I gave it a week to percolate, so here’s my take on Ep8 THE LAST JEDI (2017):  if you like Star Wars, or tentpole blockbusters, then go see it, if you haven’t already!  It’s better than Ep7 THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) – primarily because director Rian Johnson takes the creative risks which JJ Abram’s didn’t/couldn’t in what boiled down to his mega-budgeted fanfic remake of Ep4 A NEW HOPE (1977).  But marked blemishes keep Ep8 from surpassing Ep4 or Ep5 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) – mostly since the narration and characters still have to fit the defective straitjacket established by Kathleen Kennedy/Abrams in Ep7.

Good:

• Awesome CGI and action sequences (they just keep on getting better and more visually striking)
• Interesting narrative choices; Johnson really tries to surprise and go against Disney expectations within the straitjacket imposed on him
• Better attempts at characterization than in Ep7 (caveats below!)
• Corny humor is back, including comic relief bad guys (SW has always had it, and you laughed at those cheesy jokes too, admit it!)
• Cuteness factor still present, but tastefully scaled back. Everyone’s talking about porgs, but let’s not forget the scene-stealing Bizarro BB8!
• John Williams: one major leg-up SW has over other ‘universes’ (Marvel, DC etc.) is the music; fans of the Original Trilogy are so familiar with the tunes that he now only has to overlay a few bars at key moments (e.g. at a sunset, or on mentioning a dead character) to evoke emotions and monetize nostalgia

Bad:

• One major character’s arc rings false vs. 3 earlier movies’ worth of character development, though it is well-acted enough
• New cast still don’t capture the imaginations and hearts of large swathes of the next generation (their raison d’être), despite more attention being paid to characterization this time: possibly due to too many plot threads, or dull dialog, or zero dramatic arc (for at least one)
• New character being Asian female is to be applauded for inclusiveness, and fans may like her pluckiness, but ultimately she’s just a token (to be more precise, a foil of a foil)
• Plot holes requiring even more suspension of disbelief than typical for Star Wars
• New Jedi powers seem rather pedestrian, especially in today’s digitally connected age

So far, the new trilogy is a valiant and well-funded yet flawed attempt at Disney having its cake and eating it too: trying to satisfy fans of the Original Trilogy by serving up the old cast, AND attempting to get the next generation of movie-goers to fall in love with a new one.  Threading that needle is undeniably difficult and messy – like upgrading WinXP to Win10 by installing on top instead of a clean install – but there are some obvious things they could have done better to improve on both goals; and one also wonders if they were better off just picking one focus …

Conceptually as a matter of overarching narrative, the most exciting thing Ep8 does is to break the saga free (mostly) from the defining plot twist which helped make Ep5 the most beloved entry, but has haunted the series like a Force ghost ever since: Ep6 didn’t quite deliver on its dramatic promise, and the prequels-that-shall-not-be-named were bogged down in its minutiae. Ep9 (and future franchise films) can now be more blank canvases, though given Abrams’ record on Ep7 (and Star Trek) I’m not enthused about his helming Ep9; Johnson’s newly announced SW trilogy with brand new characters and story sounds much more promising!

*** SPOILERS, there are! ***

Discussion time! (But only for those who find it fun to analyze Star Wars haha 😉 )

(1) “I guess you could say he was Luke, from a certain point of view”

Ep8’s Luke is not true to the Luke we got to know over the course of 3 movies as its main protagonist, e.g. we are to believe each of:

• In a time of peace, in his own training academy, he was so concerned about the potential for evil in his nephew (the only son of his beloved sister and best friend), that he considered striking him down in cold blood … The same Luke, who as a hotheaded young Jedi, in mortal danger and outnumbered in the heart of the enemy’s territory, being goaded by the Emperor to kill his father – who was in fact the most hated, feared and murderous villain in the galaxy with endless capacity for more evil – but on principle, he put up his blade and refused, because he only saw the good in him.
• He willingly turned his back on his closest friends and family, and refused to help them for 10-15 years, when throughout the Original Trilogy much was made of his love of his friends being his greatest weakness/strength.  His Jedi mentors kept worrying it would get him into trouble; his Sith enemies were leveraging it to manipulate him
• He didn’t perceive the flaws in traditional Jedi institutions until after that fateful night … but hang on, didn’t his two mentors lie to him to manipulate him into killing his father?
• After failing, he would slip into despair … The same Luke, who after failing to save Han and barely escaping with his life in Ep5 (sans limb), after being warned by his mentors he wasn’t ready, and being dropped a world-rocking bombshell by Vader, came back and tried again in Ep6

It’s possible Luke might have done this, but there had to have been something terrible happen to him to change him towards cynical, fearful and despairing BEFORE he trained Ben/Kylo, which is simply assumed/hand-waved and never mentioned in the script.  It might have been fine if Luke were a newly introduced character, but he has 3 movies and decades of familiarity with a large (probably majority) segment of Ep8’s audience

