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drwexIt's possible that "The Last Jedi" is the best Star Wars film of all time. I would argue that it's the best Star Wars film of this century, and sets a high bar for everything that follows. (3/5 stars only because it's such a mess as a film)
This film has to be analyzed at least two levels: as a film, and as a Star Wars film that is the followup to "The Force Awakens". For convenience I'm going to use TLJ to refer to this film and TFA for the previous one. Unfortunately, almost any serious analysis is going to involve spoilers for TLJ and TFA, so it'll be behind a cut. Also, this got a bit long...
As a film, TLJ still suffers from the incoherence and illogic that have plagued Star Wars films since the beginning. Trying to make space combat be like WWII-era big ships and little fighters is a cute gimmick but it's utterly senseless. The films have always been incapable of depicting ground combat in anything but the most absurd terms. You have a lot of vehicles attacking a mountain stronghold. Why do you deploy them in a WIDE LINE when your target is a single door? When you attack this wide line, why do you send your ships IN A STRAIGHT LINE at them? Apparently, people of all sorts are incapable of hitting things that move in straight lines.
This film has other versions of that idiocy. A massively central set of scenes depends on you believing that two spaceships, of entirely different designs and builds, somehow have *precisely* the same top speeds such that neither one is able to gain distance on the other. Because... whatever, they don't even try to explain it. F=ma is apparently not a thing in the Star Wars universe.
The personal combat scenes in this film are also still as stiff and wooden as they've always been. Get a real fight choreographer, please. I get better fight scenes in cheezy Star Wars-themed video games now. Marvel (think Cap/Bucky/Iron Man) and other films have raised the bar for action choreography. Even something like "Atomic Blonde" has excellent movement and believable action. Star Wars has cool force effects to play with and a set of potentially interesting weapons. But TLJ's fight scenes are just awful - all the more disappointing because Rey's training montage bit seemed like it would offer something good.
The film also suffers from larger incoherence and pacing problems. Can someone please definitively tell me how long Rey's time on Luke's island is supposed to be? Judging from the light/dark bits I am guessing it was multiple days. But the action elsewhere that we see interspersed with it seems to be... hours?
The pacing of other parts of the film also suffers. Finn/Rose's trip to the casino planet takes way too long and pretty much any scene with Snoke takes too long because geezus insufferable git is insufferable. Where TFA foregrounded Rey and let other stories take place in her orbit TLJ has too little Rey screen time in favor of useless things like "dear gods why do you have to execute people with stupid electric axes and drawn out speeches when you have a perfectly functional blaster in your hand?"
If I'd been in charge I would have given Rey-Kylo more paired screen time. Their interactions shine as the strongest parts of the film. She just _knows_ and he's so full of uncertainty. She comes out of her training so clear and beautifully focused and he's still getting put-downs from his mentor? Yeah, you know how this is going to end.
TLJ also seems pretty casual with how people know things, particularly in the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" bit. There's suspension of disbelief and there's "you're doing this because of course you have to even if it makes no sense." TLJ definitely lands on the latter side.
Whew. OK, so that's the bad stuff. TLJ does do several things well as a film that are worth calling out. One is that it handles a diverse cast well. Every significant character grows and develops. I downgraded Guardians 2 because it couldn't manage to develop more than 2 characters. TLJ shows growth and development for at least 8 characters - pretty much everyone on the good side and Kylo Ren.
I credit the film - and particularly newcomer Rian Johnson - for understanding the kind of humor that makes Star Wars films fun. "I'm holding for General Hux" - hilarious. "Every word of what you just said was wrong" - used _twice_ to great effect. And we get the Yoda we first knew back again. The one that played tricks on young Luke and was generally a lovable smart-ass while still being the strongest and wisest one around.
Another thing TLJ does well as a film is stake its own ground within the Star Wars mythos, which brings me to analysis level 2 - how is this as a Star Wars film?
