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roughand · 7 years ago

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The Last Jedi

Things I enjoyed

Rey

I liked Rey a lot in this movie. I thought Daisy Ridley gave a strong performance, and she really made me feel her frustration and exasperation. I liked the nuance she brought to her scenes with Ben, and I liked what a good no-bullshit foil she was for Luke. I don’t have a lot to say because I liked pretty much everything she did, even when she was stuck in a less-than-good scene.

Rey’s Parentage

I didn’t mind that Rey’s parents were nobodies. It’s kind of nice, because for the last 20 years Star Wars as a franchise has been obsessed with the Skywalkers, to the point that they’ve become this narrative trump-card, and in any conflict it’s only a matter of time before one of them turns up and performs some heroic feat using the Force. I don’t love the fact that Rey is both super powerful AND innately skilled (as it robs her journey of some much needed conflict), but I do at least like the fact that she’s not a Skywalker, and can hopefully explore her own path.

Ben Solo

Adam Driver is excellent in the role, and brings a lot of menace and tension to the scene whenever he’s on screen. I don’t love the narrative decision to make him the Big Bad for the next movie, but at the very least he’s doing good things with the material they are giving him. I liked his conflict, I liked his interactions with Rey, and I liked his insane lack of control toward the end. He’s a very finely-crafted character.

Ben’s reason for turning to the Dark Side

I thought this moment, where Luke senses the growing darkness and Snoke’s corruption in Ben and briefly turns his lightsaber on, was perfect. It was such a raw moment that fit into what we knew about both characters. Luke is rash and impulsive, he always has been. Ben Solo is clearly hurting from wounds and rejections we don’t fully understand yet, but we can see the emotional scars. It makes sense for Luke to peer over the precipice but ultimately back down from killing Ben, just like it makes sense for Ben to feel a powerful sense of betrayal, and to carry that rage and hatred for a very long time. This was excellent characterization, and one of the few moments where I felt the movie (or really, the new trilogy) had strong and good ideas about what happened to Luke/Leia/Han post-ROTJ.

Ben & Rey

I liked the weird Force-connection that let them interact with each other, even if it was ultimately revealed to have been one of Snoke’s ploys. But the two are the most talented actors in the production, so giving them a chance to play off each other is a good idea. Plus, this introduced an aspect of the Force that, while new, didn’t feel too out of line with what we’d already known.

The destruction of the Dreadnought above D’Qar

This fight had the benefit of being at the start of the movie, which meant you couldn’t be sure how any of it would play out. We don’t know if Poe will get shot down and captured, or crash on some strange planet, or be sent hurtling into space. Maybe the attack will succeed, maybe it will fail horribly, maybe there will be heavy losses on both sides. It’s all possible, and made for exciting action.

They also did a good job with minor characters like Rose’s sister, and giving them small stories to engage the audience without putting the protagonists in any serious danger. They did well to flesh out these supporting characters, because their deaths were more impactful, and their struggles more tense.

In comparison, look at the fight on Crait. As visually appealing as parts of it were, the outcome was a foregone conclusion--Luke had to sacrifice himself in a grand way to (1) bring hope back to the galaxy, (2) help the Rebels escape, and (3) inspire Rey. The only people left in that bunker were the main cast and a handful of extras. It was pretty clear that everyone had to make it out alive, and that Luke/Rey would be the ones to do it. That meta-knowledge robbed the sequence of a lot of the dramatic weight it should have had.

The destruction of Snoke’s ship

This was right up there with the Star Destroyer crashing into the Super Star Destroyer in ROTJ. In fact, it was probably better. There was a lot of very visceral visuals throughout, and the silence of the initial explosion was perfect.

BB-H8

He didn’t overstay his welcome, and even though it was preposterous to think that the First Order troops wouldn’t notice BB-8’s disguise, I liked that they had him noticed by one of his own kind. Given that the weird droids are always a fixation for Star Wars, this felt very much true to the universe.

The fight with Snoke’s guards

I enjoyed this because it was a good lightsaber fight-scene that didn’t go all CG like the prequels, but still had more finesse and interesting fight choreography than all the fights in the originals. Plus, seeing Ben and Rey fight together (as opposed to against each other), and help each other out occasionally, was a nice subversion of expectations.

The Kylo Ren/General Hux rivalry

As I’ll mention below, the humor was often something I didn’t enjoy about the movie, but the Kylo/Hux rivalry always felt very entertaining. It never got too cartoonish, but consistently reminded us that Hux is more than just a putz and that there’s no love lost between the two characters. It was effective at what it set out to do, and entertaining in the process.

The spaceship-that-was-actually-an-iron

This was a great cut late in the movie, reminiscent of the bit in Raiders of the Lost arc where the scary villain has the girl tied up and captive and he starts unpacking what looks like some sort of sadistic torture device...only for it to actually be a coathanger for his heavy leather coat. This is the kind of humor that fits a bit better with the tone, and fleshes out the world in ways that feel realistic.

