Star Wars The Last Jedi has been in theaters for almost a week now and I have now seen it twice and let the movie really digest inside me. It would have been unfair to give a review after only seeing it once, with emotions still high and confusion still there, this is my unbiased review.
This movie is great. It’s amazing, it takes risks, risks that no other Star Wars movie has seen before and I can see how fans are angry in the direction that Rian Johnson took this movie, but for me it works and it pays off.
First I’ll take about what I disliked about this movie since I had few dislikes. One major dislike is the side adventure that new character Rose played by Kelly Marie Tran and Finn played by John Boyega take to a ridiculous casino planet. What really bothered me was that this entire mission meant nothing, their plan doesn’t even work. It wasted time with these two characters who are trying to save the day even though their plan was doomed. Let me put this into context, the two go to this planet to get a master code breaker in order to deactivated the First Order’s tracker senors. The two get arrested and find another guy DJ portrayed by Benicio Del Toro. They end up getting captured by the First Order meaning that their entire time spent on this casino planter was for nothing. This scene took up 20 minutes of the film, 20 minutes that I would have much seen spent elsewhere like on Ahch-To with Luke and Rey.
Another dislike about this movie is that 20 minutes that was wasted on Rose and Finn would have been better spent on Rey and Luke. Luke only gives Rey three lessons in training, well not really training it was more of lessons on why the Jedi should end. The trailers made it seem like Luke was going to be training Rey in the ways of the force, which he somewhat did, but I wanted more time on the island, more training like how Yoda trained Luke on Dagobah. Throughout the movie Rey seems to become more powerful even though she wasn’t really trained and I just wish they showed that, it would have been better served for Rey’s character arch as she goes to becoming a Jedi.
Minor issues with this movie was that Rian Johnson didn’t give a lot for Poe Dameron to do, he was just reckless which seemed like a major 360 spin on his character from The Force Awakens. I wanted more from Carrie Fisher, she spent a good majority of the movie in a coma and didn’t have much to do, I wanted General Leia to take control and lead the resistance into something great.
One thing this movie does that bothers me is leave a lot of answers that fans had unanswered. One is who is Snoke? The past two films have been building up Snoke to be this big bad like how the Emperor was in the original trilogy. Everyone wanted to know who he is including myself and before we can even get that answer Kylo Ren just kills him without answering that question and I doubt we will get to know the answer know, it just wasn’t the pay off I wanted for this movie. Another is the question of who are Rey’s parents, which again goes unanswered, well not unanswered, Kylo Ren tells that Rey’s parents were nobodies, they were scavengers who were drunks and traded her for booze money. It was disappointing knowing that this big question we all had after watching TFA was just basically thrown away.
Now onto the good parts about this movie and let me say, there are a whole lot of good parts.
First the space battles, so beautifully directed and show and we all got to see the action that took place, all of the explosions all of the flying through tight spaces was just breathe taking. Probably some of the greatest space battles in all of the series, you actually got to witness the stakes everyone took while in space and I just cannot give enough credit to Rian Johnson and the cinematographer Steve Yedlin for making it look so beautiful and breathe taking.
The island scenes were great, Rian Johnson really went into why Luke became this hermit and wanted nothing to do with the Jedi ways. All of Rey’s training was great, we got to see how powerful she can be and it was just great to see now that Luke has become the master. My one regret is that to me not enough time was spent with just Luke and Rey as he trained her, it would have been nicer to see more of it. Other then that, the entire island sequences were great, the two of them played so well off of one another it was truly great to see, and Mark Hamill was at his absolute best, this by far my favorite version of Luke Skywalker, better then Luke in Return of the Jedi. Daisy Ridley was great too, throughout the whole movie, she is really getting into this character and giving us more reasons why she is the new face of this franchise.
One scene and let me say is probably my favorite scene in this whole movie just because of the reaction it gives everyone in the theater. Towards the end of the movie when the First Order starts shooting at the resistance escaping fleets, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo played by Laura Dern scarifies herself and goes into lightspeed directly into the First Order’s main ship. Once the ships collide it lets out this big beautiful explosion and the two times I have seen this movie the same exact reaction from audience is given, a big gasp as the whole theater is left speechless and in awe as all we see is the explosion with no sound. It was just great and I loved seeing it twice just for the reactions.
Now lets talk about the final battle. We get Luke Skywalker verses Kylo Ren. And this part mirrors A New Hope as Luke holds off the First Order as the last remaining of the resistance is able to flee with Rey. This scene was done great as it comes with a twist, Luke is shown still to be on his island as his is using all of his power to project himself long enough to help in the only was possible. Then what also mirrors A New Hope, Luke looks out into the sky watching as the two suns set and the iconic Luke Skywalker theme plays and he becomes one with the force. It was a beautiful scene and I just loved how it mirrored NH in the best possible way.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie, it was great, it took risks with old characters that we have grown to love and took risks with new characters some of which I believe play off others not so much. It has great actions scenes throughout and even thought there is just one slow part throughout the whole movie this film is still good and it baffles me that fans are criticizing this movie, they say TFA was too similar to the original trilogy and this movie was too different. But I am here to say that this movie was great, amazing and I give it a 9/10 and I highly recommend that everyone see this movie more than once because it’s so different people need to see it a second time to really understand it.