Shocking and Intense!

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2017)

The latest Star Wars movie, the next installment in the new trilogy, the long awaited sequel to highly acclaimed Star Wars: The Force Awakens, possibly my favourite Star Wars movie has finally arrived. Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The Force Awakens received more or less positive reactions. it had it's lovers and it's haters. I was among the lovers. Having grown up with Star Wars and loving it to bits as I heavily emphasised in my review for The Force Awakens, I loved The Force Awakens so naturally, some hype was up for it's follow-up. The promise of more Luke Skywalker as an older, wiser but broken man, some new characters, some answers to mysteries from the previous installment, a script that apparently shocked the cast in a new way and a director who has quite the reputation as a director of some of the highest rated episodes of Breaking Bad, a director who "thinks outside the box" but is himself, a huge Star Wars fan. My hype was definitely up. I had a countdown on my phone, a shirt with the logo on it that everyone told me I wore too much, midnight screening tickets and a marathon of every Star Wars movie prior to the screening.
Did I like Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Yes! I had a great time watching it. Like The Force Awakens, I could hardly believe I was even watching it because my excitement was through the roof. The Force Awakens had it's shocking moments but wow, The last Jedi was packed with some twists and turns! Some moments made me think I was just dreaming about seeing The Last Jedi. It was great to return to this trilogy. I loved seeing Rey, Finn, Poe, BB8, Kylo Ren and Leia again as I love them all. Seeing Luke was certainly interesting. He was different. An older but broken man who has given up on training Jedi after what happened to Kylo Ren. May not have been the Luke we remembered but so what? This is not Luke's story anymore, this is 30 years later! Luke is human and changes like everyone does. People change, people go through rough patches so we saw a different but interesting Luke. But thanks to Mark Hamill, he never lost the ability to be recognised as Luke Skywalker. He was different but he was still Luke. Captain Phasma and General Hux return but aren't really that interesting. Hux seems weaker and Phasma was there for such a short time, it almost felt crammed in but her appearance didn't give her any kind of redemption from the events of the last chapter in my opinion. But I'm not really bothered. I never had hopes that they would be huge characters. I didn't let my expectations taint my viewing. Vice Admiral Holdo was just kind of meh to me. She came across has a bit nasty for a while for an unknown reason but had one huge memorable moment later on. Supreme Leader Snoke was once again just okay with the exception of being a bit more intimidating and villainy and sporting what I thought was fantastic motion capture CGI performed by Andy Serkis. I was fond of the Porgs, they are adorable. I'm actually glad they didn't serve any purpose to the story because I think that would have just been silly. They were cute and they were there to be cute, job done.
There were two newcomers in Rose Tico and DJ who I did not care for. Rose came across to me as someone a little bit crazy who at one point waved around a stun gun while telling a brief story, chuckling about stunning deserters which made her seem a little crazy but then she became a character all about animal rights and pretty much having a problem with 90% of the galaxy. It was like some variation of a 2017 vegan in a Star Wars movie. As for DJ, he was announced as "a new villain" in the films early stages and after seeing the movie, I don't see how. Kylo Ren steals the villain spotlight whereas DJ came across has a drunken oaf most of the time who had a difficult to understand accent with a stutter on top. I didn't understand him or enjoy him. I also wasn't so fond of the whole sequence with Finn and Rose on Canto Bight. I found it to be a bit boring when it came to animal rights, the broom kids and the casino type world. A casino world sounds new and interesting but it really wasn't. It was too much like Earth for me. I just found myself waiting for the movie to get back to Luke and Rey. I didn't hate it but I wasn't so fond of it. This movie kind of made me realise what I do and don't really want in a Star Wars movie. The message of the film is that greatness can come from nothing and that failure is the greatest teacher which are great subtle messages about life. However, when there were some real life problems in the movie like animal cruelty and a conflict between the rich and the poor, I just didn't really care for it. I guess I always saw Star Wars as an escape from the real world so I don't really like Star Wars being so close to Earth. I actually didn't have an issue with the humour. Most people I've spoken to thought there was too much, I thought it was just right.
Rian ultimately wanted this movie to be a little shocking and it certainly was. There were several shocking moments in this film that freaked me out, leaving me on the edge of my seat, not being able to predict what happens next in any way. However, this film has received very very mixed reviews. Some people love it, some people absolutely hate it and I don't understand it. The Force Awakens was disliked for being too much like Star Wars and now The Last Jedi is being disliked for being too different from Star Wars. The Last Jedi does some different things, doesn't rely on a formula, stands on it's own and does it's own thing. For people to dislike the answers to some questions or disliked certain moments for not being what they expected or wanted to happen is, in my opinion, ridiculous. To those fanboys who give Stan Wars fans a bad name, who support the prequels by saying you have to read books, play games and watch the terrible Clone Wars TV series to understand certain things, who complains that Luke isn't the Luke that they know, who complains that all Disney wants is money and no one working on the films cares or grew up loving Star Wars: It is not your story, these are not your characters, the films are not made to your expectations, you are not in control. You people put too much emphasis on things, build up your theories and expectations and ultimately dislike the film you were excited for because it didn't play out the exact way you thought it would or wanted it to. You go to see someone else's film.
Anyway, I hope, like The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out, that the negative reviews calm down and more people start to see the positive aspects of The Last Jedi. I personally liked it a lot. Everything I didn't like, I discussed earlier. I liked everything else. I liked what happened to all the characters and where the story went. I was happy with the decisions made, I was happy to see someone else's take on the new trilogy, let them tell me the story.