THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
After Star Wars’ returning success with The Force Awakens, we knew that the story would continue from there. And with the release of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, it became the most divisive film of the franchise since The Phantom Menace.
PLOT
The story begins with Poe Dameron successfully destroying a First Order ‘dreadnought’ ship, sacrificing many pilots in the progress. When the remaining Resistance flee into hyperspace, they are tracked by the Order. Ben Solo aka Kylo Ren attempts to shoot down the leading ship but refuses when sensing his mother Leia Organa. She does survive a blast shot by one of his wingmen, due to using the Force. As she remains unconscious, Vice Admiral Holdo takes command, not telling Dameron the plan. Rey goes to Ahch-To to convince Luke Skywalker to aid the Resistance. He chooses not to, out of fear of being responsible for another Ren, but eventually decides to train her the ways of the force after being encouraged by R2D2. During her training, she and Ren are communicating through the force. As her training proceeds, Luke realizes that she is as strong as his nephew. He tells her that when he trained him he saw the darkness rising. One night when confronting him, his nephew turned on him and destroyed the Jedi temple. When Finn wakes up, caught up with what’s going on, he wants to go to Rey to warn her what’s going on. He is stopped by the mechanic Rose, thinking he’s running away. Together, they come up with a secret mission to deactivate the First Order’s tracking device, if they can find a master code breaker. At Canto Bight, the duo and BB8 fail to find the master code breaker, but they find at least one code breaker named DJ (Benicio Del Toro). Communicating for the last time, Ren tells Rey the truth that Luke attacked him, feared of his power. Rey gets Skywalker to confess; He admits that he contemplated on killing him due to sensing that Supreme Leader Snoke seduced him into the dark side. That is what led to the temple’s destruction and his exile. Because of conversing with him, she thinks that she can turn him like Luke had done to his father. As she leaves to do so, the ghost of Yoda destroys the Jedi library and tells Luke to learn from his failure. When she arrives at the Order’s flagship, Ren takes her to Snoke. When meeting him, Snoke reveals that he connected their minds, in order to find Luke. Finn and his group infiltrate the flagship but are captured by Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie). DJ buys his freedom when giving away the Resistance’s plans. Dameron strikes a mutiny, believing Holdo to be a coward for evacuating what remains of the Resistance to the abandoned base, on the planet Crait. When Leia wakes up from recovery, she allows the evacuation to proceed. Rather than killing Rey, Ren kills Snoke and his guards with her help. However, he remains in the dark side as he wants to rule the galaxy. She refuses to join him and fight over Luke’s lightsaber, only this time it is bisected. As that happens, Holdo sacrifices herself by crashing the flagship in light speed, slicing it in half. As that happens, Finn escapes with Rose and BB8, after killing Phasma. Rey flees as well and Ren takes the role of Supreme Leader. At Crait, the First Order has caught up to the Resistance. As a cannon is charging, Rey and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) draw away their TIE fighters in the Millennium Falcon. Finn attempts to sacrifice himself to destroy the cannon but Rose stops him. The cannon penetrates the doorway to the base. Luke arrives to confront Ben and duel with him. When Ren strikes him down, he discovers that his uncle is not present but is projecting himself with the Force, all the way from Ahch-To. As this helps the Resistance flee and board the Falcon, this exhausted the Jedi so much that it kills him. It ends with both Rey and Leia sensing him go, but Leia claims that they have all they need to fight back, since others had replied to their distress call.
THOUGHTS
The best way to defend this divisive film is through pros and cons.
