The Empire Pranks Back

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2017)

The Last Jedi is an interesting failure, unlike the slick but obvious The Force Awakens - which I guess was a boring success, aiming at an easy target and hitting the bullseye. The more ambitious Episode VIII has intriguing ideas and neat set-pieces, but they are obliterated by major mistakes.
I could go on and on about those.

Luke Skywalker has become a bitter hermit haunted by his failures. Considered in a vacuum this characterization has potential, but in the context of the whole saga it just feels wrong. It retroactively damages the original trilogy, which had completed Luke's character arc - much like Han's, and that's why I dreaded the return of the old cast and would have preferred the new films to take place two hundred years after Return of the Jedi. Still, kudos to Mark Hamill, who is great in this in spite of everything.

The hyperspace-ramming moment, for the sake of a cool visual, opens a whole can of plot holes about the entire saga (why nobody ever did that with the various Death Stars?) and involves Holdo, a character we have no reason to care about; it's like Mon Mothma blowing up the Death Star, if Mon Mothma had the relational skills of Cruella De Vil. This would have been an effective send-off for, say, Leia... or Finn, who has a similar moment sabotaged later in the movie.

Speaking of Finn's aborted sacrifice, it highlights the movie's garbled handling of themes. So, is sacrificing yourself for the greater good the right choice or not? The Last Jedi gives two opposite answers (Luke, Holdo and Rose's sister versus Rose/Finn) and frames them both as correct. Or maybe it's the right choice only if you have no romantic interest. Wow, deep.

I also don't get what the film is trying to say about the Force. That everyone can be a hero regardless of Force powers? We already knew that (Han, Lando, Chewie...). That you don't need to be an "official" Jedi to tap into the Force? We already knew that too (Luke in A New Hope, even Chirrut in Rogue One). That *everyone* can use the Force regardless of innate sensitivity? I guess not, or every person in the galaxy would be waving lightsabers, performing telekinesis, etc. Or is it saying that you don't need an important lineage or a famous name to be a Force-using hero? Look, the prequels were mostly a failure, but you don't need to turn them into galactic strawmen. Episodes I-III showed a galaxy full of Jedi of different species; Anakin himself was born a slave! As stupid as Midichlorians were, nobody ever implied the Force was some kind of selective aristocratic privilege.

The Canto Bight subplot is useless in terms of narrative economy. Like many recent blockbusters, this movie is bloated - you could easily cut 30 minutes from it. See also the Multiple Climaxes Syndrome: what looks and feels like the final battle is followed by yet another very last act.

I understand wanting to raise the narrative stakes and leaving the good guys in a difficult place at the end... but all the surviving members of the Rebellion fitting inside the Millennium Falcon? That's hysterical. It's a GALACTIC conflict. These people wouldn't be enough to hold ONE CITY in one of the MILLION PLANETS in the galaxy! It's like a version of The Two Towers with only Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli fighting against 10.000 Uruks at Helm's Deep - in a misguided attempt to make it "more epic", it *instantly* becomes ludicrous.

While The Last Jedi is, to its credit, more original than The Force Awakens, it does sometimes commit a similar mistake: imitating the original trilogy's narrative beats without any of the underlying logic or deeper emotional meaning. When Luke risked his life to redeem Vader, it was the sacrifice of a son to save his father's soul; when Rey does the same for Kylo, it's unearned and absurd (he is nothing to her other than the guy who kidnapped her, wounded one of her friends and killed another). The character motivation for this baffling choice is some vision of the future, a lazy screenwriting shortcut which was rightfully booed when Lucas employed it in the prequels and isn't any better here.

But my main issue is TONE. Star Wars has always been a lighthearted adventure, not a parody. There are moments here which could have taken place in a Star Wars spoof like Spaceballs (Poe prank-calling Hux, Finn's brusque awakening, the Porgs annoying Chewie, Luke and the green milk, Finn leaking fluids from his suit, Rose zapping Finn, Snoke and Kylo tossing Hux around like a ragdoll, BB-8 commandeering an AT-ST...). It's like Jar Jar Binks all over again, only not concentrated on a single character but spread over the whole film.
Now, you shouldn't approach Star Wars like it's Crime and Punishment... but when you mock your own characters, plot and lore for the sake of a cheap laugh, you undermine any sense of pathos you've been trying to build.
Emblematic of this is Luke's first scene. While I'm not a fan of The Force Awakens (although it looks better now in retrospect, at least it got the tone right), its ending was effective: the young apprentice looking for a teacher stands before the legendary master and returns him his paternal weapon. Writer/director Rian Johnson pays it off with a gag. This bathos runs through the movie.
4,5/10