Star Wars: The Last Jedi

[thedeadparrot]

I think this is one of those movies I appreciated more than I enjoyed, and I'm still trying to parse out my feelings about it. I thought I would have more feelings about it than I did (my feelings are easy to manipulate). Which isn't to say that I didn't have feelings. Just. Less than I thought. But I've been spoiled by watching Coco and The Shape of Water recently, so.

• This movie felt like it had too many plot threads and emotional arcs in it. Almost Marvel-esque in that way. It wasn't that the arcs were bad. It was just that there were too many of them and too truncated to have much of a lasting impact. We've got Finn and Rose's shenanigans on the casino planet. Poe and the Resistance stuck in the middle of siege. Rey and Luke on their island. Rey and Kylo Ren doing whatever. At least one of these needed to be cut.


• I kind of liked the sort of twist on Return of the Jedi where Kylo Ren murders his master and it looks like he's turned a corner but is really still a shithead. He's the worst, and I'm glad the movie still leaves him that way, but he did get too much screentime for how much the worst he is. Snoke was a shitty shadowy villain anyway.


• Luke's characterization was a thing. I didn't love it and I didn't hate it. It just felt shortchanged by the plot necessities of the rest of the movie. I mean, I have a lot of Luke Skywalker feelings, and he's so much the emotional grounding rod of the OT that his arc here feels shallow since it happened so much in the past, especially compared to that of Kylo Ren.


• That scene with Yoda was great, tho. And that final shot of him looking towards the horizon and seeing two suns. Fuck, that got me right in the chest.


• I'm still salty about them killing him off, though. I wanted him to have the chance to come back and fix his mistakes in the way Obi-Wan Kenobi never did. I guess that final stand was about that, but see: truncated storylines. I bet he gets to be a Force ghost in the next one, but still. SALTY AF.


• Oh, hey. Poe got to be an actual character in this one. Kind of a confused, messy one. But that beats the last movie.


• I laughed at all the funny bits.


• I have no idea what they're doing with Rey. She got to learn how to use the Force, hooray! And then was shackled to Kylo Ren's arc and storyline for the rest of it. Blech.


• I liked the way the movie tackled the Jedi and their failings and the moral philosophies behind the Force. But it never got a chance to fully expand on that. Damn, it just makes me miss how the pacing of Empire Strikes Back could give Luke all that time on Dagobah to talk things out and feel things.


• Also, separating the main trio for the entirety of the movie was not a good idea. They have good dynamics and chemistry. And I'm not just saying this as an OT3 shipper. They could have cut down on the number of storylines by doing that, too.


• Rose was great.


• This was the most blatantly political Star Wars has ever been, even with all the senatorial/taxation/trade shenanigans in the prequels. Not subtle about it at all, obviously, and not exactly a sophisticated take on things, but more it was explicit than it has been in the past.