I can see why Johnson wrote Luke this way: it was the most dramatic explanation for his self-imposed exile, given Abrams set him up as ‘missing’ for many years and as the MacGuffin of Ep7. In hindsight, that was a bad decision (as were many others in Ep7). Even Mark Hamill disagreed with this direction, saying he had to imagine he was playing “Jake Skywalker”, not Luke, but the irony is his acting performance in Ep8 was his personal best …

(2) New generation characters are competently drawn but not magical

All of these shenanigans with Luke might have been more excusable, if it had been used to better set up the new cast to capture the hearts and minds of movie-goers (especially the next gen) as much as Luke/Leia/Han/Vader did … but this was also a missed opportunity.  They are competently drawn, better than in Ep7, which in turn improved on the prequels, but they didn’t reach the levels of pure cinema magic of the original cast.  It’s a tall order, and very hard to do, but it’s one of the main reasons why Star Wars has endured, so they had to at least try …

REY probably has the most adventures in this movie – training with Luke, fighting against/with Snoke and Kylo, blowing up TIE Fighters with Chewie, saving the Resistance with the Force etc. – but there is no real interesting drama or inner conflict with her character, because her character doesn’t grow, because she doesn’t need to grow (as Yoda himself mentions).  She doesn’t need to learn anything from Luke; if anything she ends up being his teacher and exudes unwavering optimism and confidence about the Jedi, goodness and the Light side from beginning to end.  The whole thing about her wanting to know whether her parents were important doesn’t seem like a serious weakness, nor something that would make her to turn to the Dark Side – it instead plays more like a sideshow devised by JJ Abrams to encourage social media theorizing about her parentage (free PR!)  The proof in the pudding is that she hasn’t captured the imagination of my eldest, who are both girls so smack-bang in the target demographic.  Now let’s compare with a character who has enthralled them – Elsa, from FROZEN (2013).  In many ways she’s also a Jedi – incredible Force powers, sequestered, misunderstood.  But she’s also relatable – she makes mistakes, she gets into trouble, but when the chips are down her heart’s in the right place. On the other hand, Rey never puts a foot wrong, was already more powerful than the biggest bad guy in Ep7, and sails into and out of potential trouble with undramatic (and therefore boring) predictability.  It probably also helps that Elsa can belt out Broadway standards …

KYLO REN / BEN SOLO has a leg up on the one-dimensional dime-a-dozen villains in the Marvel and DC franchises, because he has some complexity and a back story. However, his being so weak (both in emotional maturity and the Force) contributes to sapping any dramatic power from Rey’s story. He has nothing he can really offer her (other than the companionship of another Force user) – why would that ever tempt her to join the Dark side and countenance the murder and oppression of billions of innocents?  There are troubling signs planted in Ep8 that one storyline Abrams could pull in Ep9 would be having Rey fall in love with Kylo and “redeeming” him that way, while restoring “balance” to the Force … that would be monumentally terrible, and I can think of no way that it could possibly work and still be remotely watchable. I know you might be tempted JJ, but please resist it, for all our sakes!

FINN and new character ROSE have a long diversion via Maz Kanata, Canto Bight, Snoke’s ship and a Captain Phasma cameo while failing in their mission (and nearly causing the evacuation to the mining base to fail). There was also supposed to be a romantic angle, which was badly written and we only learn via Rose’s cheesy line and kiss at the end. This also cheapens Rose’s character, turning her into Finn’s foil (who was in turn Rey’s foil, at least in Ep7), which is a shame as she’s the first Asian female to make it into the above-the-line cast in Star Wars.  The final scene with the proto-Jedi stablehand is also connected with this storyline (the supposedly failed mission at least sparked something in other unknowns/nobodies), but while I am sympathetic to this being an important message and scene for Ep8, it could have been integrated while excising this whole diversion …

POE gets more to do this time around (not bad for a character who was supposed to have died in Ep7), and I appreciated his character development arc from cocky fighter pilot to wise leader and Leia’s heir apparent. It was also a better example of mentorship (under Leia/Holdo) than Rey & Luke.  However, his character also still doesn’t stand out as anything special or magical, despite being competently drawn and acted.

What might have helped?  How about getting Rey, Finn, Rose and Poe to go on adventures TOGETHER!  That would be more economical (multiple plot threads can be condensed) AND you can demonstrate and develop characters through their dynamics AND you get ample opportunity to throw in memorable one-liners and quips.  Luke, Leia and Han were together for 2 out of 3 the Acts in each of Ep4,5,6.  The new cast barely met each other for the first time at the end of Ep8, 2 movies in.  I do wonder if Joss Whedon had been given the reins instead of JJ Abrams we’d have a more memorable and magical new cast by now, assuming Kathleen Kennedy had let him run with his Firefly/SERENITY (2005) instincts (not a given, but still).

(3) Plot holes!

