Force Dump

Rating: 2/10 (29 December 2019)

Disney and Rian Johnson took a massive force dump with 'TLJ'. Having seen this at the cinema, I was bored for the vast majority of it. The comic relief was more akin to a Marvel movie, and didn't work. The film has clearly been imbued with a feministic ideology with Rey, who seemingly can do no wrong. Princess Leia was a perfect example of a strong woman on the originals, because she could often best the brash, roguish cockiness and egotism of Hans Solo. It creates genuine character chemistry, and they were a believable couples because they were equals. The character of Rey not only is capable of best a trained pupil of the force in 'TFA', in Kylo Ten/Ben Solo, but unbelievably gets the better of Grandmaster Luke Skywalker - who isn't anything like Luke Skywalker now, purely out of character subversion, and for no other demonstrable reason - despite having zero training or even prior knowledge of Jedi, Sith, or the force in general until sometime part way through 'TFA'. In the originals, Luke Skywalker was the underdog, and that uphill struggle, the odds clearly been stacked against him, made him vulnerable, raised the stakes, and ramped up the tension. Many would still argue that Luke Skywalker was always a bit of a naff Jedi, but understandably and believably so, due to varying reasons. When a character is so perfect as Rey, there's no risk, and therefore no tangible sense of danger or tension that arises from such danger. That's only part of what is wrong with both 'TFA', and to a greater extent, 'TLJ'. At least 'TFA', despite sharing similar shortcomings, remembered to entertain. Maybe not as much as it could and should have, but a lot more than 'TLJ'.
For me it doesn't matter that 'TLJ' is a Star Wars movie. Surely, it inexplicably undermines and subverts Star Wars lore purely for the sake of it, and that's a problem. The biggest problem is that Star Wars or not, it's just not a very good film. When I subsequently realised it was written and directed by the same chap who did 'Looper', I wasn't surprised, as I thought that Sci-Fi movie was a load of nonsense as well.
Both the Abrams entries in these new sequels are certainly lacking. They could and should have been so much more. But neither 'TFA' or 'ROS' are as badly done as this, and are considerably better.
In all honesty, the better entries in the Star Wars franchise since Disney acquired them have surprisingly been 'Rogue One, which I think is a great film in and of itself, and the best Star Wars film since 'Return of the Jedi', and 'Solo', which is actually a half-decent, fun, origin story.