Star Wars The Last Jedi
Written and Directed by Rian Johnson
Price: $24.15
HOW MY STAR WARS SOUL DIED
I was one of the millions of Star Wars fans that eagerly lined up for the release of The Last Jedi last December. And walked out of the theater afterwards filled with hate and disgust at what I had just experienced. Weirdly enough, out of the group of 4 relatives I went with, I was the ONLY person that HATED the movie. Everyone else liked it a lot, my dad even saying it was the best Star Wars he had seen in a long time! In those early days, it seemed like Last Jedi was riding high on a wave of critical success. As others in my family and friends went to see the film and also gave it glowing reviews, I started to feel a little isolated. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe I was being too hard on it?
A fellow hardcore Star Wars fan at my work came up to me the Monday after release and asked me "What did you think?" and I told him I hated it. He looked pretty relieved and said he hated it too, but his family thought it was great!
What happened soon afterward was I began to find other fans online who felt the same way as I. Youtube channels such as SC Reviews, Geeks + Gamers, and ComicArtistPro Secrets started to rally the fans against Disney, Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, and their supporters.
What was the response of Lucasfilm and their allies to the criticisms of the film? They said Star Wars fans that did not like The Last Jedi were racist, sexist, and filled with hate and rage...and white. That the "true" Star Wars fans were those that liked the movie and agreed with Disney's liberal SJW agenda. Rian Johnson and others made fun of and ridiculed the fans. The mainstream media outlets supported their company line that anti-Jedi fans were unenlightened and didn't want to see Star Wars move into the future. Some of my favorite Star Wars podcasts literally stated that they did not want to hear from fans or callers that did not like the movie.
For some reason, I found myself buying this Blu-ray when it came out, with the motivation to watch the movie a second time and see if my reaction was any different from when I first watched it. To really dissect why I hated it. I started watching it at the end of March but couldn't get past the first 30 minutes or so. Last night, I finally did it.
You might ask why I finally found the strength to watch the movie? I rewatched The Force Awakens last week and I still really enjoyed that movie. It reminded me that at one time I loved the new characters, the trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe. I wanted their stories to continue. I wanted them to grow as characters. The only complaint I had about that movie and still do was the whole "blow up another Death Star"climax. Yeah, it followed the broad outlines of A New Hope, but I said to myself, ok, they're trying to introduce the franchise to young audiences using the same template as the original. And you know what? IT WORKED. Kids that hated Star Wars or had no interest in the series really liked The Force Awakens, because it played equally to new and older fans.
One of the pyrrhic opinions stated by Kylo Ren but that I think also was a view held by Rian Johnson in the movie was the theme of "killing the past". That's really what made The Last Jedi come off its rails. The fact that even though Johnson said he was a fan of Star Wars he set out to alienate its older fans and only concentrate on the new ones. In a power mad despotic vision he believed that Star Wars only belonged to him. That he could do with it whatever he wanted. And Kathleen Kennedy gave him carte blanche. Instead of continuing the story created by JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan (who by the way were just making it up as they went along) Johnson placed dead ends where the plot would have naturally lead. Instead, Johnson had the mistaken belief that he was a good writer. He looked at where the story was headed and just said "ok, the audience wants THIS, but I'm not going to give them THIS. I'm going to give them what I want instead."
THE CHARACTERS
Luke could have been a powerful Jedi Master that could have trained Rey. Instead, he's a bitter old man that is just a tired asshole and gives Rey no training. She leaves after a couple of days and somehow becomes a powerful Force user and a master swordsman. In fact, both the male characters from the original trilogy, Luke AND Han, became useless assholes. Leia is still strong though, because she's female. SHE has her shit together. The only purpose of these new trilogy movies is to kill off the original cast. Problem is that once they ARE gone, Disney will see that there is NOTHING left. In fact, Luke was left out of Force Awakens simply because his character was TOO strong and took over the movie. To me, that showed just how weak the writers of the new trilogy are. They couldn't figure out a way to use any of the original characters to carry Star Wars forward. Subsequently, Abrams, Kasdan, and Johnson just kill them off. Just reminds me that all the best writers work in television today, not film.