I can see why the SW trufans are mostly up in arms about it. TLJ takes an enormous amount of what has become accepted SW canon and says "nope, not actually true." Personally, this is one of the things I liked most about the film. I've always hated the "Jedi as mystical ubermenschen" thing and please don't get me started on midichlorians. TLJ goes back to the idea that the Force is a shared energy. If you can remember when Luke and Obi Wan are first talking and training there's much more of a sense that the force is a universal thing, and the Jedi are simply those who have trained to use that power. TLJ in my opinion is drawing from that original source.
If your world-view is built around the notion of an elite quasi-religious semi-mystical order and your self-imagined membership in it, I can see why you'd be upset that a cast-off nobody on a backwater planet could be as powerful as ... excuse me, MORE powerful than your heritage-infused leader. Y'know what? Get over it.
The explicit return to the force as a universal, agnostic energy is awesome. The notion that the ultra-fearful "dark side" is nothing more than an inescapable requirement to face yourself? Fantastic. The idea that the last remaining priest of this religion would slag off the long-preserved texts and then literally set his own temple on fire? Brilliant.
This is the true strength of the film and it's something you see in a good 'reboot' though TLJ isn't explicitly advertised that way. However, that's what it does - reboot the Star Wars universe, which had become cluttered with trappings and constraints and dicta that weren't helping anyone. Blow it up, burn it down and then have your last Jedi transubstantiate - THAT's how you reboot. The field is now open and clear and we have interesting people to populate it.
I'm even sadder now that Carrie Fisher is gone. Seeing Leia in whatever comes next could have been absolutely pivotal. She's going to leave a huge hole and I don't envy the writer trying to work around that. I totally expected her character to die in this film and I'm glad they didn't take the easy route. Having Dern's Vice Admiral Holdo take that step instead was a good directorial choice.
While I'm crediting Holdo, another nod to how Johnson handles her interactions with Poe. She's absolutely right and her character shows how the Rebellion needs and appeals to people like her as well as people like Poe. As a Star Wars movie this is a good and noteworthy set of choices to make. Poe in some ways is definitely a younger Han Solo but Han never had a good foil. With Rey's focus shifting to Kylo Ren this film needed a good one for Poe and Holdo provides that.
This film has to be analyzed at least two levels: as a film, and as a Star Wars film that is the followup to "The Force Awakens". For convenience I'm going to use TLJ to refer to this film and TFA for the previous one. Unfortunately, almost any serious analysis is going to involve spoilers for TLJ and TFA, so it'll be behind a cut. Also, this got a bit long...
As a film, TLJ still suffers from the incoherence and illogic that have plagued Star Wars films since the beginning. Trying to make space combat be like WWII-era big ships and little fighters is a cute gimmick but it's utterly senseless. The films have always been incapable of depicting ground combat in anything but the most absurd terms. You have a lot of vehicles attacking a mountain stronghold. Why do you deploy them in a WIDE LINE when your target is a single door? When you attack this wide line, why do you send your ships IN A STRAIGHT LINE at them? Apparently, people of all sorts are incapable of hitting things that move in straight lines.
This film has other versions of that idiocy. A massively central set of scenes depends on you believing that two spaceships, of entirely different designs and builds, somehow have *precisely* the same top speeds such that neither one is able to gain distance on the other. Because... whatever, they don't even try to explain it. F=ma is apparently not a thing in the Star Wars universe.
The personal combat scenes in this film are also still as stiff and wooden as they've always been. Get a real fight choreographer, please. I get better fight scenes in cheezy Star Wars-themed video games now. Marvel (think Cap/Bucky/Iron Man) and other films have raised the bar for action choreography. Even something like "Atomic Blonde" has excellent movement and believable action. Star Wars has cool force effects to play with and a set of potentially interesting weapons. But TLJ's fight scenes are just awful - all the more disappointing because Rey's training montage bit seemed like it would offer something good.
The film also suffers from larger incoherence and pacing problems. Can someone please definitively tell me how long Rey's time on Luke's island is supposed to be? Judging from the light/dark bits I am guessing it was multiple days. But the action elsewhere that we see interspersed with it seems to be... hours?
