This document and the following review are identical so feel free to read whichever one is more convenient.
Spoiler Warning
The Last Jedi is probably the single most divisive Star Wars movie, with many fans deriding it as the worst Star Wars film when it was released, with others saying it was one of if not the best film since Empire Strikes Back. Personally, I fall somewhere in between these two extremes. I think The Last Jedi is a good movie, but I don’t think it’s a great one. The best way I can describe my feelings on it, however, are mixed. There are some aspects about this film that I love; some of them even rank among the best moments in the Star Wars series… at least aside from the ones that are in Episodes III or V, because those two have way more than their fair share. However, it also has some of the worst, and least well thought-out, sequences in the saga. That’s why it’s taken a long time for me to really get a good grasp as to what my feelings on this film are, but I think after re-watching it several times, I’m ready to go on record with my opinion.
One point I think needs to be made about The Last Jedi is in regards to its originality. The Sequel Trilogy is often criticized for lacking the imagination and originality of the Lucas films, but Last Jedi is a clear exception to this theory. Rian Johnson made numerous bold decisions in this film. For better or worse, this is his movie, not a cookie cutter style film that JJ Abrams has been accused of making. And I think that’s important to keep in mind, because, whether you love this film or hate it, it does a lot of new things and thus gives you some reason to watch it, even rewatch it. A lot of times, I question why I should rewatch The Force Awakens, instead of just rewatching A New Hope. With The Last Jedi, I always feel like there’s something in it that’s worth seeing again.
With that being said, I’m just going to jump straight into the plot of Last Jedi and work my way forward.
Unlike every other Star Wars Episode, which picks up the story a long time, typically years, after the previous film, Last Jedi opens up exactly where the previous film left off. The Resistance has just destroyed Starkiller Base, and are evacuating from their base on D’Qar as the First Order prepares their counterattack. In typical Star Wars fashion, the Last Jedi opens with a large action scene to get the audience hooked, as the Resistance’s evacuation is cut off by the arrival of the First Order fleet, headed by their new flagship, the Dreadnaught.
Poe Dameron, acting against Leia’s orders, leads a squadron of bombers against the Dreadnaught. This insubordination is an important part of Poe Dameron’s character and is going to especially vital in things that happen later, which have been roundly criticized by most of the nay-sayers with this film.
The battle itself is pretty good, with the set-piece of the Resistance fighters having to escort the slow but powerful bombers through the swarm of TIE fighters attacking them. It’s a new idea for Star Wars films, and given that most of the space combat in the films (especially the Sequels) was just a redress of Episode IV’s Battle of Yahvin, I really liked seeing that. Some people have complained about the design of the bombers, though.
I’ve heard the complaint that they ‘don’t feel like Star Wars’ because the design is different, which is a complaint I don’t really understand. Isn’t seeing new designs, new vehicles and just new ideas in general what we’re here. I’d rather see more stuff like this than just more scenes of X-Wings and TIE fighters blasting each other out of the sky. Others have complained that the bombers are poorly designed in universe because of how slow they are. First of all, the vehicle design in Star Wars movies has always been more focused on looking cool than making sense (the Empire using walkers instead of hover crafts for instance or the fact that space craft have wings). Secondly, while the bombers have an obvious weakness, they do also have a lot of firepower, which seems to me that they’d be a pretty valuable asset.
There are, however, a few nit-picks I do kind of agree with about this scene. First of all, Poe Dameron’s X-Wing blasts through the turrets on the Dreadnaught almost effortlessly. If X-Wings had this capability, I would have thought some of the Rebel fighters would’ve cleared out the turbo-lasers on the Death Star much more easily, as Luke only took out the turrets by using the force to guide his aim. The First Order battle strategy also makes virtually no sense, with Hux’s flagship and a handful of other Star Destroyers simply sitting back and watching the Dreadnaught get attacked instead of helping them or even attacking the Resistance fleet. While this is annoying, I don’t think a case can be made for saying that this makes the battle bad. In most movies, including even the best of Star Wars films, you can pick apart battle strategies and find flaws in them. I get why this would be annoying to some – as it does kind of annoy me, but just to a lesser extent – but I don’t think this is a serious flaw with the film, or even this scene. Minor plot-holes or nit-picks rarely, if ever, break a movie for me. Unfortunately, the Last Jedi provides ample other reasons for why I don’t like it as much as I should.