I said that I really liked the new characters from The Force Awakens, and I meant it. But after I watched Last Jedi, those characters were dead to me. Rey is just a superhero who serves no purpose in the plot now. Nothing is hard for her. She didn't have to earn anything. Even in Shonen Jump manga, the hero has to go through extensive training before they can face off against their antagonist. Or they have to lose some battles. They have to be taught by someone wiser than themselves. Even Anakin Skywalker had to be trained and even after years of it, was defeated by Count Dooku pretty easily. Just because you have talent at something doesn't mean you know how to master it. Rey even in Force Awakens just seemed to flip a switch that said "Force On".
Finn, who showed some dramatic depth in the first movie and whose barely concealed love for Rey held that movie together, becomes a buffoon in this movie who also seems useless. He's just a generic character now. He's just a black dude with a gun. He was funny in the first movie, but has evolved only into comedy relief. Pairing with the equally bland and uninteresting Rose makes his plotline even WORSE. I see no way Finn can grow as a character.
As for Rose, all I remember is chubby, big head, big hair. NOTHING appealed to me in the least about her. She was dead weight. Would have been much more interesting to have teamed him with Poe.
Speaking of Poe, to me, he was a minor character in Force Awakens. He was even WRITTEN as a minor character that Abrams and Kasdan expanded on the fly. In Last Jedi he serves mainly as a caricature of "dangerous masculinity" that wants to blow up and shoot things in opposition to the old women who know better. By the way, the old women's plans that get basically the entire Resistance fleet killed.
Poe, Rey, and Finn were never established as a trio in either of these movies like Han, Leia, and Luke were in the originals. They seemed more like a family unit whereas the new stars are more like randos who pass through each others plotlines.
What happened to Hux? In Episode 7 he came off as a wanna be Hitler who seemed dangerous and calculating. In this episode he morphs into a whipping boy for Kylo Ren and Snoke. Getting dragged, struck down, thrown against walls and is now a comic figure.
To me, really the only two interesting characters are Kylo and Snoke. But of course big daddy baddie Snoke gets killed. Johnson made him way too overpowered. It seemed like he had almost omnipotent Force abilites, even greater than that of the Emperor or even Yoda. I mean, he was so strong that you HAD to kill him off. How could anyone have defeated him? MAYBE Luke? I don't even think today Johnson knows Snoke's backstory. I don't think Kasdan or Abrams knew either. They were doing the opposite of world building when they sat down to write these movies. More like setting up one of those old western movie town lots where its just building fronts with nothing behind them.
Kylo is an intriguing character but he's too unstable and insane to take seriously now. He needed to be another bad guy's foil. He will be way too easy to manipulate and trigger left to his own devices. I just picture him screaming and crying the whole next episode. Unless Abrams is going to come up with some bigger threat than Kylo in Episode 9 (which I will most likely boycott).
RIAN JOHNSON, AND THE SCREENPLAY
So I guess the original filmed ending of Force Awakens was going to be Rey walking up to Luke and he was going to be surrounded by all these floating rocks. In other words, he was still going to be connected to the Force. Mr. Rian Johnson decided to say FUCK THAT. In fact, Mr. J decided to squash any and all expectations and speculations raised by Force Awakens.
Even John Williams, the composer of the music for both films was DUPED. You could tell just by the MUSIC when Rey approached Luke at the end of the last film that it was supposed to be an IMPORTANT scene. All that effort wasted on a useless scene and making fans wait 2 years for....nothing. I'm sorry, no matter how jaded Luke had become, that was his dad's lightsaber. He wouldn't have just tossed it like he did. Williams has been mailing in his scores for a long time. He probably hasn't done any good work since The Phantom Menace really. But the music in Last Jedi was TOTAL throwaway. Except when it hearkens back to the original trilogy.
