The Last Jedi: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The+Last+Jedi%3A+The+Good%2C+The+Bad%2C+And+The+Ugly

Aidan Herklotz

 

                                                      

Star Wars The Last Jedi has come out, and it’s definitely the most polarizing Star Wars film to date. The Audience and Critic scores are a good example of this, with the Critic score currently being at 90%, and the Audience Score being at 40% (this is using Rotten Tomatoes, by the way). The fan-base is completely split on this film, half really liked it, half thought it was terrible. Personally, I enjoyed it greatly, but I can appreciate where everyone else is coming from, which is what I’m writing about now. Due to the split nature of this film, I thought it would be good to talk about some of the really good, and some of the really bad, in multiple segments of course.

Also, I may be sort of biased, but that’s just because I’m a huge fan. And this should go without saying, but you should expect some spoilers.

 

  • The Good: Rey and Kylo’s “Relationship.”

Disclaimer: I will not be talking about the popular “Reylo” ship in this segment, it’s just too weird. The Last Jedi shows the best light-side/dark-side relationship since Luke and Vader in (obviously) Rey and Kylo ren. Their whole force facetime thing (or forcetime, if you will) going on created a completely new force power, which also shows up again at the end of the film. Their whole dynamic has been seen before, but somehow it seems completely new. Luke may have tried the same “turning the dark to the light,” thing with Vader in episode VI, but that whole thing is played differently in The Last Jedi. Rey may try to turn Kylo to her side, but it completely backfires and he becomes twice as worse. So many people complain about how the sequels are too different or too similar from the originals, but this dynamic between characters reaches a middle-ground between the two, and isn’t that what everyone wants?

 

  • The Bad: Humor at the Wrong Place and Wrong Time.

Okay. I can understand why the creators of The Last Jedi would put in some light humor here and there– every movie does, but this time they went a bit too far. Some of the jokes are justified (and pretty funny), like “Not a page-turner, they were” (from Yoda), or “hey, sacred planet, watch the language” (from Luke to Artoo) because those are both true to their respective characters, Yoda was always cracking jokes and Artoo is the kind of droid who would curse a lot. Some of the other jokes are the exact opposite (what did I say, polarized), unjustified (and really corny). Such as “Do you think you got him” (from Hux) or “Jakku, Yeah, that’s pretty much nowhere” (from Luke). For the former example, some extremely dramatic moments in film (like the death of a major character, perhaps) should be left alone from humor. In these times, I think back to the classic scene from The Empire Strikes Back, the freezing of Han Solo. Watch this scene again, listen carefully and you might just hear an annoying protocol droid screaming in my ear about how he can’t see properly. This is a perfectly good example of how one little supporting character can “ruin” a perfectly good scene, like Hux when Kylo (almost) blasted Luke in that first example. That goes the same for the latter example too, dramatic moments, inappropriate timing for a line, etc., etc.

 

  • The Good: Those Lightsaber Battles.

Before The Last Jedi came out, I never thought a lightsaber battle where lightsabers didn’t actually touch would be better than one that did, but I was dead wrong. That confrontation between Luke and Kylo was probably better than any fight from the sequels, and most of them in the prequels. Ever since the original trilogy, lightsabers have never really been about the choreography or the acrobatic stunts, the prequels made them that way, but it’s always been about the conversation between characters. Think about it, “I am your father,” “I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” “I’m a jedi, like my father before me,” those are all lines in lightsaber battles, and also what they’re known for. Nobody sees the Luke vs. Vader fight in Empire Strikes Back and remembers some random saber-blow, they remember that Vader is Luke’s father. It’s pretty brilliant really.

 

  • The Bad: Flying Leia.

Disclaimer: I love Carrie Fisher as much as the next man, so I really regret having to say anything bad about her, but it has to happen. Okay, time for some real-talk, I happened to like this sequence, but just because I like something doesn’t mean I can’t recognize the flaws in it. I have the same problems with this that everyone does; Leia couldn’t survive that long in space, you can’t fly with the force, Leia should have died here, all those. For the first problem, I agree. You can’t survive more than 15 seconds in space, this is a rule that many movies break, for example: Guardians of the Galaxy, The Martian, Gravity, etc. In all of these examples, people survive in space. But I don’t see this as an error as much as a tribute to Carrie Fisher. The moonlight shining on her face, her hand just slightly twitching at first, her flying through the Supremacy’s hologram (foreshadowing), all great stuff. For the second problem, you can fly with the force, in the non-canon Expanded Universe. But, force-flight is still theoretically possible, if you can move anything with the force (size matters not), then you should be able to move yourself, but I do agree that Jedi should have a limit to their powers.

 

  • The Good: The Questions Left Unanswered.

Is it just me, or does every movie sequel answer every question asked about its predecessor? I love when movies answer a question with even more questions, it keeps me thinking, it keeps me guessing, it keeps me on the edge of my seat, I love it! So that is why I love that about The Last Jedi, we still don’t know anything about Snoke’s backstory, we still don’t know who Rey’s, and by a lesser extent, Finn’s, parents are, and we still have no idea what Leia’s role is going to be in episode 9. According to me, it’s even better than actually answering the questions themselves. If you tell everyone about all the characters right at the start, or even in the sequel, nobody’s going to come back for the end of the trilogy. That is one of the reasons why so many franchises don’t even get off of the runway. Or the ground floor, whatever idiom you prefer.

 

So there we have it, the best and worst things about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I really loved this movie, even it’s flaws, so I thought that this would be a good way to make an article about my favorite movie franchise of all time. If you haven’t seen The Last Jedi yet, I highly recommend watching it, and also, why are you reading this? Go watch the movie already, jeez.