But, to move on from discussion of flawed battle plans and the like, the good guys win, but lose many pilots and ships in the process. The Resistance escapes, but Poe is demoted by Leia for his insubordination. However, before the heroes can decide what to do next, the impossible occurs: The First Order arrives, having tracked them through hyperspace.
This is a point that I feel like needs to be addressed. First of all, Rogue One coupled with A New Hope would seem to indicate that this can be done, and some viewers used this to further criticize the Last Jedi. But… no other movie said they could do this and there is even ample evidence that no one had this capability before this film.
Because, if you can track ships through hyperspace, the Trade Federation could’ve easily tracked the Queen’s ship to Tatooine without using Sio Bibble’s transmission and there wouldn’t have been an Episode 1. Secondly, the Empire wouldn’t have had to plant a tracker on the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, as Leia clearly states that they did. Obi-Wan placing the tracker on Slave I in Episode II is another example.
Anyway, a second space battle ensues, as the Resistance fleet flees, with Kylo Ren leading a squadron of TIE fighters against them, before he has to fall back when the Resistance fleet moves out of range of the Star Destroyers. This is an okay sequence (I’m going to ignore more questions of strategy in terms of how many fighters the First Order sends out), but does feel a bit rushed. Given that the new movie is already so long, I get why this scene didn’t go on longer, but it does feel like Kylo is able to destroy the entirety of the Resistance’s fighters too quickly and easily. Then again, this is one of the few times where we get to see Kylo really thrive at something he does, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. I just wish we’d gotten to see more of a battle between him and the fighters, but again, I guess there wasn’t time (unless they’d trimmed some of the extraneous material that comes in later).
During the battle, we get one of the first of many great scenes in the movie. Kylo Ren has his opportunity to destroy the bridge of the Resistance flagship, before sensing his mother, General Leia Organna, on board. We see the classic Star Wars telepathy scene, as the camera cuts back and forth between their faces (just like in Empire), showing us Kylo’s inner conflict, before he decides not to fire. It’s a great way to drive home the point that Kylo Ren, despite his best efforts in the previous movie, still isn’t all evil. This would also kick off his arc in this movie, where viewers would be left unsure whether or not he was actually going to switch sides.
His wingmen, however, do take the shot, killing the entire bridge crew and blasting Leia into space. And here, we get one of the movie’s weirdest scenes, as Leia flies back into the Resistance space ship (presumably by using force pull on the larger object to pull herself towards it), before being taken to the med bay. I mean… it kind of makes sense, but it’s so weird and happens so abruptly that it took me out of the movie.
With the bridge crew dead, command of the fleet falls to Amilyn Holdo, who takes an immediate dislike to Poe and shuts him out of the command decisions because of his earlier insubordination. And it’s at this point where the numerous flaws in the movie begin to crop up.
First of all, Rose is introduced. No disrespect to the actress whatsoever, but her character is not handled well at all. She is randomly introduced and becomes one of the movie’s core characters, with little chance to develop before she’s thrust on us. In fact, on her side quest with Finn, she gets as much screen time as he does, instead of the movie logically focusing on the character we already knew, while developing Rose on the side, through Finn’s eyes, so that we could get to know her before she would become as prominent. Think about Phantom Menace. When Qui-Gon arrives, he meets Anakin, who is clearly going to be an important character. However, the movie stays focused on Qui-Gon and his mission, getting the ship repaired, but shows him interacting with Anakin through that, gradually developing Anakin more and more, until he gets the pivotal scene of the second act (the pod race) focused on him.