Anyway, back to the writing of this movie. Abrams and Kasdan were just making things up as they went and didn't seem to have thought about the next two movies in the trilogy. They didn't even really think through Force Awakens. They just got lazy and inserted a bigger Death Star at the end.
Say what you will about George Lucas, at least he had a broad outline of 6 or 9 movies written out, so at least he had compass points or beats to work towards. And Lucas gave the treatments to Episodes 7-9 along with other movie ideas to Disney and Brutus Kennedy. He was promised by Brutus that she would be true to the characters "as George had written them". That she would use his ideas. She LIED. Disney and Kennedy threw out all his work thinking they were somehow smarter or more clever. Once they started down that road they were on their own.
If they were going to do that, then FINE, but at least MAP things out...the major plot points. The major beats. Abrams and Kasdan didn't do that. So it was up to Johnson to come up with answers. Why was Luke in hiding? Who are Rey's parents? Who is Snoke? Maybe a good writer could have come up with a satisfactory screenplay. But Dr. J ISN'T a good writer. He tried to shock. He tried to surprise. He tried to be clever. Amazing. Everything I just wrote came out completely wrong. Johnson WAS NOT clever. He chose the LAZY way out. Hmm, who are Rey's parents? NOBODY. Easy to solve. Who is Snoke? HE'S DEAD. Why is Luke in hiding? Because he's a whiny BITCH.
Why didn't Yoda, Obi-wan, hell, even ANAKIN slap Luke in the face and say GET OVER IT! MOVE ON! Like their Force ghosts couldn't have woken him out of his funk? Even Mark Hamil complained about the fact that Luke wouldn't have been in the state that Johnson wrote him. But he bit his lip and did his job. If I was him, I would have held the production hostage. Done a half ass job until they changed the script.
My question is, why was Dr. J given so much power by Kennedy and Disney? It makes me wonder if him and Kennedy were having an affair and sleeping together. Why else would they so blindly follow him? AND give him a NEW trilogy all his own? WHY was he given so much power over so important a franchise? They put themselves all in on him. Look what it has reaped.
Why couldn't these nincompoops have come up with a way to have the original three be in a scene together? I'll give you one reason. Those characters are too strong to be wasted as background characters. Luke WOULD have taken over the movie. Of course he would have. It's supposed to about the Skywalkers. I'm sure Lucas in his original Episode 7-9 treatments featured a Skywalker as the main protagonist, not a nobody from nowhere. Abrams and Johnson came up with the same solution. KILL the original trilogy heroes. Kill the past.
THE FUTURE
Any of my interest in the Disney version of Lucasfilm headed by Kathleen Kennedy died with this film. How could you have killed my Star Wars soul so thoroughly? It wasn't rocket science! Stepping into the leadership of Lucasfilm is like becoming the coach of the Golden State Warriors. You wouldn't have to work that hard to earn billions and billions of dollars. You should have continued the style and general themes of the original trilogy and mixed in elements of the prequels to make it have a more epic feel. You could have used the Star Wars anthology films to get more experimental or tell side stories. NOT the main saga.
I boycotted Solo until today when I gave in and went to see it. The only reason being is that I had a free movie pass. So I did not give Lucasfilm any money. If I hadn't gotten the movie pass I would have never seen it except in pirated form.
I have absolutely no interest in Episode 9 and am immune to its inevitable hype. I waited for 2 years just to see Luke toss his lightsaber over his shoulder. I won't be fooled twice. I'm sure the leaks that will be let out by Disney once filming starts will be that the ship is being righted, that they listened to the fans, that they won't pull the rug from under them again. Don't believe them. Kill the past.
Rumors have started that Brutus will be leaving in September. I think it will be SOONER. Even if she leaves, I have doubts that my interest in Star Wars moving forward will ever return.
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