Things I was unimpressed by

Much of the humour

Including:

Luke flicking the invisible lint off his shoulder after the AT-AT barrage

Luke milking the alien

Luke tickling Rey with the leaf

Poe taunting Hux about his mom

Finn wandering around in the suit leaking water (felt very “JJ Abrams Star Trek Kirk wandering around with the swelling disease)

I’m not averse to comedy (see my list of things I enjoyed for several comedic moments that worked), but a lot of this felt like it was from a different movie. Luke has never been a jokester, he’s always been almost painfully earnest. MARK HAMILL, on the other hand, is a funny weird guy with a huge personality...but that’s not Luke. I’m happy for Hamill and Fisher to get roles that are more in line with their real-world personalities, but at the same time Hamill’s performance especially didn’t read as the Luke we knew.

The rest of the comedy, particularly from Poe/Finn, but also from Chewbacca and the Porgs, just feels like it’s targeted to the child audience consuming this. It’s cheesy and doesn’t feel fresh, nor does it vibe with the rest of the film.

The stupid Jedi Tree and the stupid Jedi Texts

Ugh, so like, I don’t enjoy the way the sequels (TFA & TLJ) have handled the idea of Jedi in a post-ROTJ world. My biggest issue here is that the Force isn’t going away. It’s still there, and people will still be born who can control it. The little slave-boy Force-pulling his broom is evidence of that. So this idea that “Luke is the last jedi and everyone’s forgotten about the Jedi (again) and they might disappear for good” is just preposterous. The Force is like magic in Harry Potter. Lots of people are born with the ability to use it, and they’re gonna cause a lot of problems (and draw a lot of attention to themselves) unless someone helps them to learn to use it safely. So I just find it hard to buy that the Jedi are constantly at risk of dying out and being completely forgotten (again) despite the fact that people all over the fucking galaxy are clearly being born with Force abilities.

Then there’s just this whole idea that Luke would somehow become so slavishly devoted to the IDEA of the Jedi that he’d squirrel himself and the last remaining Jedi texts away on some planet. I mean, the most obvious thing here is that if Luke thought the Jedi were so dangerous and that they shouldn’t continue to exist, then he should have just killed himself and burned the books years ago. Keeping them in that silly tree (when you have a perfectly good mountain temple complex which no doubt offers better protection from the elements) was just a needlessly contrived set-up for Yoda to burn it down later.

Captain Phasma

Man, Captain Phasma seemed like she’d be such a cool character before TFA--Brienne of Tarth as a badass unique chrome stormtrooper! But now after two movie’s she’s done ZERO interesting things, and instead has had her ass handed to her embarrassingly by Finn twice now. And not even in a “wow that was satisfying to see David beat Goliath with ingenuity and skill” but rather in a “wow, is Phasma THAT useless that she can’t fight off this spaz?” Phasma became more of a punchline than anything when she showed up on screen because there’s zero threat to the character. She’s never done anything exciting or dastardly or shocking or intimidating. She just looks menacing because her armor is shiny and everyone else’s is matte.

The Dark Side cave on Ahch-To

I understand the point of this scene--Rey is who matters, not her parentage. It’s her own self she should be worried about, and exploring, and which poses the most potential for greatness or terrible things. But ultimately it felt very out of place in the film because it lacked the overt connections to Rey’s wider arc that Luke’s same experience in the Dark Side cave on Dagobah had. Luke goes into the cave and we, the audience, know that Vader is his antagonist, and that Luke is deeply afraid of him. Having Vader in the cave was fantastic, because it makes us question what’s real--is Vader here or is Luke fighting his own fears? And then to have Luke defeat Vader, and remove the mask to find his own face (shades of The Prisoner) was excellent foreshadowing for the eventual reveal that Vader was Luke’s father, and that perhaps what Luke should fear most is himself. They packed a lot of narrative heft into Luke’s cave sequence. Rey’s, in contrast, didn’t seem to advance anything we didn’t already know, or have reason to suspect, and there was no subtlety revealed during the rest of the movie, no moment where suddenly Rey’s experience in the cave was cast in a new light. As a result, it just felt ancillary and unnecessary.

The Porgs

The Porgs were cute...and then immediately overused. It’s hard to introduce a character or race, and then make them feel oversaturated so quickly, but TLJ succeeded in that mission. I don’t hate the Porgs, but everytime one appeared on screen it felt like the film was directly interacting with a younger audience, and I was no longer part of that experience.

Luke Skywalker’s character/storyline

Right off the bat, I didn’t buy the backstory that Luke went into seclusion after what happened with Ben. It feels very much like JJ Abrams said “I want my movie to be about everyone looking for Luke!” but then no one since has been able to come up with a plausible reason for Luke to abandon everything the way he did. It’s one thing for me to assume that YOUNG Luke is incredibly short-sighted and rash, but JEDI MASTER Luke should have already learned a lot of the lessons that Yoda taught him in TLJ. I mean, the whole “learning from failure thing” is pretty much what he learned at the end of Empire Strikes Back. It just goes back to that idea that if your plot relies on your characters acting like idiots for it to work, then you need to do some re-writes.

