Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon originally created by George Lucas. The success of the franchise and its unique universe didn’t stop after the original trilogy or even the prequels. It found success in nearly every medium from books to video games to cartoons. That’s not to say all of it was great or even good. Some of it was downright bad, but the series garnered much love and anything that had a star wars label on it was guaranteed to sell something, and as a result Disney bought the rights to it.
Contrary to popular belief a big company buying something like this doesn’t make it automatically bad. Most of the stuff that Lucasfilms and Lucasarts were churning out was already spiraling into mediocrity, but as a result of all the Star Wars material that was out there most people thought they had a general idea of how Star Wars should be. Of course, that doesn’t mean Disney should have to be confined to how the fans think they should work, they did make the entirety of the expanded universe non-canon when they bought it after all, they are completely entitled to do whatever they want in the universe and explore whatever themes they want. However even though the extended universe is officially non-canon they are not using an original IP and therefore should abide by what has already been decided. For example Luke took weeks of intensive training which was a expedited process in itself in order to defeat save the galaxy, and it sure is arguable that he was a bit of a Mary Sue in places, but Rey and is a bigger problem.
All that brings us to the most recently released Star Wars movie, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi with its entirely new to the series director, Rian Johnson. The movie had a mixed reception to say the least with most leaning towards either extremes, but most of the problems that people had with the movie were a non-issue. Johnson was going for a different direction from the movies and there’s no problem with that. The theme of moving on from the past and towards was done interestingly despite the new movies being the exact opposite of that.
Another gripe with the movie that many people had was Luke’s character. Given that he was the main character of the original trilogy fans will have a clear picture of what he should be like, but defying this expectation left a lot of people unsettled including, at a time, Hamill himself. And as it should be a surprise to no one his criticisms were cherry-picked and left everyone who listened to those parts as bitter as they thought Hamill was which is a separate issue that led to Hamill refusing to say anything about Star Wars again. The drastic change in his character wasn’t something that bothered me. It’d be pretty hard to believe that same optimistic Luke went and secluded himself on the island hiding from everyone.
The complaint that I had the most issue with was the scale of the plot. Many held a strong opinion that Star Wars movies should affect the many planets, but this one (slight spoiler) was just the Resistance fleet being chased, but I it doesn’t automatically make it less tense.
All that being said there were a lot of problems. There were entire scenes that could’ve been cut out of the movie and improved the movie’s overall quality specifically the casino planet and most of Rose’s character.
On top of that the movie throws in too much comic relief in scenes that would otherwise have been more impactful. There were too many moments where the tone was set for something intense only to be quipped away. Some antagonists were reduced to laughing stocks instead of the serious character they could’ve been, and some may be okay with that, but I would’ve preferred the alternative.
Besides the things that could’ve been done without it could’ve improved with the main plot had its own problems. A lot of these problems I felt could’ve been avoided if the moviegoer had not seen any Star Wars media in the past, but most have so it is a problem. This problem isn’t confined to The Last Jedi but could be seen in The Force Awakens as well. Since I’m going to be addressing specific issues some spoilers will be unavoidable so read this paragraph at your own risk. The problem that concerns me the most is the way the force is conveyed as more of a tool than anything else, although The Last Jedi seems to attempt to reconcile it by showing the force as a more omniscient presence it still used more or less the same. In the previous movie Rey uses the force to persuade a guard to release her with absolutely no training or practice, but in this movie she has three days of practice so now she really is a jedi master able to stand up to people who have trained literally their whole lives just to battle people like her and can match the power of Kylo Ren you’ll see more of his backstory.
The story’s timing is either convoluted or sloppily done. The main plot of the story takes place over a course of about 16 hours meanwhile throughout that it cuts to Rey occasionally who is there over a course of 3 days, but leaves at just the right time anyways. To me, that just doesn’t line up right.
Besides the many inconsistencies with itself and the Star Wars universe the story was very visually pleasing. If one were just watching and had “turned their brain off” it would be a great movie. Myself, I enjoyed it while I was watching it only paying attention aside from the casino planet which was wholly unnecessary and had Rose in it.
After watching, however, I thought about it and realized all of the things written above, so it was a very mixed bag with a lot of wasted potential.
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