Here, as soon as Rose is introduced, she’s supposed to be an important character. This not only makes her character weaker (because we get no time to get to know her), but also takes away from Finn’s character, who feels like he’s been tossed to the side in this film, as it starts to focus much more heavily on Rey and Kylo. Given that they’re the main characters, this wouldn’t be so bad, if they still gave Finn something… no matter how small. But no, his character isn’t developed. He has no character arc in this movie.
Another major problem is this movie’s ‘chase’ sequence. The Resistance fleet, by burning their fuel at an absurd rate, manages to stay ahead of the First Order Star Destroyers, just far enough out of range that, though the Destroyers can hit them with their cannons, they can’t damage the shields. That makes no sense in and of itself, but the worst part is how painfully slow this part of the movie is. This is honestly one of the all-time worst set pieces in a Star Wars film.
There’s no tension… it’s just boring. Big, slow ships run away from other, big, slow ships, while cannon shots bounce uselessly off their shields. And the worst part is that this goes on for half the movie. All while we’re cutting back and forth between Finn and Rose’s side quest and Rey’s training, those scenes are interspersed with this abysmally slow chase sequence.
The next problem with the movie is what happens after Finn and Rose meet. They realize that Snoke’s flagship (the Mega Star Destroyer) is the one tracking their fleet, so they need a codebreaker to sneak aboard the ship and disable the tracker. This leads them to the casino planet Cantobight… the absolute worst part of the movie (yes, even worse than the chase, because it’s completely unnecessary and adds to the stupidity of the previous).
Things start out bad enough, with the heroes being unnecessarily arrested because they parked their ship in the wrong place, just as they’re about to find the code breaker. But it’s okay, because once they’re thrown in jail, they find DJ, who can do the job just as well, despite the fact that this was supposed to be an incredibly difficult skill.
There’re so many problems with this part of the movie that I honestly don’t even know where to begin.
First of all, I find it almost impossible to get invested in this storyline at all, because it doesn’t have an interesting plot in and of itself. It simply exists so that they can get this master codebreaker and then hurry back to the fleet. It feels like the movie’s just put on pause for twenty minutes while they fulfill this side quest.
Think about some of the other ‘side quests’ in Star Wars movies. In the Tatooine segment on Phantom Menace, yes, the heroes were stranded in a place and trying to escape so that we could get back to the main plot. This, despite its flaws, still works far better than Canto Bight for a number of reasons.
For one thing, this was necessary to introduce Anakin Skywalker, inarguably an important character. DJ is the only character introduced on Canto Bight, and he’s really not important and certainly not interesting. In fact, he’s one of my least favorite Star Wars characters, based on his annoying stutter and the insane convenience and randomness with which he is introduced.
Secondly, while Phantom Menace stayed focused on those characters and that setting, making us feel like it was important even though it could be considered a ‘side quest’, The Last Jedi constantly cuts back to the Resistance fleet, reminding us how much time they have left and that they’re still in this awful chase sequence. We obviously know that this conflict isn’t going to resolve itself until Finn and Rose get back, so we know nothing’s really going to happen there to progress the plot. Yes, stuff does go down between Poe and Holdo later, but that’s after Finn is already back. In the meantime, we’re just watching this boring chase and this uninteresting side quest, waiting for the second to wrap up so the plot can resume.
What makes things even worse, is that there’s a third plotline going on (which I will go in depth to in a bit), which is extremely character heavy with no real action. So, we have all the character development going on between Rey and Kylo, we have Poe stuck with the Resistance fleet in the chase, and Finn and Rose off on Canto Bight facing one hurdle after the next to try to get back to the fleet. Basically, we don’t feel like we’re moving forward, so the movie really starts to stagnate here.
Another problem with Canto Bight is the fact that the movie seems to want to drag this out as long as possible. It’s one thing to have them get arrested (even though the reasons behind it are pretty stupid) because I get that they can’t just get there and get out immediately. But then in their escape they have to go on the long rampage through the city on their space horses, and then their ship is destroyed, and then they get trapped on top of a cliff, before DJ finally shows up and rescues them. I feel like some of this could’ve been cut out to speed things up a bit.