Consider that when Luke visited Dagobah and Yoda acted weird at first, it was because Yoda was testing Luke. Luke came there looking for a great warrior to train him to fight, and Yoda needed to disabuse him of those notions before he could actually start training him. Yoda’s shtick was just that--a false persona intended to see how Luke would react, and to expose his faulty assumptions about what it means to be a Jedi.

But when Rey visits Luke on Ahch-To, he’s a dick to her because he doesn’t WANT to teach her. Again, this just doesn’t seem like Luke’s style. He’s an idealist, he’s someone who sees the good in everyone. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to kill Ben, so it beggars belief that he would so callously refuse to train Rey. Moreover, it was a huge contrivance (more on that later) that Luke had “withdrawn from the Force” because that’s never really been how that works, but also because that was only a thing so Luke wouldn’t sense the fact that Rey and Ben were in contact. Like, it didn’t make sense for Luke to have not been touching the Force all these years, and it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t be able to detect the presence of someone like Ben. But again, the plot wouldn’t have worked unless Luke’s entire character is fundamentally altered so that he’s a crotchety recluse who lacks the Force-awareness even characters like Leia seem to have.

No chance to process the events on Snoke’s ship

There is a total lack of Rey processing what happened on Snoke’s ship in the script. One minute she and Ben are literally tearing apart Luke’s lightsaber after they’ve turned on each other, and seconds earlier they killed a dozen elite First Order Guards after Ben executed Supreme Leader Snoke, who moments before had been torturing Rey. And the next minute Rey’s on the Falcon, with Chewie, shooting at TIE Fighters and seeming totally chill. There was zero time to process the impact of everything that happened to her, and given that the whole reason she went to Snoke’s ship was to save Ben, it beggars belief that she’d be so cavalier after having him reject her so spectacularly.

Holdo

I love Laura Dern, and she did a fine job with the limited material she was given (ugh, that “may the For--” “oh i’m sorry, you go” “no you go!” exchange with Leia was cheeseball to the extreme), but there were three elements of Holdo’s character that didn’t make a lot of sense:

Why not tell people, or at least Poe, that she still had a plan, that the transport ships weren’t just going to fly randomly into space but that she had a destination in mind? Instead, Holdo, who seemed very capable, suddenly seems like she’s ok with letting mutiny foment on her watch because….why? She thinks Poe is a flyboy? It wasn’t good leadership, and she could still have inspired hope without seeming like she was without a plan. How is acting like everyone’s probably going to die an inspiring approach for a leader to take?

Why was Holdo, who is ostensibly a brilliant, seasoned, compassionate general, the ONLY PERSON who can fly the cruiser’s suicide mission? Surely there was a low-level tech or even a droid for god’s sake who could have done it? Her death seemed to exist to ensure there was a “heroic sacrifice” moment for the rebellion, which felt very contrived and not authentic.

Why did Holdo wait so long before kamikaze-ing!? I can understand that due to the magic of editing less time may have passed from her perspective than the audience’s (as we are cutting back and forth to simultaneous action elsewhere), but we still watch Holdo sitting there while at LEAST 3-5 rebel transports get destroyed before she decides to ram Snoke’s ship. Like, she KNEW she was going to die on the cruiser, so why not ram Snoke immediately, or at least after he destroyed the first transport? Holdo standing there and looking stricken and helpless while the rebels are getting shot like fish in a barrel felt almost comical. It was so obvious that she had to ram the ship that it was frustrating that the plot forced her to wait so long.

The Knights of Ren

Someone else pointed this out online, but: where are the Knights of Ren? What is that? Why introduce it if it’s never mentioned again? Will these guys ever crop up? How do they fit into Ben Solo’s backstory?

Luke’s other students

Yet again we get a mention that Ben Solo left Luke’s academy with a few students he had turned to his cause (or, presumably, who Snoke had turned to his cause). What happened to them? How come Luke isn’t torn up about them, too?

Things I really disliked

Let’s start with a bunch of little things that really bugged me:

Ackbar dying offscreen

Ackbar is one of the most iconic characters from the original films (at least to fans) and he deserved a bit more than being killed offscreen. He could easily have been one of the many ship captains that Holdo watched go down with their ships via hologram as they were picked off one-by-one. Using him that way would really have upped the stakes as we watched a beloved character from the original film die in a heroic but senseless way.

Luke throwing his father’s lightsaber away

Yeah, this was very out-of-character for Luke. That lightsaber must hold a LOT of significance and memories for him. To see him toss it away so callously just felt like people wanted a funny beat to end the scene on more than they wanted to stay true to the character. It didn’t ruin the movie for me, but it definitely IMMEDIATELY gave me the sense that they didn’t have a good handle on Luke’s character.

