defense against it!?

Oh hey, I haven’t even started on the Rey side quest yet!

My biggest gripe is about the events around Luke and Kylo. Luke, who wouldn’t even strike down Darth Vader while under the manipulation of Darth Sidious, is jumping to conclusion and ready to kill Kylo while he sleeps? Then, after that happened, he didn’t try to do anything to “fix” it, but rather immediately choose to become a hermit? Then, after he decided to help after Rey left, the only action he took is a force projection that led to his death? This seems like such a waste in term of story telling.

Speaking of waste - the way Supreme Leader Snoke died is quite a let down. While I usually appreciate surprises, what a waste to build up a mysterious big baddie and then kill him with what amounted to a “misfire”.

The best part of the movie is Rey and her interactions with Kylo. In this movie, a lot pointless things happened, but at least the story is lined up in a direction that makes me look forward to the next one. Just without a living Luke (I’m sure he will appear as a force ghost! Hopefully he will haunt Kylo for a while)