I mean, I know that they’re wrecking the city to show the decadent society getting destroyed, but… do we really need that? Do we need to see them talking about how awful this casino planet is for so long? Especially because it doesn’t even go anywhere. Had they given us some reason to care about this place, like an antagonist or a character we wanted to see liberated (broom boy doesn’t count), it would’ve helped. Of course, that would’ve just meant it took longer for us to get back to the main plot, which is why I stand by my statement that this entire detour was doomed from the start.
The last thing I want to quickly touch on is this absurd coincidence of them just happening to be tossed in the same cell as DJ. Maz said the Master Codebreaker was the only she trusted, aside from herself, that could break into the ship. Obviously, DJ is not trustworthy, but this seems to be pointing to the fact that very few people could pull this off. Yet, there just happens to be another guy on the same planet who just happens to be in the same cell that the heroes are tossed into, that can pull this off. Couldn’t they have just had DJ be the master codebreaker and have had Finn and Rose need to break him out of prison? Wouldn’t that have made this sequence a bit more interesting, sped things up and fixed this plot-hole?
We would’ve seen the heroes actually doing something, rather than just getting tossed back and forth between one danger after the next, with seemingly no control over what’s happening to them (they’re arrested and only freed by DJ, they get cornered but can escape because of the help of the slave children, and they get cornered again, but are rescued by DJ). And, even though it would still have felt like a ‘side quest’, we would at least get to see them presented with a more interesting goal than ‘find someone and leave’, so that everything they go through feels slightly more worthwhile.
Well, now that I’ve gotten my rant on Canto-Bight out of the way, I feel it’s time to move on. While Finn, Poe and Rose have been having their adventures, much more interesting and important things have been going on.
Before the Resistance Fleet is tracked through hyperspace, we pick up right where Force Awakens left off, with Rey holding out the lightsaber to Luke.
Immediately, things don’t go as expected, as Luke tosses the lightsaber away, walks away and tells Rey to leave the island. This would begin a massive controversy over Luke’s character. However, I’m not going to get into that just yet. As soon as Luke learns of Han’s death, we immediately cut to Kylo Ren, who is appearing before Snoke in his throne room. Snoke chastises him for his inner conflict over Han’s death, labeling him as a disappointing apprentice. Having given up all hope of ever returning to his real home by killing his father and now earning his master’s disdain, Kylo Ren destroys his mask and is left in a vulnerable and confused state, again leading the audience to wonder what path he’s going to choose in this movie. The reason I addressed this here is because it’s about to become very important to the interactions between Luke and Rey.
After Luke refuses to train her, Rey stays on the island for days, following Luke and waiting for him to change his mind. Luke stubbornly refuses, until he goes to the Falcon and speaks with R2-D2. Seeing these two best friends get reunited is amazing, and I really don’t think they could’ve handled this scene much better. Once R2-D2 changes Luke’s mind, he agrees to train Rey and convince her of his belief that the Jedi should end.
This part of the movie is a bit difficult to go through chronologically, because it mostly alternates back and forth between Rey speaking with Luke and her speaking with Kylo, as she slowly learns more and more about each of them, and discovers what happened in the past.
So, I’m going to talk about the development for each of these three characters in turn. I’m going to start with Rey and Kylo first because theirs is less controversial.
Given that the last time Rey had seen Kylo he’d just murdered her mentor, she is understandably angry at him when they begin to have a mysterious connection through the force. This plot device is, in my opinion, one of the best things about the movie. This is a way for the main hero and villain to have numerous dialogue scenes and character-building scenes together, that have no action in them whatsoever.
This had never really been done in a Star Wars movie before. Obi-Wan and Dooku get one dialogue scene in Attack of the Clones. Luke has a lengthy dialogue scene with Vader and Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi, but it’s all concentrated right there in one scene (he does talk to Vader earlier, but that’s still very close to the movie’s conclusion). It’s good, but it comes so late in the movie; here we get to see these two characters developing together throughout the movie, so that the stakes have been raised immeasurably when they meet the next time. Yes, it does involve introducing a ‘new’ power (more like an extension of an old one), but in response to that I have to say, I don’t want them to stop expanding the universe while they’re making the movies. If they’re not going to introduce new elements to the story, why bother making more movies?