The New Republic falling so easily

In The Force Awakens, it is heavily implied that the galaxy is relatively peaceful place and the remnants of the Empire have retreated into obscurity. Admittedly, I’m not as well versed in the SW political structure as I used to be, a quick google search confirms that as recently as 6 years prior to The Force Awakens, there was still a galactic senate looking after things. Given that’s the same New Republic senate that gets destroyed by Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens, it makes you wonder how easy it is to take over a galaxy? Like, right now any kind of large scale continental invasion is prohibitively complicated and costly. Similarly, subjugating literally dozens of worlds is not a cheap, fast, or simple affair. It’s quite time-consuming, and requires extraordinary resources. It seems rather convenient that the Imperial Remnant could build up such a devastating fleet without the New Republic noticing, but also improbable that any Imperial Fleet could immediately establish control over the WHOLE GALAXY (remember, no one answers Leia’s distress call at the end of TLJ) by blowing up ONE planet.

It reminded me of late-period Game of Thrones where characters would just stab each other and “take” that person’s power. GoT spent almost 4 seasons demonstrating that it didn’t work that way--stab the man at the top and you might find yourself with no power and surrounded by enemies--only to do an about face in the last three seasons on that point. TLJ felt like it did the same thing. We’re told the galaxy is huge, and full of different planets and species and people, but then the First Order blows up one planet and everyone falls into line? Way too convenient.

The slave kids on Canto Bight

Is it just me or does the SW franchise seem to present a really happy-go-lucky depiction of child slavery? Anakin and Shmee’s enslavement to Watto was frequently played for laughs, even the bit when Anakin was giggling about the explosive device planted in his and his mother’s brains that would detonate and kill them if they tried to run away.

Similarly, Rose and Finn stumble upon these slave-kids who are forced to care for alien race horses, and they save the bulk of their sympathy...for the horses? Like, I get it, animals in captivity are sad and we want to free them...but there were literal child slaves there that Rose and Finn did not seem in any way concerned by.

Like, when the one kid presses the button to free the horses all I could think was “Man, he’s probably going to get whipped to death for that! Why don’t Rose and Finn seem to care?” The fact that the movie KEPT RETURNING to them, too, felt a bit odd. These kids are enslaved on a pleasure planet that caters to rich arms dealers, and based on how the casino treats the alien-horses, I can’t imagine they treat their child-slaves much better.

So that just took me out of whatever scene the kids appeared in.

The bad dialogue

There were so many moments were the film was clearly going for some kind of iconic, powerful line (like ESB’s “Do or do not, there is no try.”) but fell miserably short. The ones that spring to mind:

The repetitions of “We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn down the first order.” It got cheesier with each person who said it.

Poor Rose got some of the worst lines:

“I want to smash this lousy beautiful city to pieces”

“Finn, we’ll never win by fighting what we hate, we’ll win by saving what we love…*dies*”

Captain Phasma’s “No! Don’t kill them quickly. Make it painful”made me groan AUDIBLY. It was such movie-speak for “Don’t hurt them! Let them escape!”

Anytime a character discussed hope and whether it was all gone, or how much was left, and who had it, and who didn’t, and oh it’s back, and hey here’s this Force-sensitive slave-kid he’s got hope too now because of his decoder ring

Any of the “yee-haw that’s one hell of a pilot” type lines from Poe or Finn.

Now for some more substantive problems:

Leia’s resurrection and Force-propelled spaceflight

This bothered me on a bunch of levels:

This would have been a good send-off for Leia. She got a lot of good moments in with Poe prior to Ben’s attack, and she really drove home the idea of how important it is for Poe to learn to be a leader. That would have been an excellent time for her death, as it would catalyze those last words to Poe, and make them really mean something. Instead, she comes back and snickers with Holdo at how thick Poe is. It’s not bad, it’s just a missed opportunity that became disappointing.

The movie seemed to care about, but then immediately stop caring about, Ben’s relationship with Leia. As far as Ben knows, Leia dies when that other TIE pilot blows up the bridge, but we never see Ben reacting to either her “death” or her resurrection (which he doubtless should have been able to sense through the Force). Leia sensed Han’s death, so shouldn’t Ben have sensed the massive amount of Force energy Leia must have used?

This was one of several scenes where I found myself asking “What the fuck are the rules anymore?” I’m not trying to be a Force-purist or anything, but as a regular member of a movie audience, a lot of the reveals in the movie felt very out-of-left-field. I get that Jedi are essentially superheroes in space, but it makes “the Force” into a bit of a plot device that can get them out of any situation. It’s further compounded by characters like Leia, and Rey, who have little to no training in the Force but who, when the situation dramatically calls for it, are able to perform tremendous feats of skill and power. If we don’t see them training and struggling with these abilities building up to those moments, then the impact is not only lessened when they occur, but the suspension of disbelief is violated. It just introduces new powers and new abilities with no groundwork or grace, and that makes it hard for audiences to stay in those moments. It then becomes a challenge for them to come up with reasons those characters DON’T continue to use those abilities. On the one hand, I can understand the whole shock/trauma-activated-ability idea, but on the other if you discover you have the ability to withstand the vacuum of space and fly through it, wouldn’t that be an ability you’d want to pursue and become better at?

