Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi | Review
"There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
A warning: this review will contain spoilers and is going to be a bit longer than my other reviews.
Also, just as a reminder: this is my personal opinion and shouldn't be taken as a slight against your own. The fact that I even need to clarify that speaks volumes about the current state of the Star Wars fandom, or even people who just enjoyed or didn't enjoy the movie. Please don't be rude or dismissive or overly defensive/offensive simply because I might not agree with you on certain points.
Thanks.
Those of you who know me even a little bit should be well aware that I'm a massive fan of Star Wars. My first memory of a movie that I was truly obsessed with was the original film in George Lucas's seemingly fever-dream inspired saga, back then simply called 'Star Wars' (the 'Episode IV: A New Hope' subtitle was missing not because Lucas hadn't written anything else—he absolutely had—but because it was expected to be a small, inconsequential movie in the lineup of 20th Century Fox's 1977 release year).
I was four or five years old when I first saw that movie at home on the VHS copy of the Special Edition Trilogy box set my parents had bought. I remember where it would distort and blur and need to be fast forwarded through because the VHS player would eject the worn and overused magnetic tape if I didn't. I remember watching the second act that takes place aboard the Death Star, which leads into the climactic trench run sequence over and over and over until I could practically feel that the images were etched onto the back of my eyes.
The story itself just drew me in each time I watched it, though I didn't exactly understand why. Today, I can articulate the reason is simply that the entire original trilogy is absorbing, well-made cinema, full of tension and emotion and high stakes that made me (and still make me) feel all the thrills that Lucas intended to be there. Back then, it was the magic of a story well told to a young kid who was willing to believe, even for a second, that the future could be as exciting and adventurous as what was on screen. Now, I think it's the artistry with which that same story was crafted, and the ingenuity of the people behind the camera (and on it) that fascinates me.
Looking back on those endless, obsessive repeat viewings, I realize now that the only reason I was so utterly enthralled with those films was because my parents had brought them home in the first place. I think now more than ever, Star Wars is tied to one of the most important parts of my life: my family. I wasn't always watching the films alone; my brother, my sister, my parents, even my dog would sit there and watch with me sometimes. It was a family affair, though I'm sure I still drove at least my parents crazy with how much I wanted to have repeat viewings.
But still, when I think about Star Wars now, I think about my family. I think about watching those movies together and feeling like I was five years old again—not because of the story or the plot, but because Star Wars was something that we did together.
A lot of kids felt like that and still do. Minus my dad, everyone in my immediate family went to see the latest chapter in the Skywalker Saga: Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi. There were moments in the theater while we waited for the lights to dim that I actually felt emotional simply because we were there together. No other movie series does that for me. That fact right there makes it impossible for me to deny that there's something intrinsically special about Star Wars. It's characters, it's weirdness, it's message–any number of things combined to make it the enduring piece of beloved Americana that it is.
But for the first time in my life as the end credits scrolled for The Last Jedi, I felt that what I had just watched was something I had never thought a Star Wars movie would be: inconsistent.
Now, to be fair, consistency in the Star Wars universe is and has always been a point of contention for fans of the series. I'm pretty sure several land wars have been started over Disney's choice to effectively uncanonize the Extended Universe and clean the slate for their new stories moving forward. As much as older fans might want to see Mara Jade or Jacen and Jaina Solo appear on the big screen, the Mouse has its own ideas for what it wants fans to obsess over in the future. And those obsessions circle around Rey, Kylo Ren, Finn, Poe, and all the new characters introduced in The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and now The Last Jedi.
But as I said, the problems I think are inherent to Rian Johnson's newest film stem from the inconsistencies of its characters, not necessarily it's production or it's direction. Let me be perfectly clear: from both of those standpoints, The Last Jedi is a solid movie. The direction feels assured throughout every scene and I think the acting is some of the best it's ever been in the series. On top of that, the fantastic cinematography by Steve Yedlin and much of the visual work done by the incredibly talented artists at ILM make for a true blockbuster experience that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
But those things always, always come secondary to the plot of a film and the characters within it. They're the backbone, the thing that the audience latches onto for the duration of the ride. We go with the plot and the characters; we trust that wherever they take us, we'll be shown things that will amaze us or scare us or make question what we think we know. And The Last Jedi is absolutely fixated on making the audience question what we've come to know and in my opinion, it sacrifices the quality of its plot and the depth of its characters in order to try and change the status quo for better or for worse.