So, I think this force connection plot device was an amazing idea.
I will also defend to my dying day the romance between Kylo and Rey. Their needed to be some emotional connection between the two of them to make their conflict more meaningful. Anakin and Obi-Wan were best friends; Luke was Vader’s son. Granted, it didn’t have to be a romance necessarily, but given that they met for the first time in Force Awakens, they couldn’t really have given them some past connection, unless they were secretly family but that would’ve just been retreading old ground.
Another thing that makes these scenes so good is that we get to see Rey slowly pulling Kylo towards the light side, continually trying to turn him. The only time before this we’d seen someone trying to turn someone back to the light was Luke with Vader at the end of Episode VI, but again, spreading it out over more of the movie gives the plotline more of a chance to develop. This also works well because the audience is left in suspense as to what Kylo is going to do.
We know Kylo Ren is heavily conflicted at this point (Snoke confirms he’s feeling guilty over his father), he’s seemingly being abandoned by Snoke and his growing connection with Rey is obvious. This movie doubles down on subverted expectations. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But I genuinely enjoyed being uncertain as to what Kylo’s fate was going to be by the end of this movie. Yes, he stays evil so this doesn’t really go anywhere in this film, but the uncertainty was nice while it lasted.
I would also like to comment on the fantastic visuals in this movie. The images of Kylo sitting alone in med bay or standing next to the First Order loading bay not only showcase interesting sets but also symbolize his loneliness and isolation. The shot of Leia on Crait is similarly amazing, with the stark contrast of the red and white on the planet and it somehow managing to capture an almost peaceful vibe, building tension for the impending conflict. Holdo’s sacrifice onboard the Raddus is perhaps one of the greatest visuals in all of Star Wars, and the entire editing style throughout the force vision scenes is amazing. Rian Johnson’s writing in this movie might have some flaws (as stated earlier, there is a lot of bad writing decisions), but his visual style was flawless.
Returning to the main plot, at the same time that Kylo is feeling disillusioned, Rey is also feeling the same way. Luke is a clear disappointment to her, and as Kylo points out, her every effort to find a home is failing. Her uncertainty leads her to the dark cave on the island, where she tries to find answers about her past. Again, the visuals here are superb, with it giving off genuinely creepy vibes.
Following her failure to discover her origins, Rey returns to Kylo, where their bond is strengthened, prompting Rey to leave Ach-To in order to find Kylo and redeem him. This part of the film also serves to defend my opinion that Rey is an interesting character. While I’m by no means saying she’s one of the all-time best Star Wars characters, I do think her need to find a place where she belongs (home, family, etc.) is an interesting idea for a character. While it isn’t really explored as well as it should throughout the trilogy, here it’s handled well, as we see her pulled in two different directions by Luke and Kylo. At first, she sees Kylo as being pure evil and wants nothing to do with him, but the more conflict she senses in him and the more she realizes she doesn’t belong with Luke, who doesn’t want there to be a new generation of Jedi, she begins to think her true place is with Kylo, if she can redeem him into rejecting his villainous alter ego and becoming Ben Solo once again.
Before we get to that part of the movie, however, I need to address the most controversial decision in the entire movie: Luke’s character.
I’m not going to give all the different accounts that Luke and Kylo give Rey of what happened in the past. Suffice it to say, Luke senses Ben’s inner darkness and considers killing him in his sleep to prevent all the carnage that will ensue. Ben Solo wakes up to see his uncle standing over him with a lightsaber, and the fallout results in his fall to the dark side. On one sidenote, I find it interesting that it’s Luke who lies to Rey about this incident and not Kylo, as everything Kylo tells her is true, with the only inconsistency being that it was Kylo who swung his lightsaber at Luke, not the other way around.
At any rate, this leads to Luke’s exile, where he reevaluates the Jedi and comes to the conclusion that they must end, because they have failed in almost every conceivable way, leading to his initial refusal to train Rey. Following this, he attempts to dissuade her from becoming a Jedi, trying to convince her that his way of thinking is right.
