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Star Wars: The Last Jedi

OK. Finally saw it. Not prequel bad, but I really wanted to believe the whole bit of that the fanboys were enraged and the story was awesome. Upthread people mentioned being disappointed that the Republic was on the verge of being wiped out and the Empire was back just like that without any explanation. That's pretty much everything in the movie. One deus ex machina device after another.

Somehow the Empire has found them and they only just escape but jump somewhere without enough fuel to go anywhere because...reasons. And the Empire has a magic tracking device that the forgettable ginger General Huggy was apparently very clever about. The way they set it up, I was expecting a spy or traitor but no. Apparently just Magic Technology. They had Geordie reconfigure the deflector array or something. But hey, the new security guard can defuse it because...apparently that's what security guards do? Only they can't because it's impossible to get on the ship undetected. And in spite of all the other powers the Empire has and they can just nail rebel ships like skittles, their ships are slow as shit--but have bigger gas tanks. Happily they for all their firepower and gadgets, they aren't able to jam an interstellar Skype call that somehow is happening in the middle of a gunfight...for some reason. Or notice that one of the ships has buggered off to the Casino Planet where all kinds of 1990s OT remastered whackiness happens. And then they don't meet the hacker they need but a master thief who stutters just happens to be hanging around the jail when they show up. And he somehow knows about Rear Admiral Purple Hair's--who in spite of military rank is, for some reason an old chick in a ball gown--plan. She spends the whole movie seeming useless just so we can find out SURPRISE! she was competent all along. She's just crap at explaining what she's doing or leading people. Then CGI whacky foxes!

All in all, it's like they took the remastered Empire and Jedi, stuck them in a blender with the jailbreak from Star Wars and a few other random things and even the old '70s Battlestar Galactica and tried to stuff it all unsuccessfully into a 2 hour running time. There was a decent premise but it gets lost in so much stuff just randomly happening.

I didn't hate it the way I hated the prequels, but it wasn't on the level with the 1977 movie either.
 
Oh, yeah, and they spent the last film building Snoke up to be some super badass and all this film having him mug the ROTJ Emperor bit and do phenomenally powerful things only to quickly kill him out of hand. Then after Ben Ren Solo Kylo teams up with Mary Sue who, instead of having to spend 1/3 of the movie carrying Luke around in a backpack, doing flips and standing on her head, apparently took the Jedi correspondence course in 3 easy lessons--but I digress--he just turns back, apparently. Shit, the more I think about this movie the more disappointing I find it.
 
It was just full of Mary Sue/Marty Stu/Shit Stew. Fuck the whole thing right through the floorboards and into the fruit cellar where ol' Henrietta Knowby can have a go at it.
 
I watched it again and wanted to make a post but I feel like the post will end up being too long because I keep thinking about all the internet discussion about the movie. It's weird how much that blew up. People seemed to get really angry (and not just people who hated it, people who loved it too) about stuff that wasn't actually in the movie or wasn't actually a big deal? I don't get people talking about how it ruined Luke and it being the end of the Jedi, like did they not watch the last ten minutes of the movie when he realised he was wrong for being a dick and literally said "I AM NOT THE LAST JEDI"? Surely everyone at least thought he got a better story than Han in TFA (which I rewatched before this) who apparently went back to smuggling in his seventies then died on a bridge in an overly telegraphed way? I do understand being annoyed a bit by who Snoke ended up because I kind of felt that way too. Not that I had high hopes for him based on TFA but we could have gotten some more context for him here and he could have done...something. I know the point is that the story's about Kylo and not him, but Star Wars has managed to make secondary villains fun before (LIKE GENERAL GRIEVOUS.)

And the thing about Rey's parents being nobody...why are people angry at that? Why do people think that TFA built up Rey's parents to be something special? It didn't! At all! I just watched it and there's really nothing in there to say her parents are anyone cool. The story with her parents is that Rey is waiting for them to come back for her. She dosn't want to leave Jakku because she thinks they'll come back. But she gets over it after the scene with Maz. Maz literally says to her "you know in your heart that your parents are behind you...but there is someone ahead of you" (meaning Luke) and you get the hint that Rey knows this is true. Then Rey goes to Luke at the end indicating that she's given up waiting for them. So where do people get that her parents are Obi-Wan and Sy Snootles or whatever? Is it because Leia hugged her and ignored Chewie? That was just bad writing! Not a clue!