The pacing of other parts of the film also suffers. Finn/Rose's trip to the casino planet takes way too long and pretty much any scene with Snoke takes too long because geezus insufferable git is insufferable. Where TFA foregrounded Rey and let other stories take place in her orbit TLJ has too little Rey screen time in favor of useless things like "dear gods why do you have to execute people with stupid electric axes and drawn out speeches when you have a perfectly functional blaster in your hand?"
If I'd been in charge I would have given Rey-Kylo more paired screen time. Their interactions shine as the strongest parts of the film. She just _knows_ and he's so full of uncertainty. She comes out of her training so clear and beautifully focused and he's still getting put-downs from his mentor? Yeah, you know how this is going to end.
TLJ also seems pretty casual with how people know things, particularly in the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" bit. There's suspension of disbelief and there's "you're doing this because of course you have to even if it makes no sense." TLJ definitely lands on the latter side.
Whew. OK, so that's the bad stuff. TLJ does do several things well as a film that are worth calling out. One is that it handles a diverse cast well. Every significant character grows and develops. I downgraded Guardians 2 because it couldn't manage to develop more than 2 characters. TLJ shows growth and development for at least 8 characters - pretty much everyone on the good side and Kylo Ren.
I credit the film - and particularly newcomer Rian Johnson - for understanding the kind of humor that makes Star Wars films fun. "I'm holding for General Hux" - hilarious. "Every word of what you just said was wrong" - used _twice_ to great effect. And we get the Yoda we first knew back again. The one that played tricks on young Luke and was generally a lovable smart-ass while still being the strongest and wisest one around.
Another thing TLJ does well as a film is stake its own ground within the Star Wars mythos, which brings me to analysis level 2 - how is this as a Star Wars film?
I can see why the SW trufans are mostly up in arms about it. TLJ takes an enormous amount of what has become accepted SW canon and says "nope, not actually true." Personally, this is one of the things I liked most about the film. I've always hated the "Jedi as mystical ubermenschen" thing and please don't get me started on midichlorians. TLJ goes back to the idea that the Force is a shared energy. If you can remember when Luke and Obi Wan are first talking and training there's much more of a sense that the force is a universal thing, and the Jedi are simply those who have trained to use that power. TLJ in my opinion is drawing from that original source.
If your world-view is built around the notion of an elite quasi-religious semi-mystical order and your self-imagined membership in it, I can see why you'd be upset that a cast-off nobody on a backwater planet could be as powerful as ... excuse me, MORE powerful than your heritage-infused leader. Y'know what? Get over it.
The explicit return to the force as a universal, agnostic energy is awesome. The notion that the ultra-fearful "dark side" is nothing more than an inescapable requirement to face yourself? Fantastic. The idea that the last remaining priest of this religion would slag off the long-preserved texts and then literally set his own temple on fire? Brilliant.
This is the true strength of the film and it's something you see in a good 'reboot' though TLJ isn't explicitly advertised that way. However, that's what it does - reboot the Star Wars universe, which had become cluttered with trappings and constraints and dicta that weren't helping anyone. Blow it up, burn it down and then have your last Jedi transubstantiate - THAT's how you reboot. The field is now open and clear and we have interesting people to populate it.
I'm even sadder now that Carrie Fisher is gone. Seeing Leia in whatever comes next could have been absolutely pivotal. She's going to leave a huge hole and I don't envy the writer trying to work around that. I totally expected her character to die in this film and I'm glad they didn't take the easy route. Having Dern's Vice Admiral Holdo take that step instead was a good directorial choice.
While I'm crediting Holdo, another nod to how Johnson handles her interactions with Poe. She's absolutely right and her character shows how the Rebellion needs and appeals to people like her as well as people like Poe. As a Star Wars movie this is a good and noteworthy set of choices to make. Poe in some ways is definitely a younger Han Solo but Han never had a good foil. With Rey's focus shifting to Kylo Ren this film needed a good one for Poe and Holdo provides that.
