Do you like Star Wars? Any thoughts on the last Jedi?

Of course I like Star Wars. 

As for The Last Jedi, I enjoyed it quite a bit, although not without a few reservations. Further spoilery thoughts below the cut:

What Worked:

What really made the film work for me, its core, was Rey’s storyline – her “lessons” with Luke, her conversations with Ben, the mirror sequence and the revelation about her parentage, the big fight sequence in Snoke’s chambers, and her showing up with the Falcon to spirit the Resistance to safety. I thought this section did a remarkable job of echoing Luke’s Hero’s Journey while deconstructing it. 

And it was deconstruction the way that deconstruction should work: calling into question the status quo (the Jedi Order’s limited views on the force, especially the desire to cut themselves off from the Dark SIde; the series/fandom’s obsession with bloodline and parentage and Chosen One heroes, etc.) and then coming up with fresh new ideas to replace them. And it’s that last step that gives you brilliant moments like Ben’s revolt against Snoke turning out to be a coup instead of turning back to the light like Vader did, or Luke and Yoda’s burning of the Jedi’s sacred writings, or Luke’s final duel/astral projection as a note-perfect send-off for a beloved character. 

Also, I generally liked the combat sequences much more than in TFA, which copied Episode IV a bit too closely for my liking. The bomber sequence in the beginning is clearly meant to evoke WWII bombers in the same way that X-Wing fight scenes were borrowed from WWII footage of dogfighting fighter planes, which is a nice twist, I thought the skimmers and their red plumes on the salt planet was a really lovely visual, and the big lightsaber duel with Snoke’s Guard was arguably some of the best lightsaber fighting that we’ve seen in the entire Star Wars franchise.

What Didn’t:

What didn’t work as well for me was the casino plot with Finn and Rose and Poe’s plot. Let me be clear: I thought all the actors involved were giving a hell of a performance, and I see a lot of potential in the underlying ideas, and there were plenty of moments I liked in them, but there were some underlying problems with both.

To start with Finn and Rose: while the two actors have instant chemistry together (not talking about romantic chemistry, I have no ships to defend), their initial meeting was a bit muddled (several reviewers mentioned Finn initially trying to run away repeating his arc from The Force Awakens as a negative point, but Finn does mention that he’s not trying to run away but warn Rey about returning to a trap. That probably could have been made more clear in the dialogue). 

The idea of a casino plot is brilliant – done right, you could have done a nice mix of Casablanca and the Mos Eisley Cantina, and who wouldn’t love that, I thought the underlying theme of arms merchants selling to both sides as an interesting idea – but there were definite problems in the execution. Namely, I think the animal racing chewed up screen time that was needed to build a rapport with Benicio del Toro’s character so that his heel turn (or was it?) lands with more force, and the casino interior scenes were not particularly memorable to make the place feel as lived-in and intruiging as the Cantina. Overall, this sequence kind of bogs down the second act and doesn’t quite mesh with the ticking-clock tension of the other plot. 

Finally, there was a weird thematic conflict with Poe’s plot when we get to the salt planet: Rose’s argument that the Resistance will win not by suicide-charges against our enemies but by keeping our friends alive clashes pretty sharply with the valorization of Vice Admiral Holdo doing the exact same thing that Finn was trying to do with the battering ram.  

Now with Poe’s plot: as with the other one, there’s a core idea here that I like a lot – deconstructing the loose cannon/hot-shot hero in favor of an argument that we should listen to and respect older women, and deconstructing the “so crazy it could work” plan by showing it fail. However, the way they made it work was by withholding information from characters and the audience to an unreasonable degree. I completely buy the argument that Laura Dern’s character didn’t owe Poe anything given that he’d just been demoted and she outranked him, but withholding information from the entire Resistance to the point where a mutiny breaks out that threatens the whole endeavor doesn’t make sense. 

And I don’t think they quite stuck the landing on Poe’s arc. Yes, he sees his plan fail and the Resistance suffer as a result (for the second time in the film), but he doesn’t really change his behavior as a result, yet both Leia and Holdo’s dialogue toward the end of the film suggests that he has. “The spark that lights the flame” isn’t really enough to be going on with. 

(Incidentally, it’s possible I missed something important, but how did Benicio del Toro’s character leak the actual rebel plans to the First Order when neither Rose, Finn, nor Poe knew what they were? This seems a rather important causal link.)