The more plot holes (on top of the character mis-steps above), the more suspension of disbelief you require of an audience, which is already going to be high for a space fantasy ;).  Without further ado, here’s a few:

• The Space Chase: let’s assume what they tell us that even though the First Order have a ton more Star Destroyers and fighters with ample fuel, they are slower than the Resistance’s light cruisers, and if they stay out of range, they can’t be caught until they run out of fuel.  If so, why didn’t the First Order just get their 20 Star Destroyers to hyperspace to the 20 points of a sphere around the Resistance fleet, and then close in on them at sublight speed?
• Kylo’s Betrayal of Snoke: why couldn’t Snoke have sensed it, given he was able to wring all secrets out of Rey (who is stronger than Kylo), could masterfully manipulate Kylo in every other respect, and must have been keenly aware that the primary way Sith apprentices advance is by mudering their masters?
• Snoke’s Guards: why did they attack the two most powerful Force users in the galaxy after their Supreme Leader was dead (so could no longer order them to); did they all have a death-wish? Why did Rey and Kylo take so long to dispatch them? E.g. just one telekinetic sweep of a lightsaber around the room would have done the job – like Yondu’s arrow in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2 (2017) – right?
• Luke’s Projection: why could Leia hold his hands, and his copy of Han’s dice be held by both Leia and Kylo, while the First Order’s weaponry and Kylo’s lightsaber went right through him?

Special mention for Holdo’s Hyperdrive Attack: that was a cool scene with great SFX, but you have to wonder why no one tried it (or experimented with it, especially on the Imperial side) in any previous movie, or why Holdo didn’t do it herself earlier (or order the medical frigate to do it before running out of fuel etc.)? It seems much more obvious and easier to test than developing hyperspace tracking or even Death Star tech, for example. In any case, Ep9 will need to deal with the aftermath: at lightspeed, the smallest mass could cause massive destruction (even at planetary/Death Star scale) so you don’t even need a cruiser – just new types of torpedoes that are basically only engines and a targeting computer, and cannot be evaded by any ship maneuvering at sublight in realspace (unless Ep9 comes up with a new tech to counter it).

(4) Underwhelming new Jedi powers

First, to get it out of the way, I was ok with Leia’s Mary Poppins scene. Carrie Fisher/Leia is basically a goddess to her fans, so why not. It was clearly only meant to be an instinctual Force power, as a response to life-threatening stress to her body, and she can’t otherwise control it (if only Luke were around to teach her …) Plus it’s already been done on the Canadian TV show Dark Matter 😉

Connecting Kylo and Rey so they could Skype each other just seemed like lazy writing, so that Kylo could back-channel Rey questions she could ask Luke for their RASHOMON (1950) style subplot. (Earlier examples of connection e.g. Luke/Leia and Luke/Vader were based on family and instinctive, with the bandwidth level being more ‘Find My iPhone’ vs. full Skype videoconferencing)

But the biggie is Luke’s final scene. I’ve seen Ep8 twice now, and both times the quip from other movie-goers as they left the cinema was, “So Luke just dialed it in, I guess?” Especially from folk who are very familiar with teleconferencing in to a meeting from home … This had two effects: it rendered Luke’s last feat to be more pedestrian than amazing, and it doesn’t make it immediately obvious why he had to die, since no one dies from a phone call … unless, perhaps, that galaxy far, far away had also repealed net neutrality so he had a heart attack when he saw the bill?  I believe Johnson’s intent was to show Luke redeeming himself one last time by sacrificing himself so the next generation could live to fight another day, but instead, for many it just felt like an odd and underwhelming coda to a side-story about an unknown character who happened to be called Luke Skywalker …

At least in the last scene they returned to the good old-fashioned Force pull. Often when I’ve swept or vacuumed I’ve wished I could do that!

(5) Rey is Nobody, and Nobodies can be Somebodies!

To end on a positive note, the revelation that Rey is a nobody (which is to say, anybody can be Rey/Jedi) was the most encouraging development out of Ep8, setting the franchise free from the defining plot twist of Ep5 that has haunted it ever since, like a Force ghost. I was rooting for this after first seeing Ep7, but didn’t think Disney would go there (they do love their royal families), so had resigned myself to her being outed as a Skywalker or Kenobi, or on the outside a Palpatine (the least bad option).

I only wish they had gotten there via a less circuitous route by freeing themselves of the Skywalker legacy at the beginning of Ep7, which would have allowed them to come up with an even better villain than Kylo Ren (who is the last character still weighed down by Skywalker baggage), skip the whole misdirection around Rey’s parentage (which didn’t do Rey’s character/storyline any favors), and avoid retconning weird/contorted things to reset Luke/Han/Death Stars/etc. back to pre-Ep4 maturity levels (as if the Original Trilogy never happened or amounted to anything). It would have made the new characters stronger while preserving nostalgia around the original characters for existing fans.

The final scene with the stablehand confirms that Johnson really means it, but I hope Abrams doesn’t undo all his good work with some groan-inducing reveal about Rey and Kylo in Ep9 …