THE FLIPSIDE OF THIS THOUGH is that TLJ makes a big deal out of Rey still thinking her parents are great when really I feel that was already kind of resolved in TFA? I think it's because there really isn't much to Rey's character in TFA other than the thing with her parents, so TLJ has to use that to give her a character arc. I mean the part in the cave is very cool and arty but when Kylo tells her about her parents being nobodies Rey kind of already knew so it doesn't come across as that much of a big deal or change her as a character? AND THAT IS REALLY MY BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS MOVIE: Rey's character. It's a movie that goes deeper with the characters than any other Star Wars movie, yet really she doesn't feel any different at the end than at the start. Like her stuff with Luke feels like it goes on a bit too long and in the end his dead puppet friend has to show up to talk sense into him, so Rey doesn't really achieve anything there. She kind of helps Kylo kill Snoke but then Kylo takes over and just does everything Snoke would have done anyway, so it doesn't feel like Snoke being dead makes things any better or worse. It's weird that she doesn't talk to Luke again in the last hour of the movie. She doesn't really feel like the main character by the end and i think that's a problem because she's surely supposed to be the main charater by now. Compare to how Luke feels at the end of TESB. He's gone through some shit. It feels like he's grown up. I don't feel like just lifting some rocks makes it feel like Rey's a proper Jedi now or anything.

(I don't know how anyone can call her a Mary Sue in this movie either though since lifting some rocks is really the only useful thing she ends up doing.)

And I still don't like the Rose/Finn stuff very much, the resolution with her stopping him from sacrificing himself still feels bizarre, I don't buy that they're in love now. I feel like Rian Johnson isn't that great at doing the "fun romp" part of Star Wars and that's a problem for me because I like the fun rompness of Star Wars. I like the pulpliness, the weird new aliens and starships and planets and crazy long action scenes that don't even necessarily have anything to do with the plot. I feel like the movie is lacking this side of Star wars.

I don't really like how small the conflict between the Rebels and the First Order feels. Do the First Order have other ships besides the ones they were chasing the Rebels with? It would have been nice to maybe see the First Order spreading over the galaxy and taking control. I hope we get that in Episode 9.

And there's literally no reason Holdo couldn't have said "we have cloaking devices and are going to Crait" to Poe to stop a lot of bother.

BUT YEAH there's still a lot of good stuff here: Mark Hamill is great, Luke has a great arc, Carrie Fisher is a lot better here than in TFA, there's some beautiful shots, there's some arty stuff that you wouldn't normally see in Star Wars but feels like something out of the Clone Wars/Rebels animated series so it's good to see the live action series expanding in that way, the opening space battle is good at showing the horrors of war (after the awkward "Poe trying to be Starlord" bit ends anyway), and it tries to do something different instead of just saying "remember Star Wars!?" like TFA did. So it is good but i still have reaonsable problems which I've thought about and aren't based on unrealistic expectations okay.
 
Two points:

A) I don't think the relationship between Finn and Rose is ever supposed to be anything close to them in love. She kisses him because she cares for him and obviously has a crush on him, but he never reciprocates and never treats her as anything more than a friend. When he's kissed by her he just acts surprised, and doesn't really return the kiss.

B) Holdo kept the plan secret because she knew if it got out then it would result in a lot of deaths, and Poe had literally just been demoted for not being trustworthy. She was right to do so, because as soon as Poe finds out about the plan he blabs about it to Finn over an open comm channel, which gets overheard by DJ and so results in a lot of deaths.
 
Well when Rey's watching Finn sit at Rose's bedside at the end it certainly seems like she's thinking there's something between them and it's setting up a possible love triangle thing for the next movie.

I think Poe talked to Finn about how she was feuling the transport, but that was before he knew about the cloaking devices? Because I remember being confused when the First Order guy says something about "scanning for cloaking devices" when Poe hadn't actually mentioned them to Finn (because he didn't know about them yet.) So if Holdo had just said to Poe in private "don't worry, we have cloaking devices" he woudln't have been as worried and jumping around starting mutinies.
 
Poe thinks that Holdo's plan is to just escape on the transports and let the Raddus be destroyed, because he's not aware that they're close to Crait. He doesn't think that this is a very good plan, and because he has such a big ego he tries to take over the ship because he thinks he should be in charge. He tells Finn that the plan is to have people escape on shuttles, which DJ overhears. DJ tells the First Order that, hey, they're probably going to try and escape on shuttles to maybe keep a look out for that. Because of that information the First Order scans for cloaked ships and finds the shuttles.

If Poe had just trusted his commander and done nothing everything would have been fine, but he got mad that he wasn't the one calling the shots any more so he took things into his own hands. He was wrong.
 
But mabye Holdo could also have known when it's time to tell people the plan to stop them acting like idiots. I'm not arguing that Poe isn't an idiot who got 95% of the Rebels killed (which makes it a bit weird when Leia and Holdo are like "I like this guy!") just that Holdo wasn't that great a commander either.
 
Its been months since I've seen it now, but I liked most of it. I remember The Kylo and Rey versus the red candy gang was visually stunning. The final hyperspace kamikaze by the Admiral was cool. I was right about Kylo killing Snoke, and was pissed that Luke was a force projection at the last battle. Even though it fit storyline wise, It was just a bad fit. Sadly ironic the 2 original male leads that are still alive IRL are dead in the movies while Leia makes it just to be deceased IRL. That's a tinfoil hat conspiracy if I ever heard one.
 
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