Fans were extremely unhappy with this development of Luke’s character. Some of these criticisms I think are fair, some I think are just an aversion to any form of change to beloved characters.
There are too many complaints levied at this part of the movie for me to address all of them but I will do my best. First of all, I do agree that Luke Skywalker contemplating the murder of his nephew and apprentice is pretty far against his character. This does make his character arc for this movie problematic, because it’s entirely based on this pivotal moment. Yes, they try to mitigate this moment, and they partially succeed. Luke does say it’s based on pure instinct, and he clearly regrets it immediately after he strikes his lightsaber but still…
Then again, it is worth noting that Luke has struggled with the dark side before. There’s no reason to expect that he will never, ever struggle with it again after Episode VI. Unfortunately, there’s not really discussion of this aspect. He just seems to contemplate this to prevent future death, not out of some inner darkness. However, it’s also worth bringing up the complaint of how different this is from his handling of Darth Vader, who was seemingly far more evil. While there’s something to these arguments, I think they miss out on something: Luke lived through the Empire’s reign for his entire childhood and most of his life as a young adult. Here, he sees himself given a chance to stop a new Darth Vader and a new Empire from being created. Seeing Luke faced with this dilemma is interesting, but I do understand why this was off-putting to some.
However, as implausible as this setup might seem, what they do with it is pretty good. The idea of seeing a disillusioned Luke Skywalker works because he wants to end the Jedi out of a belief that they are harmful to the galaxy. He’s still a good person who wants to do the right thing, he’s just become embittered towards the Jedi Order and wants to end it because he thinks that’s the moral choice.
But this still sparked a lot of backlash, because many fans said this was antithetical to the hopeful, optimistic Luke Skywalker of the OT. I don’t think there’s as much to this argument because I see thirty years and the descent of his nephew into the dark side, as well as the dissolvement of the marriage of his best friend and his sister as plenty of reason for Luke Skywalker to lose this optimism. Plus, he’s no longer a twenty-year-old; becoming more cynical with age isn’t unbelievable. The only concession I will make is the argument that this change takes place off screen where we don’t get to see Luke go through that evolution, which I do understand. However, there was no real way around this, based on where the Sequel Trilogy was started. Thirty years have passed and a lot has changed. Yes, we have missed seeing a lot of important developments, but that’s to be expected.
Finally, I don’t see Luke sitting out the war as some outrageous decision. Obi-Wan and Yoda both sat out the war in the OT. Yes, they had a plan to set things right, but as already stated, Luke Skywalker no longer believes things can be set right by him or the Jedi. Thus, this decision is rational.
On one final note with Luke Skywalker, just after Rey leaves, his character arc comes to a culmination. He plans to destroy the sacred Jedi texts, before encountering Yoda’s force spirit, who destroys the texts himself (though the end of the movie reveals that Rey did, in fact, save them).
Here, Yoda, clearly the wiser and more experienced of the two masters, chastises Luke in his typical, cheerful fashion. He teaches him that failure is part of a Jedi’s journey, and that Rey, a Jedi, is the best hope of restoring peace to the galaxy, helping to bring Luke out of his disillusionment. It’s a great character scene, and seeing Yoda back is amazing as he’s one of my favorite Star Wars characters. Seeing him and Luke back together again is also great, especially since it’s obvious that as much as Luke has learned, he’s still an apprentice compared to Yoda.
Anyway, Rey heads to Snoke’s flagship and Kylo Ren at the same time Finn and Rose head there with DJ to disable their tracking system. As this happens, however, the Holdo plotline comes to a head, as Poe learns her plan is to evacuate the Resistance Flagship, the Raddus, before he leads a mutiny to end this seemingly insane plan.
I have a couple of points to make here. First of all, the subverted expectations of Holdo not being a traitor aren’t as absurd as fans like to state. The reason they say this is so outrageous is because there is seemingly no reason that Holdo wouldn’t just reveal the details of her plan earlier, or the fact that they have a hidden base on Crait and that the transports will be cloaked, protecting them from the First Order.
