Movie Review - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

MegaSoulhero I saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi! This was probably my most anticipated movie of the year. I’ve always been a huge Star Wars fan and I really loved the Force Awakens. So I wanted to see more of those characters. Anyway, let’s get to it.

It takes place where the last film left off. Rey hands Luke his lightsaber on an island that’s shaped like a shoe and he helps her learn the ways of the Force. While that’s happening, the resistance preparing to battle against the First Order. Which leads to space battles and stuff. So yeah. It’s a Star Wars film. To get positives out of the way, it’s not a remake of Empire Strikes Back! This is something people were worried about since the Force Awakens was similar to A New Hope. The Last Jedi feels like an entirely different film. It takes a lot of risks and doesn’t copy the other films. I really loved the visuals! The effects are brilliantly done and the scenery is amazing! One thing that’s so great about Star Wars films is that they introduce us to these new creative environments. Some of the outer space moments look very impressive as well. There was this one moment that happens and it was beautiful. The audience literally gasped when it happened. Mark Hamill gives his best performance as Luke Skywalker. Seeing him again after all this time was really thrilling. You can tell how hurt the character is through his performance. Even Kylo Ren gives an amazing performance. They gave him a lot more development. He went from being just some moody character to being someone who wants to prove to himself that he’s more powerful than others think. And now for Carrie Fisher. I got a little emotional while watching. She gave such a great performance! She definitely showed off her talent here. All of her scenes were great. She is deeply missed.

The movie may have some pretty awesome moments, but it also has some bad moments. It was tonally inconsistent! At times it doesn’t know if it wants to be a dark and serious film or a comedy. The tone is all over the place. There would be these epic and dramatic scenes that would be ruined by a joke. The humor isn’t as overused as Thor: Ragnarok’s humor, but it’s still used quite a lot. The jokes weren’t even very funny. There was a scene with Chewie flying the Millennium Falcon while a Porg is in there. There were literally three jokes involving that Porg in only two minutes of that scene! And also, I HATE PORGS! When I first heard about these things, I said that would only be in the movie to be cute and not add anything whatsoever. I was totally right! They were completely pointless! Why were they there? At least they weren’t in the film for very long. Speaking of pointless things, Phasma comes back. She was very underused in the Force Awakens. She seemed like a cool character, but she didn’t really do anything cool. I thought that since they were bringing her back in this movie they would give her more to do. Nope! She was wasted once again! I was also really hoping that Snoke would have an excellent role. I was glad we got to see him in his physical form instead of as a hologram. As the movie kept going on, I was getting very excited during Snoke’s scenes and I wanted to see where this was gonna go. Then something happened and it made me VERY angry!

At a runtime of 150 minutes, this is the longest Star Wars movie to date. And there is definitely things that could’ve been cut out. There’s a whole subplot involving Finn and a new character named Rose. It literally goes nowhere! There was no point in it! It felt like I was watching something completely different. It seemed as though they needed to give Finn something to do and that was the best they could come up with. If this entire subplot were cut, the movie would be at least 30 minutes shorter. It was unnecessarily long. Oh, and let’s talk about Rose. If you thought Jar Jar Binks was bad, Rose is on a whole new level. I hated her so much I wanted to rip my brain out! She was very annoying and ruined dramatic moments! Finn was about to do an act of heroism at the end, but Rose had to go and ruin it! And she put the resistance at risk by doing that! Her relationship with Finn is very forced. I never felt a real connection between them. I know that Rose has feeling for Finn and Finn doesn’t feel the same way, but this just made her a lot worse. The editing was also crap at times. It would cut from the resistance scenes to Rey and Luke in a very unorganized way. The movie also had some of the worst action scenes of any Star Wars film! It was nothing but noise and a ton of CG thrown in like crazy! It was kind of a mess. They could’ve been good, but I just couldn’t process what was going on.

Overall, the Last Jedi is a step back from the Force Awakens. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. I really loved the amount of character development as well as the visuals. And when the movie gets dark, it’s done pretty well to an extent. However, there was a lot of wasted potential. Some moments worked and some didn’t work. Maybe I’ll watch it a second time and see if I have a change of opinion. But for now, I will say that it is a good movie but not a great one. At least I also got to see Hamilton this weekend. That will be my next review by the way.

Score: 7/10

Comments

Once, I went to my local Disney store a few days ago to buy Christmas presents, and in the Star Wars section...was a huge stack of really creepy Porg plushies in a table for 15 bucks. - TristGamer