![]() DISCLAIMER: Many Bothaans died to bring you this information. Exactly two weeks ago I saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Since that day, I've wrestled with what I could say that would even matter. I know that nothing that I say in this blog post will change your feelings about The Last Jedi so I write this more for me than anybody else. I have to share how I truly feel: I left the movie frustrated, disappointed, and, honestly, angry. As an English teacher, I'm constantly working with students to improve their expression and storytelling. I'm constantly reading stories with different pacing, narrative devices, character development, and points of view. After working at my craft for the last 12 years, I can say that I know what works in a story and what doesn't and, from what I watched in Episode VIII, The Last Jedi is a poorly made story. Incredibly, Rian Johnson somehow found a way to make a bad Star Wars movie. Now, I know what you're thinking: "The movie wasn't bad." It was entertaining (and it WAS entertaining. I did enjoy it as a standalone film). The movie had action and drama and unexpected moments, but these aren't enough for a Star Wars movie. Going into The Last Jedi, I told everybody this would be the best Star Wars movie ever. My mistake. I thought that it would solidly connect to The Force Awakens. I thought that it would continue to develop the new and old characters from the previous movies. I believed that it would give worthy endings to some of the characters that inevitably would die. I surmised that it would explain some of most compelling moments in previous movies. I thought that it would entertain and have great visual effects. I believed that it would give us closure with the Jedi. I wanted it to answer the big questions audiences had after The Force Awakens. I thought that it would be even better than The Force Awakens and Rogue One. I thought that it would rival Empire Strikes Back. I wanted to love this movie AND I was aware that most of the things I thought should happen (ABOVE) probably wouldn't. Instead, I got The Last Jedi. An underwhelming, disconnected, underutilized, and, ultimately, average movie. Most critics have pointed to the dumb jokes, the blue milk beast, focus on Rose and Finn's pointless trip to Canto Bight, the space horses, and slow-moving space chase as the major issues in the movie. These are just minor problems. There are more pressing issues here. First, great stories develop many of the characters, both static and dynamic, and discard few as cannon fodder. Last Jedi does the opposite. The story spends little time on the character Episode VII made us wait to see (i.e. Luke) and when we did see him, he was a shadow of his former self. This is not ROTJ Luke, nor is it Mark Hamill's Luke. We get why Luke changed but we don't really see him as the Master Jedi he needed to be. Force projecting himself across the galaxy displays him as an illusionist, nothing more. We didn't come to the movie to see cheap parlor tricks, especially if the character performing the tricks will die as a result. What a sad ending for Mark Hamill and, even though he's taken back how disappointed he was with the new Luke Skywalker, I can't help but feel cheated. Phasma is similarly underutilized. I read Phasma by Delilah Dawson in preparation for The Last Jedi but, ironically, it seems like Disney and Lucasfilm aren't really trying to connect the Star Wars universe together as much as they claimed. Phasma gets a few minutes of screentime, just like The Force Awakens, and spends that time being challenged by a former First Order soldier who never even liked to fight. Then, after supposedly killing him, he rises from the hole he'd fallen into and kills her. The scenes with Phasma made no sense. Why even include her in the story? Bryan Young, author and moderator of most of the Star Wars panels at Comic Con, commented on Twitter that Phasma is the Boba Fett character in this series. My response? Why? Just use ordinary stormtroopers if you're going to discard her that easily. Snoke, who I believed needed (at least) a little bit of explaining for us to care about him as a villain, is disregarded even more. In order for an audience to care about a story, the story needs to have a worthy villain/problem. The Last Jedi doesn't make me care about Snoke at all. He's just some random alien who knows how to use the Force and can even easily fend off the Chosen One (Rey), yet he's easily manipulated by Kylo and killed off. Episode VIII even tries to make me believe that Kylo will become the