PROS: I recall having a blast seeing this in theaters in 2017, as I did with The Force Awakens. It is another visual delight and the cinematography from Steve Yedlin is just as spectacular as Dan Mindel's. You still can’t go wrong with a score by John Williams. What Rian Johnson does differently from J.J. Abrams, is that he is able to introduce things that were never a problem in the franchise until now, which successfully raises the suspense despite being questioned later. Adam Driver continues to make Kylo Ren just as hateful as he first depicted him. And the only time I truly believed he would return to the light was when he decides to not kill his mother. Although the truth of Snoke wasn’t revealed until its sequel The Rise of Skywalker, Andy Serkis was able to once again make him the terrifying figure he’s supposed to be, via motion capture. Daisy Ridley continues to create growth for Rey as a hero. She embraces the confident in finding good in others, Ben in particular. Her scene with Ren fighting Snoke’s guards is well edited and so badass to see, easily becoming a scene I like to go back to. I may have complained that it took so long for Leia to use the force, since the character never really used it until now, but I was happy to see it happen nonetheless. I was glad to see a reunion between the siblings Luke and Leia, before actress Carrie Fisher passed away, making the scene more heartwarming. She still gave a good performance because she is a veteran that is nothing but hopeful for the best, no matter what the stakes. It was great to see return of Yoda in ghost form, as they cleverly combine visuals around the iconic puppet. And from the voice aloneFrank Oz makes him just as wise as the last time we saw him. It was genius that this character motivated Luke to get involved, because it was clear that Rey couldn’t convince him to do so. There are many moments where the audience is supposed to giggle like Luke taunting Rey with the Force, Poe dissing Hux or Rey giving the caretakers of Ahch-To a hard time. One that actually gets me every time is when Leia stuns Poe. Although Holdo should have told him that evacuating was the plan, he should have been open minded. Speaking of Holdo, Laura Dern was an interesting addition to the cast because she is able to make her enigmatic with the given time. You immediately forget her for being difficult with Poe as she sacrifices herself against the First Order. That one shot of her ship colliding towards the opposing flagship is the most incredible shot of the film to witness. Despite being against this depiction of the character, actor Mark Hamill is able to reflect the pain and regret that surrounds Luke Skywalker. I am glad that Luke is hesitant to join the war because if he had said yes immediately, it would’ve been too predictable. I have complained of his death being anticlimactic but it makes sense. For someone who’s avoided using his powers for so long and then suddenly use so much of it, it adds up why it exhausted him so much that it kills him. When you accept that, you understand why it happens. Since Luke remains to be my favorite character, it was tough for me to see him go because I always looked up to him, coming from nothing and becoming something when first meeting him. But it proves that not everyone can live forever, not even our heroes. Lastly, I didn’t mind the last scene in which a child from Canto Bight uses the force to grab a broom. It is unnecessarily picked on compared to other things in the movie that are actual problems. To me, the point of that scene is that even after Luke is gone, the Jedi will continue to grow, implying like he said that he’ll never be the last Jedi.
CONS: Entertainment never excuses flaws and this movie proves that. When the rebel releases the bombs on the dreadnought, there is no force that would cause those bombs to fall straight onto it. If you want to be realistic of one thing, it should be about the physics in space. Despite introducing new things, they create new questions. The best example is being tracked through light speed. How is it possible to track a ship in that way and how come that was never used in prior films? Another problem is the fuel. Being low in fuel was never a problem for any character in Star Wars prior to this, so the Resistance being low on theirs is almost not believable. The weirdest thing that’s never explained in this film or The Rise of Skywalker is during the Force conversations between Rey and Ren, they are somehow able to teleport matter. Seeing Luke throw his lightsaber is a gag that undermines the ending to The Force Awakens. I don’t see the problem if they decided to show Luke give it back to Rey solemnly. The Porgs in this movie are almost as adorable as Ewoks were in Return of the Jedi, but no matter how funny there presence is, they almost pull me from the movie because they do nothing. I still enjoy John Boyega's Finn, but the Canto Bight segment slows the movie down heavily and it almost lost my interest, no matter how stunning the scene looked. Instead of getting to the master code breaker they’re looking for, they go to DJ who gets them in trouble. I found it infuriating that they took out the cameo of Tom Hardy as a stormtrooper who encounters Finn. I’ve seen the scene and it’s just as funny as Daniel Craig’s stormtrooper cameo in the previous film, so I don’t see the problem deleting that one. Despite being written to build suspense, it was completely unnecessary for Holdo to not tell Poe that evacuating was the plan. Way before seeing The Rise of Skywalker, I knew that Kylo Ren was lying about Rey’s parents. He was clearly telling her they were junk traders in order to convince her to join him, but it backfires. The big flaw with Luke’s death aside from being anticlimactic, is how his metal hand disappears with the rest of his body. That still doesn’t make sense to me. To think a situation like that wouldn’t be duplicated, the same thing happened with Bucky in Avengers: Infinity War. I’m not the kind of fan sending death threats or hate mail to actress Kelly Marie Tran, but that doesn’t mean I don't like Rose. Rose doesn’t make things worse but she was wrong to not let Finn sacrifice himself to destroy the cannon. It sounds selfish to rather see Finn go, but it’s better than the rest of the Resistance dying mercilessly by the hands of the First Order. The love she claims to have for him just doesn’t feel real at all. The dice that we see Luke carry is so confusing. We first saw the dice in A New Hope and this artifact never returns until now. We also see it in Solo and neither film give it any importance, since there is no symbolism around it.
To wrap up, The Last Jedi doesn't raise the bar like it should, but does not immediately it's not bad of a film. If you can find a way to ignore these flaws, than there is a possibility to enjoy this sequel not just as a Star Wars fan, but as a general moviegoer.
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