Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

***Spoiler Warning***

As many of you may already be aware, we here at Life of Films are not big fans of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but we appreciated the foundations it laid with new characters like Rey and Finn. There were intriguing mysteries around these characters, such as who Rey’s parents are and how Finn managed to defect from the new evil force looming over the galaxy – the First Order, run by another mysterious figure, Supreme Leader Snoke, who seemed to have an interesting background. It also left us with questions about the original characters, especially Luke Skywalker and why he had exiled himself. If, like us, you were looking forward to finding out more about these characters in The Last Jedi, then, like us, you will have been sorely disappointed.

With Snoke’s army somehow at full force again, despite what happened at the end of The Force Awakens, and the Rebellion down to only about 400 people, the fate of the galaxy is in Rey’s hands. She needs to persuade Luke to come back and help with the fight, so that he can inspire more people to join the battle against the First Order. The problem is that Rey is on the clock: the First Order has located the Resistance and is in pursuit, waiting for the Resistance fleet to run out of fuel so that it can destroy what is left. I don’t really believe that a starship would just run out of fuel, but I suppose it made for good suspense.

With Rey trying to bring Luke back, we are left with Finn and Poe on the ship with Princess Leia. Each character has their own little story on the ship:

• Finn desperately wants to leave so he can go and find Rey and warn her not to come back to the ship, which is being hunted.

• Poe is having a weird life lesson about being a leader, not a hotshot.

• Leia seems to be finding her Force roots, learning to wield it rather than just feel it.

Let’s start with Leia and her newfound strength with the Force. Now, I don’t mind Leia being a Force-wielder; it makes complete sense for her to be one. What doesn’t make sense is how she is not killed instantly when the bridge of the ship is blown up and she is sucked out into space. Instead, she uses the Force like a giant magnet, which pulls her back in through the hole left by the explosion to the airlock. Poe then opens the door on the other side but isn’t sucked out himself. I literally laughed as I saw ‘Super Leia’ fly through space. It was borderline embarrassing. At least it put her in a coma, which meant floating in space had some kind of effect on her.

Before Finn can leave the ship, he is caught by Rose Tico, a maintenance worker who takes it upon herself to guard the escape pods so that no one can flee. During their meeting, they come to the realisation that the First Order is tracking them through lightspeed and that they will need to sneak onto the mothership and turn off this tracking device. This mission would have made sense to an extent if it hadn’t then meant that Finn and Rose had to fly to a random planet called Canto Bight, where they needed to find a hacker to help them. They find the hacker they are looking for via Maz’s intel; however, they bring back Benicio del Toro’s DJ instead. He can hack but inevitably betrays them, in turn making Finn’s story completely redundant, as all they do is make things worse.

During Finn’s mission, Poe is tasked with distracting Vice Admiral Holdo, the new person in charge whilst Leia is in her coma, so that Finn has enough time to complete his mission. Holdo makes her own plans for the crew to flee the ship and take refuge on the nearby planet Crait, but decides not to tell Poe. She allows him to keep creating stupid distractions and thus has to continually punish him. If they had just had a chat about everything, the fleet would have been better off for it.

This leads me to Rey and Luke’s side of the story, and boy, was this the most disappointing part. The Luke Skywalker I grew up with was the epitome of a hero, putting others before himself and always seeing the good in people. Here, that was all thrown out of the window. The Luke we get is old and none the wiser, and only cares about himself. I actually think the Luke in Return of the Jedi is wiser than the one in The Last Jedi. In the very last scene in The Force Awakens, we see Rey standing there holding out Luke’s father’s lightsaber, waiting for him to take it. This is the lightsaber that was with Anakin when he became Darth Vader, which was then handed to Luke by the legendary Obi-Wan Kenobi, only for Luke to lose it, along with his hand, during one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history. So, you would expect this scene to be dealt with carefully, as this lightsaber holds a lot of emotional weight for the character and the audience. Apparently not to Rian Johnson, the director, as he directs Mark Hamill to toss it over his shoulder and walk away because Luke is done with being a Jedi. This, for me, is all the proof you need that Rian Johnson doesn’t care about Star Wars, and nor do Disney. I have never seen such disrespect shown to an object that is part of something so loved by so many. He uses something so important to get a cheap laugh, and this sets the tone for much of the movie – cheap laughs. In any scene where there might have been some kind of emotional weight, it was cheapened by a quip, gag or someone doing something stupid, like brushing off their shoulder after being bombarded with blaster shots. Yeah, Luke actually did that – *eye roll*.