new big bad in Episode IX. There's no way Snoke doesn't come back (ala Voldemort) in the last movie. If I'm forced to work with untrained Kylo as the bad guy, I'll be really embarassed for Lucasfilm. In contrast, the movie spends 45 minutes on Rose Tico and Finn going to Canto Bight. Many have commented that they loved seeing good guys fail in The Last Jedi because, according to Yoda, "the greatest teacher, failure is," which I can agree with. However, their side journey is pointless and, honestly, detracts from the characters that we ultimately do care about in the story: Luke, Rey, Kylo, and Snoke. Rian Johnson's decision to spend time helping us connect with Rose is admirable, but confusing, at best, and sends the wrong message, especially when Rose awkwardly endangers the entire Resistance by crashing her ski speeder into Finn's so that he can't die a fitting death as a martyr for the rebellion and so that he CAN kiss her. Finn should have died. He'd left the First Order, fought for The Resistance, saved Rey from Kylo Ren, and became beloved as a character. If Finn had flown into the battering ram laser cannon the First Order was using to attack the abandoned base on Crait, he would have become one of the best characters in the Star Wars saga. His character arc was finished, just like Poe's arc was finished in The Force Awakens before Lucasfilm decided to keep him alive. Just like Poe. Just kill off the characters. Especially Leia. Carrie Fisher, the actress who played Princess Leia, passed away a year ago on December 27, 2016. Most people believed that The Last Jedi would be her final act. Then, shortly before the release of Episode VIII, rumors swirled that Rian Johnson had elected to keep the movie as-is, which was strange considering there are at least two moments in the movie where she could have died and one where she SHOULD have died. The Mary Poppins scene in space was almost comical and I've seen multiple people on Twitter say that the audience LAUGHED when it happened. I get that Johnson was showing Leia's Force abilities, but this felt misplaced and misguided and could have lent itself to her dying. When the Tie Fighter's blast her out of the ship, I found myself thinking, "Wow. This is it." Instead she force throws herself, all the while unconscious, back into the ship. Her survival was a weird choice. In contrast, Lucasfilm KILLS off two characters that we needed in Episode IX: Luke and Snoke. The audience had been waiting to see Luke at the apex of his Jedi power. We wanted to see him handle Kylo and then face off against the baddest baddie in the universe: Snoke. Luke's death was sad, but he didn't get the heroic sendoff he deserved. He didn't really fight Kylo Ren and he didn't really die honorably. He was just force projecting himself across the universe instead of going to Crait and saving his sister and the Chosen One from his nephew. He died just stalling so that the Resistance could get away. When Yoda fades away in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is distraught. When Luke dies on Ach-To, nobody even notices (besides the Blue-milk beast, the nuns, and the porgs). Such an unfitting end to the most iconic character in the saga. Snoke could have become just as iconic a character in the saga, but he's murdered before Act I is over by Kylo. So many questions swirled around who he was, how he knew Kylo, how he'd seen "the rise and fall of the Empire," how he'd become the leader of the First Order, how Han and Leia knew him, how he was so disfigured, and how he was so powerful in the Force. I was grateful going into The Last Jedi that at least a few of these questions would be answered. There had to be answers to these questions, right? Nope. Rian Johnson literally doesn't give any answers and, unless Snoke comes back to life, ala Voldemort and Darth Plagueis, there's no way fans should be okay with what happened to Snoke in the movie. The Last Jedi is also missing a few key components of the story that we need in order to fill in the blanks; namely, The Knights of Ren, a flashback to Kylo's attack on the Jedi temple, and Rey or Kylo's tutelage under Luke and Snoke. