It doesn't deserve the hate or the praise.

Rating: 4/10 (19 February 2018)

I was a latecomer to the theater to see The Last Jedi. After my viewing, the film left me with plenty to think about, so I went online to find critical and audience responses. What I found interested me: there was a significant disconnect between the reaction the vocal fans of the Star Wars franchise and that of the professional critics who reviewed TLJ. With few exceptions, the critical response to TLJ has been very positive. The fan's consensus however, has been ambivalent at best. Some more outspoken among that latter camp have derided the movie as a, "Hate letter to fans," or have posted volgs titled, "The Rot at The Core of Star Wars." Looking into the causes of this disparity, I find that many authors posit that the longtime fanbase-predominantly white males-feel threatened by the large number of prominent women and nonwhite characters featured in the cast. While in many cases this is true, (I recall an IMDB audience review that labeled newcomer Rose as, "Positive Body Image Girl,") I find it a shallow and dismissive theory in most cases. When I viewed Last Jedi, I saw a film that was exciting and mechanically excellent with only a handful of visual miscues. At the same time, I saw a film that is nowhere near as socially progressive and empowering as it gets credit for and it squanders every possible opportunity to depict a better, more exciting story.
I'll start with the film's progressive elements, since those will probably dictate my credibility with readers. As much as I adored the original trilogy and tolerated the prequel trilogy, I heartily agree with any critic who takes those movies to task for having monochromatic sausage-fests for their casts. Whether you buy into progressivism or not, I hope you agree with me that a better-balanced cast, one that reflects the film's audience, is a good thing.
My more progressive acquaintances (you know who you are,) will probably admonish my next opinion as coming from the viewpoint of the privileged, cisgendered, heterosexual, white male that I am. And to them I say, I love you. I really do. But dear friends, I flat out disagree. TLJ was critically lauded for the large number of empowered women featured in the cast. But from nameless pilots to main characters, I saw the film treat women as being entirely disposable. The only type of person the script worked harder to get rid of was people over the age of forty. I find it sad that the only female character to escape this ignominy was Rey.
Now that I've alienated a lot of you, lets move on to the film's mechanics. With few exceptions (one of which I will discuss later,) Rian Johnson did an excellent job as a director. TLJ looks and sounds amazing. It features a lightsaber fight that is second only to the finale of Phantom Menace. I will be gushing over one of Rey's scenes later. There is one special effects shot that I regard without hesitation as the most beautiful and striking such shot that I have seen in a movie. I have nothing evil to say against the cast either. To a person they did excellent work. They were empathic, fun, exciting, and in one case frustrating to see. Too bad the narratives they acted out were not equal to their caliber.
Before the story I would like to discuss TLJ's two themes: letting go of the past and failure. Letting go of the past was a poor choice and the film did its best to undermine the idea even before one of the characters articulated it. First, TLJ is the eighth episode in a series nearly forty years old. Events from the seven films that preceded it brought the story to this point. Second, the movie is an immediate sequel to The Force Awakens. Last Jedi is driven by the fallout of events from Episode VII. Third, the events of the movie, from the prolonged chase of the second act, to the step-by-step replay of Episode V's Battle of Hoth in the third act, to the obscure memento from the earliest hours of Han and Leia's relationship, and the second theme itself are all drawn from previous episodes in the Star Wars series. Given how severely the letting go theme is undermined, I get the idea Johnson just included it to end older plot lines that did not interest or inspire him.
The second theme, failure, is laudably consistent with the other second acts in the Star Wars movies. In Episode II, the heroes (spoilers) fail to avert a major war, subdue Count Dooku, or identify the arch-villain. In Episode V, the Rebel Alliance suffers a costly military defeat. Luke fails to complete his training or rescue his friends. Vader fails to convince Luke to defect. Consistently with the past, no character or faction by the end of TLJ will have all that they hoped for.
Last Jedi leads off with the story of Poe Dameron and Princess Leia. The opening scene depicts Poe as a hothead whose insubordination leads to an ugly pyrrhic victory for the Rebel Allian-oops! -I mean the Resistance. Naturally and rightly, Leia severely reprimands him.