Andrew Stanton, the current VP of Creativity at Pixar and director of Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, and WALL-E, has this fantastic TED talk where he covers his relationship with storytelling. Here's a quote that I think really nails what exactly makes a good story so engaging.
"Storytelling is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings."
I think that's a perfect way to sum up Star Wars as it appeared on screen back in 1977. It was a simple story, one that wasn't built upon 30+ years of its own context and cinematic language. At it's very simplest, it was a distillation of the Hero's Journey, told in an exciting way that engaged and engrossed practically everyone who saw it, so much so that it spawned generation after generation of people who to this day are still obsessed with it, myself included. So for Disney, the question became this: how, in modern cinema, do you continue that success without ruining what made it so special in the first place?
The success of J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens seemed to prove to everyone that, yes, Disney understood exactly what they were doing with the series and had a clear vision for its future. They'd even begun experimenting, albeit very carefully, with the so-called anthology films, the first of which was Rogue One, and was another massive success on Disney's part. But let's be clear here: the main films—the Saga films—are what really carry the weight of Star Wars on their backs. They push the story forward, they ask the big questions, and they have the greatest emotional baggage attached to them. And for two years, fans waited eagerly to see the questions that The Force Awakens asked of its characters to be answered, for the story to be progressed from the point it was left off at.
But for all it's build up, all it's hype, and all of Disney's mastery of marketing, The Last Jedi felt inconsistent above everything else, and that same inconsistency muddied the water that the audience is left to wade in in its wake. To return to Andrew Stanton's analogy of storytelling, it felt like a joke that started off strong but got so carried away with its own setup that its punchline carried little weight and left me feeling more confused and annoyed than satisfied or complete.
There are an abundance of issues I have with The Last Jedi, from Luke and his reasoning for even thinking about killing his own nephew in cold blood, to Finn and Rose's ultimately meaningless side plot on Canto Bight where we learn that we're supposed to save animals and that rich people are just the worst kind of people in the galaxy (I find this ironic coming from Disney), to the ending of the film and the fact that the main characters are all pretty much in the exact same place as they were at the beginning. But these are things that people much more articulate and argumentative than myself have already discussed and fought about online. None of those are my biggest problems with the film, but they are emblematic of the type of film I think it ultimately is.
All of those little issues (and big ones) really hit me hard after I sat down and thought about The Last Jedi. When the credits rolled, I actually liked it and enjoyed my time with it immediately after it ended, and the emotions of simply watching a new Star Wars movie were still buzzing. But once I got home and talked about the things that bothered me, I came to realize that I didn't actually agree with what I'd seen and learned about the characters I'd grown to care for.
I've thought a lot about The Last Jedi, more than any other Star Wars movie I've ever seen, and possibly more than any other movie this year. I wracked my brain to try and pinpoint exactly why I didn't enjoy it, why I couldn't accept how it viewed its own characters, and what made it all feel so ultimately empty. I kept coming back to that same feeling of inconsistency. Why did it feel so... seperate from all the other movies?
There's a multitude of reasons why the original trilogy is so beloved and I believe one of them is because as a whole, the three films that make it up feel so incredibly consistent with each other. There's never a point in them where the audience is second-guessing the characters or the plot going on around them. All three of the stories they tell work together to put Luke, Han, and Leia in difficult situations and pit them against both outward enemies and inward conflict that lead to plot resolutions that carry over into the next film, or create the circumstances for the ultimate ending of ROTJ. You can sit down, as many people have, and watch all three movies in a row and follow the logical progression of their plots easily.
Yet that same feeling of consistency is broken within the first fifteen minutes or so of The Last Jedi when Luke throws his old lightsaber (and Anakin's lightsaber, which makes it essentially a family heirloom at this point) over his shoulder. The moment is played for a laugh, and it absolutely got one out of me along with the rest of the audience I was watching with. But when I reflected on that moment afterward, it felt wrong... and I knew why.