Throughout the whole film, Luke is nothing like I remember him being. He’s miserable, uncaring and even has a whiff of evil. This is shown during the flashback to how Ben Solo turned into Kylo Ren. Luke explains that he saw evil in his nephew and, for a second, whilst Ben was sleeping, went to kill him so that he couldn’t hurt anyone. Ben catches him just after Luke realises that what he is doing is wrong, and reacts by pulling the walls down on Luke with a Force pull. He then unleashes his anger on Luke’s school, which is what causes Luke to give up his faith and go into hiding, as he feels responsible for all that is happening in the galaxy now under Snoke and Kylo Ren’s reign. The fact that Luke’s first thought is to kill his nephew when he senses conflict in him shows that Rian Johnson hasn’t really paid much attention to the original trilogy, as Luke risks his life to bring Anakin back to the light side of the Force because he can sense conflict in him as well.

Now that we are onto Kylo Ren, I can talk about some of the positives of the film. Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, is, without a doubt, the best character in The Last Jedi. There is so much depth to his character, keeping the audience on their toes as to whether he will fall deeper into the dark side or come back to the light. The bond between him and Rey is a key part of this story, and probably the highlight. Rey gets fed up with Luke and his depressive state so quickly that she tries to resolve matters herself by going to see Kylo Ren and trying to bring him back to the light side of the Force. When she goes to Kylo, he inevitably takes her to see Supreme Leader Snoke. Snoke reveals that anything they have felt for each other has been manufactured by him, using his incredible strength with the Force. Due to this manipulation and Snoke’s harsh treatment of him, Kylo decides to turn on his master and kills him in the most stupid way. With Rey’s lightsaber sitting next to Snoke, Kylo uses the Force to twist it and turn it on so that the blade shoots through Snoke and chops him in half. Not only do I find it odd that Kylo is able to turn a lightsaber on with the Force, as I have never seen that done before, but it completely undermines Snoke and the amazing power he has just demonstrated. On top of this, he is killed before we even find out who he is and how he became so powerful, as well as disfigured. This power and disfigurement deserve to be explained; they need to be! Snoke was reduced to nothing more than a device to bring Rey and Kylo together, but with the aforementioned power, it seems a ridiculous decision.

With Snoke now dead, the scene directly after is a great highlight of the film, as we see Rey and Kylo team up to defeat Snoke’s guards with some epic teamwork. This is certainly the scene I can’t wait to watch again and again. Once Rey and Kylo finish defending themselves, Kylo tells Rey his plan to rule the galaxy himself and how he wants Rey to join him, as she is damaged, like him. He goes on trying to persuade her by telling her that he knows who her parents are and that she herself has known all along. This conversation automatically gets everyone on the edge of their seats, waiting for Kylo to reveal that it is Han or Luke, maybe even Snoke, whom they have just killed. But no, it’s nobody, just some wasters who sold her as a child to get an extra buck to fuel their addictions. I mean, come on! The two characters we have been creating fan theories about for two years both turn out to be nobodies?! Disappointed just doesn’t cut it.

Now that the Resistance/Rebellion is on Crait and Ren is in charge of the First Order, he sends his army down to finish off his mother Leia and what’s left of her rebels. With minimal time to escape, it seems as though the galaxy’s last hope is about to come to an end until, to no one’s surprise, Luke Skywalker appears (looking a lot younger than he has for most of this film) to save the day. He has an emotional chat with Leia and apologises for his wrongdoings, which was nice, and I enjoyed seeing them back on screen together. Luke then goes out to face this entire army, giving the Rebellion time to figure out an escape.

The reason for Luke’s return is that he is visited by Force-ghost Yoda, which was probably the best scene in the film, even if Yoda did look a little off. Just seeing our beloved little green friend back on screen again, teaching us more about the Force, was great, and a real highlight within the new era of Star Wars.

So now that Luke has come back, he walks out to take on the First Order. After their first attempt at killing Luke with a ton of blaster shots fails, complete with a ridiculous shoulder brush from Luke, Kylo goes out to fight him. Finally, the scene I’ve been waiting all movie for, but boy, does it disappoint. It’s not a fight at all. We just see Luke dodge two of Kylo’s lightsaber swings before Kylo finally gets a hit, but only because Luke lets him. Luke almost imitates Obi-Wan’s famous line, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”, only for Kylo Ren’s blade to go straight through him, revealing to the audience that Luke was simply a Force projection.

With Kylo Ren failing to quash the remainder of the Rebellion, ultimately allowing them to escape, the film returns to Luke on his lonely planet Ahch-To, where we see him weakened by projecting himself over to Crait. As we watch him look out at the famous twin suns, just as we see him do in the legendary scene in A New Hope, with his famous theme playing in the background, Luke fades away, granted a Jedi’s death. This was a very touching scene, but sadly it followed a very awkward and pointless fight scene, as well as a very disappointing and out-of-character portrayal of the character we all know and love.

There we have it, an extremely long, spoiler-filled movie review of The Last Jedi. I really wanted to love this film, but sadly it has well and truly been corrupted by Disney. I am a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the one thing that has always bugged me is the cheap gags that always take away from the seriousness of the scene. It upsets me to know that this same format has seeped into my favourite film franchise. I think I have to come to the realisation that Star Wars is gone.

#StarWars