STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI REVIEW
If you google movies that have a ‘Your Mom’ joke in them, you will get a laundry list of films like: “White Chicks”, “Scary Movie 2”, “Phat Girlz”, “Yo Momma”, and “Your Momma’s Sweet Ass”. You can now add “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (TLJ) to that list. Yes, in the opening minute of the movie, Resistance pilot Poe Dameron cracks a ‘Your Mom’ joke to the leading commander of the First Order, followed up with a tongue-in-cheek insult calling the Commander ‘white’ and ‘pasty’.
From the get-go, TLJ displays a brand of ridiculous slapstick humor that not even Jar Jar Binks could compete with. From Jedi Master Luke Skywalker tickling main protagonist Rey’s hand with a blade of grass to joke about the Force and main antagonist Kylo Ren having his shirt off during an awkward Force Skype session with Rey to Resistance droid BB-8 launching coins at baddies to knock them out and General Leia Organa telling the aforementioned Poe Dameron to get his head out of his cockpit, the writing in the latest Star Wars installment was easily the worst to date. Not only does the film’s humor and dialogue not fit the Star Wars universe (e.g. Stormtrooper turned Resistance fighter Finn calling his nemesis, Captain Phasma, a “chromedome”, and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker calling lightsabers “laser swords” just to name a couple more examples), the actual plotline is uninspiring, dull, and non-sensical. To put it simply, never in the history of Star Wars has petrol (or fuel) been a concern. When we go to watch Star Wars, there is an acceptable level of suspending one’s disbelief (a movie term that assumes the audience will overlook aspects such as characters needing to use the restroom). Making sure your starship has gas would fall under that category, and TLJ spends 75% of the storyline concerned with running out of fuel. Yet, the storytellers of the film want the audience to suspend their sense of disbelief in situations that beg for logical explanation (e.g. Finn and Rose conveniently being placed in a prison cell with a master lockpicker and code breaker (horribly acted by Benicio Del Toro I should add) that completes their mission because he could break out of the cell at any time in two seconds, or the fact that Finn and Rose are captured and getting ready to be executed in front of about three hundred stormtroopers when the Star Destroyer gets dealt a major blow by a Resistance cruiser; the next time they cut to the hanger, it’s just Finn and Rose all alone in the now burning hanger where they were about to get executed and eventually, Captain Phasma and a few stormtroopers appear from some clearing smoke. I mean, where did the previous 300 stormtroopers in the hanger go who were making sure Finn and Rey had no chance of escape?).
Another aspect of the film’s god-awful writing comes in how they handled Luke Skywalker’s character. In the classic trilogy, Luke was stubborn in regard to doing the right thing, even against any tall odds he met. Luke’s character also didn’t have a “funny” bone in his body, leaving the humor to companions such as Han Solo, R2-D2, and C-3PO. In TLJ, Luke’s character has been completely neutered to the point where he is a lonely hermit who just wants to die, yet, he tries to create humor (e.g. the aforementioned grass tickle scene as well as a horrifically stupid shoulder brush off moment near the end of the film). Not sure what the writers of TLJ were thinking, but depressed and funny usually don’t go together well in the same character. Regardless, it is also portrayed that Luke Skywalker entertained the thought of murdering Ben Solo (future Kylo Ren) when he was training under the Jedi Master in the past, which is what turned Han and Leia’s son to the dark side. Luke, Mr. “No, I’ll never join the dark side. I’m a Jedi, like my father before me” would never be tempted enough to murder one of his students. TLJ just degrades the iconic and legendary figure of Luke Skywalker beyond identification, to the point where he is milking giant alien breasts…no really, Luke milks giant alien breasts in the movie. But even if you don’t agree with my thoughts on Luke Skywalker’s character, the actor who plays Luke, Mark Hamill, even hated the script and the way they handled his character to the point where he said that he had to pretend it wasn’t Luke in order to go through with filming. Hamill’s actual quote after the film’s release was: “what could have happened that would make the most hopeful, optimistic character [in the galaxy] end up in this dark place? I had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s Jake Skywalker – he’s not my Luke Skywalker.”
Another aspect of the writing that drove me crazy was the fact that 90% of the scenes in the movie display a character telling you why the scene is in the movie (e.g. Towards the end of the film, the entire Resistance seems to be trapped in a bunker with no way out. When Luke Skywalker appears and goes to confront the First Order by himself on the battlefield, Finn wants to help out, but Poe stops him, blatantly saying: “No, Skywalker is doing this for a reason!” Members of the Resistance then ask where all of the crystal wolves that were trapped with them in the bunker went. The next shot shows one of the crystal wolves bolting into a back corner and under some rocks. Cut to Poe saying: “Over there! There’s got to be an exit where that critter went. Follow me!” Like, no shit Sherlock…). As someone who teaches “good” writing, I always tell aspiring writers to show the reader, don’t tell the reader. This is magnified even more in film. TLJ is one gigantic ‘tell the viewer’ instead of ‘show the viewer’, as if the movie-viewing IQ of audience-goers is zero or near zero.
There are some popular reasons why the majority of Star Wars fans despise TLJ, things like Space Leia (by far…and I mean, BY FAR the dumbest moment in Star Wars movie history), the unanswered questions behind who Supreme Leader Snoke was, why hadn’t Leia contacted her so-called “allies” in the Outer Rim waaaaaay before the Resistance was down to about 300 members at the beginning of the film?, why kill off a fan-favorite in Admiral Ackbar (offscreen I might add!) and introduce an extremely poor character in Admiral Holdo to lead the Resistance fleet?, what’s the point of the entire casino animal rights break onto Snoke’s Star Destroyer sequence of the film (seriously though, the only significant plot point resolved in about 45 minutes of screen time is the demise of Captain Phasma, which really, isn’t significant considering she’s nowhere else in the film)?, enough with the Death Star type lasers (they use one on the salt planet at the end to get through the Resistance’s bunker, however, when it goes off, despite being “Death Star tech”, makes the smallest of small holes in the bunker wall lol), and why does Luke die at the end of the film (my joke is that Mark Hamill wanted out of the shit show Disney is making of Star Wars)? I could have focused on any of these horribly conceived aspects, but that stuff is already out there. I wanted to make give some fresh takes with my review regarding the horrible writing, cringeworthy slapstick humor, and absolute failure in how to handle the character of Luke Skywalker.
The first time I watched the film, I did enjoy it despite its massive shortcomings. Rian Johnson successfully captured the buffoonery of the prequel trilogy, while creating some nostalgic moments of the classic trilogy in the film’s score (thank you John Williams), while creating his own “new” brand of Star Wars, a brand that unsurprisingly follows the formula of modern Marvel movies. In a way, what Johnson did is brilliant, where the film fails is that two aspects of the three-tiered formula suck (the Star Wars prequels and “Marvelized” movies). TLJ and the forces behind it, however, are now reaping the spoils or backlash or however you want to look at it that they deserve. Yes, the film was the 2nd highest grossing on it’s opening weekend of all-time (making the executives behind it and Disney in general a “winner”), however, according to Forbes, the drop off in box office sales between the film’s first weekend and second weekend after release is the greatest ever seen in movie history. This tells me (and it should tell you also) one thing: the movie isn’t very “good”. This not so nice record to have tells us that the film has absolutely no re-watch quality (which it doesn’t; all of the slapstick jokes lose their appeal after the first time), and the majority of the people who saw it on opening weekend are telling their friends and families not to bother seeing it because it is so poorly done (and that’s accurate; if you haven’t seen it, I would save your money and wait for Redbox, if at all).
GRADE: (a generous) D- (62%) CF