If you watch The Force Awakens, the setup for the entire film leads up to the ending where we see Luke's reaction to Rey holding out his old lightsaber. The emotions that play across his face are vivid and intense! He's confused at first that someone has found him, then he stares in disbelief and wonder at this girl holding out this weapon he lost 30 years ago. There are actual tears in his eyes as the music swells and the camera cuts closer in on him. It's an absolutely stirring scene and one that left fans thinking for years.
But in The Last Jedi, that scene has been literally redone. Aside from the location, they reshot the moment to moment reactions, something that's never been done in a Star Wars movie before. And it feels weird! Knowing how The Force Awakens ends and then seeing that same ending redone to fit the narrative of the new movie where the same scene is ultimately played off for a quick laugh feels so incredibly disingenuous. It's a canonized retconning of a scene that had the perfect amount of emotional gravity to it already, which leads me to my final point.
Expectations.
There's been a lot of talk about The Last Jedi and expectations that fans had for it. Fan theories were as abundant as they've ever been for a Star Wars saga film, especially the second in a trilogy that's supposedly going to be breaking new ground. Rian Johnson himself has replied to fan theories on Twitter, and much of Disney's promotion of the film hinted at the story not "going to go the way you think" it would.
For the most part, I stayed away from any trailers Disney released prior to the last four months of promotion for the film. I watched the first teaser trailer and that was it; I didn't want to know anything else about it until I sat down in the theater and watched it for myself. So for all intents and purposes, I had a few theories in my head that I thought the movie might go with, but I was open and willing to go with it wherever it ultimately decided to take us.
The only expectations I had was that The Last Jedi would take me on a journey that would ultimately lead me somewhere worth my time. That's the point of a good story. That's what every Star Wars movie promises its audience before the fanfare starts: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." To quote Stanton one last time:
"...That's what all good stories should do at the beginning, is they should give you a promise.... A well told promise is like a pebble being pulled back in a slingshot and it propels you forward through the story to the end."
I think that that's what a lot of people would say a good story does. It takes you on a journey from one point to another in an arc that makes sense and leads to some sort of conclusion that fits within the context that was created for it, and that works both for individual movies and sequels and trilogies. That's the expectation I had when The Force Awakens was about to come out for the first time in 2015. There was a promise being made about certain things I cared about, and I hoped that the film would launch the story in a new and exciting direction. And it absolutely did.
But for me, The Last Jedi feels like a sort of ricochet in the arc that The Force Awakens launched the third Star Wars trilogy—and the audience—on. As it's own movie without the context it's built on, The Last Jedi works wonderfully! It's got so many fantastic moments of awe and spectacle and at the same time, intimate moments full of emotion and revelation that draw you in. But the thing with trilogies and especially Star Wars is that you can't judge a single movie on its own. The audience, critics, and fans both hardcore and not are all subjecting the film to everything that came before it (and what's going to happen after it), not just The Force Awakens.
To me, The Last Jedi represents something that desperately wants to make its mark upon Star Wars, but is unwilling to do anything that will ultimately change what we've come to expect. Characters do things and fail and learn, but those lessons ultimately lead them back to the same place they were before. One of the main points of the movie is failure, in every sense of the word: legends who don't live up to their myths. Plans that fall apart despite the best intentions. Answers that leave you disappointed because you were hoping for something more.
It's all an interesting take on the mythos of Star Wars and a valid point against the movies that have come before it. But in the end, The Last Jedi simply presents its answers to its characters and its audience, then rolls the credits. It's a strangely plotted film that circles around itself in the most taunting way, teasing its characters with potential new directions to go before shutting the door in front of them and telling them to follow what's come before.
In the end, there's still a small group of rebels fighting against a massive, seemingly unstoppable evil army, with an amour-clad, red lightsaber wielding bad guy on one side, and an inexperienced Jedi on the other.
In the end, it's light against dark.
A promise we've seen fulfilled before.