Overall, though, it felt narratively cheap because we took a character who’s very much been established as NOT skilled in the Force, and had her suddenly pull off something that we hadn’t even imagined Obi-Wan or Yoda at their height could do. I’m not attacking it on scientific grounds, or even trying to say “The Force couldn’t do that!” I’m just saying that from a storytelling perspective it felt deeply unsatisfying and out of place.

Snoke

Snoke in this film was a big letdown. At first, it seemed like they had something interesting planned for him. We got to see him in the flesh early on and he had his own kind of unique menace. They got Andy Serkis to play him so clearly he’s an important part of this story. His origins and motivations are shrouded in mystery and his power level is clearly off-the-charts. It was all setting up our expectations for later reveals, or deepening his motives, or making him even more threatening.

Then he dies halfway through the film and we never learn a single new thing about him. I’m all for zagging when the audience thinks you’re going to zig, but TFA and TLJ invested a sizeable amount of their running times establishing Snoke as this big threat, who was connected to story in ways we didn’t understand yet. I can understand killing him off unexpectedly, but to do it without exploring more of his character, or setting up anyone to take his place is a big letdown.

To be clear, I understand that Ben is going to be the new Big Bad, or at least until the end of the next movie when he comes back to the light and the new Big Bad for the NEXT trilogy shows up, but Ben is not a good replacement as a primary antagonist. I mean, we know he will either be saved, like Vader was, or die heroically helping the rebels. There aren’t a lot of other directions to take him in--having him be uncomplicatedly evil would feel like a betrayal of his character up until now. I also get that Ben is slightly different than previous antagonists because he doesn’t care for the structure and regimentation of the first order, he just wants to rule as he sees fit. It’s just that that’s...kind of boring. Snoke was interesting because he was mysterious, and we couldn’t be sure what his connection to the Force, or the First Order, or to Ben really was. He was unpredictable, which made him an entertaining villain. Ben, meanwhile, is broody and prone to fits of rage. He’s very much still a child in a mask, and while that can make him intimidating to other characters, it’s not enough for a primary antagonist like Star Wars needs.

Finn’s “arc”

I get the sense that the writers really struggled to come up with something for Finn to do in this movie.

Rey’s arc was clearly connected to Luke and Ben, and did not have room for a third major figure in her emotional landscape. They may return to moren Finn/Rey stuff down the line, but this movie was first and foremost concerned with Rey/Luke and Rey/Ben.

The next strongest relationship was probably Leia/Poe. As much as I think Leia should have died off earlier in the movie, I think her arc with Poe was a decent-enough one, and will hopefully pay off in the next film, when he learns to take more of a leadership role in the rebellion. Holdo was there to give Poe an antagonist, and although I didn’t love the obvious and constant reversals of Holdo’s character (she’s good, she’s bad, she’s a coward, she’s a hero!), I thought the story pulled off the task it had set itself. Poe learned the lesson he needed to learn, as seen when he counseled Finn against sacrificing himself for the “battering ram cannon” (dumb name).

It feels like the Rey/Ben storyline was locked in, as was the Leia/Poe/Holdo storyline, but then after those two big plots, Finn had no one in the main cast to bounce off, and no one’s story needed his presence. Rey’s apprenticeship with Luke, subsequent surrender to Snoke, and eventual escape to rejoin the Rebels was completely unaffected by anything Finn did. The Rebel fleet’s attempts to escape the First Order did not need Finn’s help, and indeed reached their true objective in spite of him mucking up the plan. All he was good for on a metanarrative level (by the time his actual plan had gone up in smoke) was goosing the drama by alerting the First Order to the defenseless transport ships, thereby ensuring heavier losses for the rebels.

So obviously the writers knew that Finn needed to be there at the START of the story (to pick up with him after the last movie), and they knew where they needed him at the END of the story (on Crait, with a bone to pick with the First Order) but they didn’t really know how to get him from point A to B, nor how to ensure that nothing he does in the interim fucks up the rest of the already-established plots.

To fill the gap, they created the new character of Rose for Finn to bounce off of. It makes sense on paper--she’s grounded while he’s hyperactive, she’s sensible while he’s deeply emotional, she’s a low-ranking rebel while he’s one of the heroes--and all of their qualities make them good foils for each other. Indeed, in that first scene where she finds him trying to board the escape pod they find an enjoyable rhythm together pretty quickly, and I liked the dynamic they established.

But then it all goes deeply off the rails because the writers realized they couldn’t let them do anything that mattered. Finn’s plan had to be unsuccessful because the fleet needed to make it to Crait, not jump away. Finn couldn’t run into Rey while on Snoke’s ship because that would jumble the plot too much. So they had to keep Finn at arm’s length from doing anything useful and it showed.