This is the second point: Holdo holding out this information does, in fact make sense. For one thing, she doesn’t know that the First Order is tracking them through technology. The rational assumption is that there is a traitor on board (that’s what I’d assumed the first time I watched the film), so why would she want to broadcast this plan to the entire ship? Secondly, remember how the movie began: Poe Dameron tried to be a hero and go on the offensive, rather than making a logical retreat. In other words. There was no reason to believe that he would’ve gone along with this plan, making it an even worse idea to tell him and risk the traitor (who turned out to be nonexistent) finding out.
However, there is one undeniable hole in my defense. The refueling of the transports is taking place on the bridge, meaning Lieutenant Connix (one of Poe’s co-conspirators) would already have been aware of this. Which means that Holdo told the bridge crew about her plants with the transports, but not the destination, making it seem like her plan was utterly inept. I understand not explaining it to Poe, but withholding this one piece of her plan from everyone seems a little contrived.
I suppose I should also touch on Poe’s character arc here. As already stated, he starts out as the reckless hero type, before learning from his mistakes with Holdo as we see at the end of the movie, where he’s the one who counsels taking advantage of Luke’s diversion to escape, rather than throwing their lives away in a useless effort to help him.
Leia, however, defuses the mutiny when she wakes up by stunning Poe, just as Finn and Rose are captured on the flagship. DJ sells out the Resistance’s plan, and Hux orders the bombardment of the transports. And… this brings us to the other reason why I hate Canto Bight. DJ’s only contribution to the movie is to sell out the Resistance’s plan, as the tracker is not disabled. While I like seeing the bad guys actually succeed at something for a change, this makes it seem even more obvious that Canto Bight could’ve been sped up. This is already the longest Star Wars movie and we couldn’t have saved time on a side quest that existed just so the heroes could lose and their plan could get uncovered? Was there really no better way to do this?
At the same time, Kylo takes Rey prisoner as soon as she arrives and takes her to Snoke, who reveals he was the one who connected her with Kylo, in order to use his inner conflict to his own advantage.
Snoke orders Kylo to kill Rey and prove his loyalty. However, Kylo betrays him, igniting the lightsaber on Snoke’s armrest, cutting him in half.
This is, yet again, another controversial use of subverted expectations.
Personally, I think this death is amazing. It’s completely shocking for one thing, and while we all expected Snoke to do more, he wasn’t an overly interesting character. Don’t get me wrong, I like him as a villain, but I don’t see that he was so great that we needed to see more of him. Especially since it developed Kylo’s character, showing him finally rising out of his master’s shadow. Keep in mind, this is central to Kylo’s character, constantly living in either Snoke’s or Vader’s shadow. Here, he finally becomes his own person. And, at the same time, it genuinely makes it look like Kylo has turned to the light side, as immediately after this, he and Rey battle Snoke’s Praetorian Guards.
This entire sequence is one of the high points of the movie, as the scenes between Rey and Snoke are good, Snoke’s death is good, and we get this amazing fight sequence immediately afterwards.
The camera work is great, with the battle opening with long, steady shot of Rey and Kylo fighting back-to-back, before they are separated and they take out their enemies one at a time. This makes up for my disappointment of there being no lightsaber duel in this movie, as we get to see some really great choreography and something unique. The main characters are clearly superior to their opponents in single combat, but with their numbers, they are a clear threat to them. There’s some real tension here (with both Rey and Kylo nearly being killed), and it makes for an extremely entertaining action sequence.
Once the battle ends, Rey asks Kylo to end the bombardment on the Resistance transports now that he is in command of the First Order. However, here we learn that Kylo did not kill Snoke out of a desire to return to the Light Side, but to seize the First Order for himself. He asks Rey to join him on the Dark Side, before revealing that her parents were ‘nobody’ (retconned in the very next movie).
I honestly didn’t have a problem with this twist. I felt like it was a good way of addressing all the rumors about her identity. After all, not every major character has to be related to someone else. While I didn’t have a problem with the reveal of her true identity in the next film, I don’t have a problem with this one either.
