Miles of Movies

Review:

Film Info:

                                                                                                       Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the continued story of                                                                                                Rey (Daisy Ridley), a young jedi in training who has                                                                                                  found Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in the hope                                                                                                        that he will teach her and return to help the rebels                                                                                                  in their fight against Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and the                                                                                                First Order, who are expanding their control of the                                                                                                  galaxy. There are complications and the result is a                                                                                                    mess of plotlines, filler in a movie that didn’t need it,                                                                                                and a general lack of a plan connecting this film to                                                                                                  the previous film.

                                                                                                       Before we get into what’s wrong, let’s talk about the good things in this film. The opening scene is one of the best in the series, putting me on the edge of my seat for a character only on screen for a minute. This film takes some elements from the previous film and expands on them. In general, it is a good-looking, well-shot movie. There are a few well-directed moments in the second half of the film. Mark Hamill’s performance is probably the best of his career.

        Unfortunately, that is about as far as the compliments go. This film is a bit of a narrative and tonal mess. To start, there is a new character introduced in this film (even though the previous film had enough characters that carry over) that has a storyline on another planet (literally and figuratively). This entire storyline could have been omitted from the film, cutting out about twenty minutes that feel like they belong in another movie completely. It completely stalls the pace of the film and then doesn’t end up tying into the main story, like a slap in the face to people hoping that this sequence would end up going somewhere. There are multiple sequences with gaping holes in them, where events could be consolidated if characters within the same scene just communicated. And then there were parts of this movie that worked on paper but just weren’t executed very well, either thematically or visually. You would think that a film carrying a huge budget would be above that.

        But this isn’t the most baffling thing about this movie. That honor falls on this film’s ability to select storylines and characters from the previous film and choose whether or not to use them. It feels like there was nothing planned after Star Wars: The Force Awakens and this movie decided to address some things brought up in that film and cut off things it didn’t know how to answer or want to answer. And it seems like most of it is just the film’s laziness - some of these dangling plotlines could be resolved in just one or two lines. I can’t help but feel confused at some of the decisions made here. It just feels like writer/director Rian Johnson didn’t care about some of what came before and decided to ignore it.

        Overall, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in this movie. A large chunk of it was pointless and tacked on in a movie that definitely didn’t need filler. There was so much to explore after the previous film and so much of it was just tossed aside. The opening scene is fantastic and there are individual moments that work very well, but the film as a whole is overlong and messy.