What we got instead was a really problematic (See below) detour to a planet that didn’t ultimately matter, in search of a macguffin that ultimately didn’t matter, all in the service of developing a relationship with Rose, a character who may be dead and who never had any real chemistry with Finn.

I honestly wish they’d thrown out that whole thing and found a different way to incorporate Finn into either Poe or Rey’s story, because clearly they don’t have great ideas when he’s on his own.

Hyperspace tracker subplot

One of the biggest problems I had with the movie was the “First Order tracking the rebels through hyperspace” subplot. Almost EVERY ASPECT of this was a disappointment, and here is why:

Hux’s Plan First off, there’s a moment early on where Kylo walks in on a conversation between Snoke and Hux where Snoke is congratulating Hux on his clever plan, saying something about how a cur’s weakness can be his strength. It seemed to imply that some element of Hux’s personality allowed him insight into hunting the rebels, and he devised a singularly brilliant way to do it. But then ultimately it was just “the First Order are tracking the rebels through hyperspace” and that seems like, I dunno, ANYONE could have devised that plan. There was nothing to the plan that indicated ONLY Hux could have come up with it. He doesn’t seem to possess any kind of advanced scientific or technical knowledge and his strategy (Track them until they run out of fuel) isn’t exactly complex, or subtle. It’s fairly obvious. I kept waiting for a further reveal that Hux had convinced a high-ranking rebel to defect and feed him information, or SOMETHING to explain why Snoke seemed so impressed and satisfied with his plan. But it never came.

Also, how are we to believe that Rose, who is essentially an electrician, would be able to disable a high-level First Order specialized system in such a way that no one notices? It just felt super convenient that this tradesperson that Finn runs into randomly possesses the ability to effectively and secretly disable the ONE thing the First Order has been using to track the rebels. Remember, Dj the hacker only opened the door to the stupid thing, it was Rose who said she could secretly disable it all on her own.

Compounding all that letdown is the fact that, in the end, “disabling the tracking device” was barely different than “disable the tractor beam on the death star” in ANH. Just like the tractor beam on the Death Star in ANH, in TLJ it’s up to our heroes to infiltrate a massive evil ship and disable this one tiny room that should, when you think about it, be MUCH MORE HEAVILY GUARDED THAN IT WAS. At least in ANH the Death Star tractor beam room was super impressive. In TLJ, the tracker-room was a broom closet with a giant flux capacitor in it, tucked away behind some random panel in a random hallway.

Also, the whole conceit that “there’s only one ship actually tracking us” felt like an easy out, but one that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. If this truly was the last of the rebels, and wiping them out would ensure the total victory of the First Order, then maybe have a tracker on ALL your ships? Even if you’re not worried the Rebels will sneak on board and secretly disable it, you should always have redundancies for critical systems and processes like that. In the case of Ben Solo choosing to fight Luke while the rebels escape, this is an oversight that makes sense. We’ve seen how Ben can be ruthless and clever, but how there are still parts of his personality he can’t control (his need for his master’s approval, his hatred of Luke, etc.). So when he makes the mistake of facing Luke, his shortsightedness makes perfect sense. In comparison, Hux’s failure to properly safeguard this incredibly important tracking device just felt like lazy plotting.

Lastly, I’ll cover this more in a later section, but the fact that this whole entire subplot wound up having zero significance and not actually achieving anything was deeply, deeply frustrating. It’s one thing to do a Bespin-like sequence, where the heroes’ plan goes awry but they still move their arcs forward, or move the plot forward. Like, Luke faces Vader and learns a lot about himself. Leia is ripped apart from Han but finally declares her love for him in the process. Lando betrays them, but then proves to be an ally and helps them escape and joins the cause moving forward. Bespin was an unmitigated disaster in terms of “the protagonists achieving their goals” but narratively it was deeply productive. The entire “disable the tracker” subplot in TLJ only served to deepen Rose’s character who was ultimately wasted in the climax. The rest of the plotline did absolutely NOTHING to change the status quo. It almost seemed like the interaction between Finn and Benicio del Toro (aka DJ) would make Finn into a more Han-like, morally grey character, but then when DJ betrays them it’s clear Finn is a rebel through and through. Ignoring Rose’s character, what impact did the tracker-device plotline have on the larger film? I can’t think of any.

Canto Bight The problems with this part start right away with the very-hard-to-take-seriously scene where Rose and Finn just basically figure out the entire First Order plan and how to stop them in a matter of seconds. Instead of taking this information to ANYONE, like maybe Leia, they instead decide to contact Maz Kanata because Lupita Nyongo signed on for three movies, damnit, so she’s gonna be in them. Maz tells them the ONLY person who can complete their mission is a codebreaker wearing a special lapel pin. NO ONE ELSE can help them, and Maz would know, because characters repeatedly tell us that she’s very wise.