Subsequent events render Leia incapacitated and replaced with Laura Dern's Vice Admiral Holdo. Here we have the glaring visual miscue I promised to discuss. The color palate of the rest of the officers and enlisted members of the Resistance is earth tones with a few splashes of orange and blue from pilot uniforms. The costumes mimic the angular appearances real world military uniforms even Leia's dark leather coat looks like something a high-ranking warlord would choose to wear. Among these obvious military technicians poor Vice Admiral Holdo stands out like a sore thumb. Introduced when an extra eagerly tells the audience that this person we've never seen before is a longtime friend and colleague of Princess Leia, she is clad in an ill-fitting tan-colored spandex gown more reminiscent of the costumes worn by Mon Mothma in Episode VI and Rogue One. The stateliness of her appearance is undermined by bright purple hair. So there she is: unconvincing as a commander and not regal enough to be a clear leader. Her character looks like her actress was a walk-in on lunch break from a Hunger Games shoot. Call me superficial if you will, but I maintain that movies are a visual medium: Unless they are in a disguise, a character must look the part they are playing. The audience gets a tremendous amount of information about a character based on what they see. We believe that Rose was a mechanic not just because she said so, but because she was clad in a grease-stained jumpsuit. Admiral Holdo gives us mixed messages and little else.
Upon Holdo assuming command, the disgraced Poe attempts to exercise influence over her that he does not have with the predictable results: Holdo shames, silences, and dismisses him. The moment was hollow for me, "You tell that main character, you person that I literally met seconds ago and have no idea what your intentions are," I thought to myself. Here is an example of how the movie ignores an opportunity to tell a better, more exciting story. Admiral Holdo is doing and saying all the same things that Princess Leia would have been. Poe's relationship with Holdo starts and remains bad. Instead of just idling Leia's character for the next third of the movie, what if Leia was wounded, but active and still in power? We could have seen a widening rift of acrimony develop between the pilot and his mentor instead of a huge rift remaining huge between these two strangers. What if Leia had simply died and Holdo (who was at length revealed by TLJ to be a subtle tactician) was the leader that we would see assert her just authority over the restive heroes for the rest of the series? Why insist on Leia's early survival? Let go of the past right? Or what if Holdo was a traitor giving information on the Resistance fleet to the First Order for the heroes to expose and silence? So there. I've offered three more interesting narrative choices than the bland events that actually occurred. Don't get too curious about or attached to Holdo either. In a fine example of how I feel this movie really treats women and the not young, the script tosses her aside by the end of the second act.
The strongest plot line belongs to Rey, Kylo, and Luke. I didn't care for Rey in Force Awakens. She lacked a real motivation and gained powers, abilities, and affection as the plot required. I find her much improved in Last Jedi. She now wants things: the identity of her parents (a holdover from Episode VII,) and context for the paranormal things she discovered that she can do in the previous movie. Importantly to me, she has difficulty getting these things.
Luke is a reluctant mentor who has obviously never seen the many kung-fu movies that set up an identical scenario. Over time, we get to see a hint the sort of teacher he was and why he chose to disappear from the larger galaxy. Apart from that Luke is simply present, wasting the opportunity to bond and find renewed purpose with his student; and being told to get his act together by everyone he encounters. The film's weakest humor occurs in this thread as well, mostly coming from Rey inconveniencing the nonhuman caretakers of the island she and Luke are training on.
The porgs deserve special mention. I liked them. They were cute, amusing, and unintrusive.
The better thread comes from Rey's intriguing long-distance relationship with Kylo. They come to know each other better and set up what could have been one of Rey's most critical moments. More on that when I discuss the antagonists. Rey's story also features my favorite scene in the whole movie: Her parallel to Luke's Dagobah tree scene. Again, so much for letting go of the past. At any rate, she goes in and the Dark Side tempts her with hidden knowledge-the identity of the parents she longs to discover-if only she will reach out to touch evil. Thanks to her growing relationship with Kylo, she does get this information. But not in any way that is satisfying, emotive, or even interesting. It