Almost as soon as Rey refuses his offer, Admiral Holdo, seeing that the Resistance transports are about to be destroyed, jumps to lightspeed, ramming the Raddus into Snoke’s star destroyer, resulting in one of the greatest visuals in all of Star Wars, only aided by the excellent sound choice of having everything go completely silent.
This attack cripples Snoke’s ship, knocking Kylo unconscious and allowing Rey to escape, while also allowing Finn and Rose to break free. Finn gets his chance for revenge against Phasma as he has to fight his way through her in order to escape. It’s a decent fight, and one that fans had been saying should have been in Force Awakens for two years, so it was entertaining. My problem with it is that it’s so obviously the only reason Phasma was resurrected for the film. However, it does at least give Finn something to do, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
From here, the Resistance flees to Crait, where Kylo launches an attack, aimed at killing them once and for all. The Battle of Crait, while visually reminiscent of Hoth, is so far inferior I don’t even consider it to be a copy. Literally nothing happens. The TIE fighters shoot a couple of turrets, the walkers shoot a few Ski Speeders, and just as Finn is about to sacrifice himself to stop the Battering Ram Cannon being levelled against the gate the Resistance hides behind, Rose intervenes, nearly killing both of them to stop his noble sacrifice, because ‘they’re going to win by saving the things they love’. Never mind the fact that Finn was going to heroically sacrifice himself for his friends… you know, saving the things he loved.
Also, worth noting, this would’ve been a great sendoff for Finn. It would’ve been emotional, it would’ve been surprising, and there was clearly nothing left to do with his character in the next film. It would’ve been so good. I mean, I think Finn’s a fine character, but I think giving him such a powerful sendoff would’ve meant far more than keeping him around for another movie so he could be sidelined yet again.
Anyway, as Poe, Finn and Leia attempt to find an escape from the cave so they can fly away on the Falcon (piloted by Rey and Chewie), Kylo Ren prepares his attack, now that the main door has been destroyed, thanks to Rose.
However, Luke Skywalker arrives and confronts Kylo Ren.
Something immediately seems off, however, as Luke doesn’t fight Kylo with his lightsaber, but merely dodges all of his attacks. It’s soon revealed that this is merely a projection of Luke through the force, as the Jedi Master has not left Ach-To. I have mixed feelings about this scene. I like the twist, but at the same time, I would’ve liked to see an actual duel between these two.
Additionally, this represents a problem with Kylo’s character arc in this movie and in the previous film. Every time we see Kylo Ren rise up and do something impressive, he’s immediately undercut. He killed his father, before being shot by Chewbacca. He defeated Finn, before being defeated by Rey. He kills Snoke and is knocked unconscious. He becomes Supreme Leader, corners the Resistance and breaks through their defenses, before being outsmarted by Luke. It’s really frustrating, because Kylo could’ve been so much more menacing (and he was in the next film). I get that, because he’s so conflicted, he is intentionally less scary than say Vader or Maul, but I feel like they overuse this setup. Seeing him have even just one success that wasn’t immediately undercut would’ve been nice.
However, Luke’s actual death is really well done, as it calls back to the binary sun set on Tatooine. It’s a nice way of tying his character arc across the two trilogies.
Anyway, Rey embraces her destiny as a Jedi, destroys the rock wall entrapping the Resistance, and the heroes escape on the Falcon.
So, as is probably obvious, I have very mixed feelings about this film. I absolutely love certain parts of it. Basically, everything between Luke, Rey, Kylo and Snoke is amazing. Almost everything else, unfortunately, ranges from trash to just bland. I still enjoy the movie, and walk away with overall positive feelings every time I watch it, but I feel like it could’ve been so much better. Sometimes the subverted expectations work well, such as genuinely surprising twists (Snoke’s death for instance), but then sometimes it just feels pointless, and after a while it gets tiresome. Why does everything have to have a twist behind it?
However, what I love about this movie (aside from all the great character development) is how unique it is. This film stands out from all the other eight episodes, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for… not so good reasons.
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