So they sneak off the ship and land on Canto Bight, which looks a lot like Naboo at night, but whatever. The movie wants us to know that Finn is enchanted by this place, while Rose is not, and it takes very little time for her to detail all the problems with it. None of this is conveyed in a particularly elegant or artful way--Finn stares dopily around at everything while Rose just clenches her jaw and spouts truly godawful lines like “I just want to smash this beautiful lousy city to pieces.” We also get a bunch of alien race horses, and it’s all starting to stray into the realm of the prequels.

Ultimately, Finn and Rose find the dude with the lapel pin, but are apprehended by security before they can talk to him. That is the last we see of the actual codebreaker.

After they meet and then part ways with DJ (more on him below, I hated him so much!), they find the alien race horses again and take off on horseback in one of the dumbest sequences in the film, and definitely the most broad. This part especially, the horseback escape through the city and eventual rescue by DJ felt very prequel-esque. The happy-go-lucky slave kids, the overly-CG horses, the slapstick ride through the city, it was all just too lowbrow compared to the rest of the film.

Benicio del Toro aka DJ I have a lot of issues with this character but they all really boil down to one thing: It’s cheap fucking storytelling:

It’s cheap storytelling to have Maz tell the audience “ONLY the codebreaker can get you onto the ship!” but then DJ can also do it.

It’s cheap storytelling to have Finn and Rose get imprisoned in the cell with a DIFFERENT codebreaker who can do exactly what they need.

It’s cheap storytelling to have a character as resourceful as DJ simply hanging out in jail waiting for someone to what? Also get imprisoned and ask for his help? It doesn’t make sense that if he could stroll out of prison at any point in time that he would be there at all.

It’s cheap storytelling for DJ to be able to steal a weapon merchant’s ship so easily, yet he hasn’t already done that and was instead hanging out in jail for no reason.

Not only does all this make many of the scenes in this plot (with Maz, or on Canto Bight looking for the lapel pin) feel pointless, but it also makes the rest of Finn and Rose’s plot (once they’re off Canto Bight and onto Snoke’s ship especially) frustrating because it all seems so convenient.

The best part about DJ is that, for a second, you think he’s going to contribute to Finn’s arc by pushing him towards being a more Han-Solo-at-the-start-of-ANH-style independent operator, by pointing out that both the Rebellion and the First Order are part of a larger military-industrial complex. For a second it seems like Finn might get some real depth and shading, and an interesting perspective that’s vastly different than Rey or Poe’s.

And then the worst part of DJ’s character is that he betrays them to the First Order as he was obviously going to do and this just makes Finn angry at the First Order. DJ leaves as pointlessly and stupidly as he arrived.

Finn & Rose getting captured This entire sequence was endlessly frustrating. I’ve already detailed my problems with Hux’s plan above, but Finn and Rose’s capture and subsequent escape deserves its own section because it was so bad.

The first problem is that their hangar scene was clearly written to fill dramatic space, not to function as a realistic sequence of events. Finn and Rose are brought to the hangar, surrounded by a legion of stormtroopers. Phasma insists her troops kill them slowly, which is such a painful cliché at this point that there were multiple audible groans from the audience at that point. The stormtroopers slooooowwwwwwllllly lower laser-axes to Finn and Rose’s heads. Then the ship is caught in an explosion, and when we cut back to Rose and Finn, the literal dozens of stormtroopers who had been surrounding them with laser-axes millimetres away from their necks are nowhere to be seen. Phasma is also gone, but then just as quickly the stormtroopers and Phasma come walking back into the hangar like they were never there. It makes no sense!

Then, you’ve got a very implausible fight between numerous armoured stormtroopers (it seems that in the 20+ years since ROTJ their accuracy has not improved) and two blue-collar workers wearing no protective gear. Somehow Finn goes toe-to-toe with Phasma despite the fact that if she lands a single hit on his unarmored form, he’d go down. Not to mention the fact that Phasma HAS A BLASTER which she chooses not to use on Finn. Her ultimate death was silly, earned a bunch of laughs in the theatre, and had zero drama or tension to it. I love Gwendolyn Christie but she played a horribly written, terribly underused character who never got to do a single cool thing, then got herself killed in the silliest way and went down barely landing a single blow on the unarmored janitor she was fighting.

Meanwhile, there were apparently more stormtroopers but they just kinda get forgotten about. Rose hides and fires a few stray shots, but where did the half-dozen troopers flanking Phasma when they re-entered the hangar after the explosion go?

And then, the capper on this shit sequence, is BB-8 taking control of an AT-ST, and rescuing Finn and Rose. It reeked of the worst kind of prequels-level “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” writing. It was silly, and not in a fun way, but in a really dumb and cheesy way. It was reminiscent of Anakin in The Phantom Menance shooting a bunch of droids by accident when he was hiding in the fighter cockpit, or the nonsense factory escape sequence with R2-D2’s hoverjets in Attack of the Clones.