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but wonder if Rian Johnson even watched The Force Awakens or even cared about the movies that came before it at all. I'm sure he did with how much care he put into the visual effects, but the storyline just doesn't connect or make sense. Going into the movie, another rumor was that it would really help connect the nine movie saga. If anything, The Last Jedi doesn't really connect to the original trilogy or the prequels at all. There's no mention of The Clone Wars, Palpatine, Anakin, Padme, the Death Star, Qui-Gon, Maul, Obi-Wan, the rebels sacrifice at Scarif, or even Jar-Jar. I'm not stupid and know that a director has to cut a lot and one can't fit even 1/3 of these things in a movie, but instead of the random jokes and Canto Bight, connecting the universe would have been nicer. More importantly, the movie discards the importance of the Jedi even as its saying that the Jedi will continue. Luke's character is tossed aside as little relevant, Rey's parentage is tossed aside as inconsequential, and the idea at the end of the movie with the Newsie using the force to collect the broom is the idea that "being of royal lineage or a special family or bloodline doesn't matter." The movie almost feels anti-Christian in the sense that the Jedi do nothing in the movie (Rey doesn't really show that she's grown any in the days we see her) and the vibe is that the really important characters in the story are the forgotten characters, like Finn, Rose, Poe, Holdo, and Hux. All non-Jedi. The Last Jedi seemed to tell me that there aren't great people out there with special abilities that can help us in life (i.e. God). Just ordinary people. Sad. We go to movies for the extraordinary. We want to see Rey change and become the most powerful Jedi who ever lived. We want her to face her fears. We want her to meet Kylo in battle. We want Luke to overcome his lifelong fear of failure. We want him to leave Ach-To and face Snoke in the throne room. We want Kylo to face his demons and either turn completely to the Dark Side or follow his grandfather's footsteps and overcome them and join the Light Side. We don't see any of this in The Last Jedi and won't see almost any of it in Episode IX because many of these characters are dead. In The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams set up certain questions to be answered and plot points to connect. We needed to know who Rey's parents were. We wanted to know where Snoke came from. We wanted to know if the Chosen One prophecy was being revisited again. We wanted to know how Kylo became so disenchanted with his parents and in love with his grandfather. Rian Johnson literally gave us NONE of the answers we wanted or needed. The answers he did give us were underwhelming, at best. Why? What was the Lucasfilm storygroup thinking? Why didn't they give us one or two answers? Were they worried that theorists had spoiled the story so they wanted to tell a different story? Did they give Rian Johnson too much creative freedom? Honestly, there were parts of The Last Jedi that I loved, including the fight in the Throne Room with the Praetorian Guard after Snoke's assassination, Kylo fighting Luke's force projection on Crait, the stunning visual effects, and even Reylo, which I thought would never work. The movie has some really good scenes that I can't wait to get on Blu-Ray. Scenes that are iconic. I liked the Porgs. I didn't mind the depravity of Luke's life on Ach-To. I LOVE Rey. She's a great character. However, The Last Jedi felt like Rian Johnson made up whatever storyline he wanted without paying ANY attention to what had been written before. There is no real connection to the prequels, no attention to detail with the original trilogy, and The Last Jedi gives us no real reason to watch Episode IX. Unless... Unless Snoke is still alive. Unless we see Anakin's, Luke's, or Obi-Wan's Force Ghosts. Unless the movie ties ALL of the movies together. If JJ Abrams can tie everything together or place a few morsels of hope in Episode IX, then he can redeem Episodes 7 8, and 9. I used to believe these things were inevitable. I don't know anymore. I hope that Lucasfilm learns from this failure because even though it's a good movie, it should have been a great movie. It had every right to be. Hopefully the failure of Episode VIII will teach the Lucasfilm group the importance of sticking with one director and one vision so that they can get Episode IX correct. If we start off Episode IX at Leia's grave and Snoke alive in some shape or form, things could get good really fast and then Rian Johnson is forgiven. Because, in the words of Force Ghost Yoda, "The greatest teacher, failure is."
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AuthorThree-time Spartan Beast. Utah Jazz fan. Cougar. Aggie. Pioneer. Colt. Teacher. Auror. Earthbender. Ranger. Jedi. Hero of the Lance. Guardian of the Galaxy. Archives
December 2017
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