Structural Problems

There were some massive structural problems with the film, on the following levels:

Derivative Storytelling

The movie felt and looked more original than Force Awakens, but when you look closer it’s still cut from much of the same cloth as the original trilogy. Off the top of my head, from ESB alone, there’s:

Rey trains on a remote planet with a reluctant Luke Luke trains on Dagobah with an initially reluctant Yoda

Rey’s enters a “Dark Side cave” and has a vision Luke enters a “Dark Side cave” and has a vision

Ben asks Rey, “Join me and we can rule the galaxy together” Vader asks Luke to join him so they can rule the galaxy together as father and son

The Resistance flees D’qar in cruisers and transports while being shot at by the First order The Rebels flee Hoth in cruisers and transports while being shot at by the Empire

The First Order assault a Resistance base on the remote, white salt planet of Crait with AT-ATs The Empire assaults a Rebel base on the remote, snowy planet of Hoth with AT-ATs

Because the base is older, Poe and other pilots are forced to fly slower, less maneuverable and powerful ships Because the base is on an ice planet, Luke and the other pilots are forced to fly slower, less maneuverable and powerful ships

Rey loses Anakin’s lightsaber during a confrontation with Kylo Ren Luke loses Anakin’s lightsaber during a confrontation with Vader

Rey must build her own lightsaber, a Jedi rite of passage Luke had to build his own lightsaber, a Jedi rite of passage, on Tatooine before going to Jabba’s palace

Some of those bits weren’t wholly unwelcome, but I’m really ready for Star Wars to move beyond the shadow of what’s come before. I’m ready for a Star Wars where:

The protagonist isn’t a callow youth about to become a Jedi

The main antagonist isn’t a Palpatine-like dictator

The secondary antagonist isn’t a Vader-like enforcer

The villains don’t rule over an Empire-like army

There were elements of this film that hinted at more creative stories that might get told, but too much of it hewed too close to familiar beats and tropes.

Plot Contrivances

This was a huge problem for me. The contrivances pile up really quickly, and take you out of the story fast. Rose and Finn suddenly sussing out the First Order’s secret plan. Rey is just innately powerful and doesn’t need more than a day of light training with Luke to be super powerful. Rey repeatedly tries to gain Luke’s trust, going so far as to tell him she’s being completely honest with him, despite lying from the get-go about her connection to Ben. Luke declaring that he’s been cut off from the Force for the past X years so he can plausibly not be aware of all the things he should be aware of, like Ben being inside Rey’s head. Maz tells Finn there’s only one man who can do the job, but then they randomly meet another. Phasma tells her troops to execute Finn slowly, giving him time to escape.

The sheer point of fact is, at least for me, much of the story the film told was exhausting because it required constant and new suspension of disbelief. We are already suspending our disbelief quite a bit for a story of space wizards, so I do not think it’s too much to ask for the story to flow logically, and sensibly.

Implausible Timeline

Ostensibly, from the point at which Finn and Rose contact Maz, all the action is compressed into roughly 12-16 hours (since there’s still about 2 hrs left on the fuel for the fleet when they start to abandon ship in the transports). However, in that time it feels like Rey spends several nights on Ahch-To with Luke, while Finn and Rose spend less than a single night on Canto Bight (they arrive early evening and depart the planet before dawn). Perhaps the two planets have different day/night cycles and this all works out, but to viewing audiences it seriously distorts our understanding of how much time is elapsing in between scenes. There were moments where it felt like Rey was on Ahch-To for days but then we cut back to Finn/Rose and only an hour or two have passed, and then back to the fleet and it feels like no time has passed. It’s not a death knell, but it’s just one more thing that caused a bunch of whiplash when trying to process all the different threads.

Status Quo Reset

This is perhaps my biggest disappointment with the movie, far beyond anything mentioned above. I was truly dismayed that this new trilogy is still retreading the same ground as the previous ones, and more than that it seems to be setting us as close to square one as possible and slowing down the progress enormously. At this point in the film, the Rebellion is smaller than it’s ever been, and the First Order is (somehow) nominally in charge of the galaxy. We’ve been here before--it was the first three movies. Only now we’re back to an almost pre-ANH configuration, with every indication that the story this time will move even slower and with even more unecessary detail and sideplots. I can already see the slave-kid with the Force abilities being the protagonist of the fourth, or fifth, or ninth Star Wars trilogy, and indeed the realization that these movies will be coming out like clockwork every year robs them of their lustre and appeal. If they were telling unique stories, and showing me things I’d never seen before, I’d be more excited. But instead they telling the same old stories, and taking me to the same places, with the same people (or same types of people) and it fundamentally just doesn’t look like they want to go anywhere new.

A huge part of the former Star Wars Expanded Universe was the idea that there’s a huge chunk of the galaxy (at least half of it!) that was unexplored and dangerous. There were whole societies there unlike anything we’d seen, and threats, too. I’m ready for Star Wars to grow up and stop telling the same story about the plucky Jedi taking on Darth Evil and his army of faceless fascists. I’m ready to see Jedi and Sith threatened by some new menace, or the fascists subjugated by anarchists who create their own problems. I’m just ready for there to be new stories, but when I look ahead at the road the franchise is charting for itself, it’s deeply, and stiflingly, familiar.

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