Originally written December 21, 2017

I have to admit…this is going to be a difficult one for me to review. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been an extremely polarizing movie among the Star Wars fanbase. I’ve heard some people (people that I even know personally) call it the best Star Wars movie ever made. Even critics have given it very high praise, with it having one of the highest scores for a Star Wars movie on Rotten Tomatoes. However, then if you look at the audience score for the movie on Rotten Tomatoes, you will see that it is the lowest rated Star Wars movie ever…and yes, that’s including the prequels, which have regularly been trashed by Star Wars fans for years.

So, why the huge divide? Well, I think the first thing that needs to be considered is context. The Last Jedi is the second movie in a trilogy that, at the time of writing this review, has yet to conclude. As such, at this point in time we can only judge the movie based on what we’ve been presented with so far. I’m making this point because, while this isn’t the only criticism being leveled against The Last Jedi, this is very much a “middle movie.” Middle movies are hard to pull off right, but if you want an example of how to do it right, look no further than the original Star Wars trilogy with The Empire Strikes Back. Speaking of Empire, though, if you actually go back and look at original reactions to that movie when it came out, you will find that many people didn’t like it, feeling that it was a very disappointing follow-up to the first movie. That movie was once considered a disappointment because of how much it differed from the first movie, and yet nowadays many people not only call it the best Star Wars movie, but one of the best movies ever made.

Now, don’t mistake my intention with the Empire comparison. I’m not saying that The Last Jedi is at the same level of quality as Empire Strikes Back. I’m merely saying that perhaps in the future, after this trilogy has concluded, maybe The Last Jedi will wind up having a more unanimous consensus among fans, rather than the polarizing confusion that we’re left with now. Like I said, context is everything, and I’m not willing to rule out the possibility that maybe once we have the full story of the trilogy, things in The Last Jedi might make a bit more sense and be appreciated more. However, my job right now is to judge the movie based on my viewing experience of it at the time of its release.

This movie is hard to review from a critical point of view because it’s so subjective. Don’t get me wrong, art in general is always subjective, and so a person is always entitled to go against popular opinion as long as they have strong enough reasons to back up their argument. However, movies tend to be a lot easier to review when there’s a common consensus regarding its quality, but this isn’t the case with Star Wars: The Last Jedi. As I’ve already discussed ad nauseam, there hasn’t been a common consensus regarding the quality of The Last Jedi, and so with a movie like this, sometimes I’m not sure how much weight my personal opinion should carry. I can tell you that I was personally disappointed with The Last Jedi, but if there’s also a ton of people out there that think this is the best Star Wars movie, then who am I to tell them that they’re wrong?

From my perspective, the most polarizing thing about The Last Jedi is how it handles its story and characters. While some people may have felt that it played things too “safe,” I personally loved the first movie in this trilogy, The Force Awakens. I felt like it was a fantastic mix of old and new, and that it introduced some great characters that had a lot of potential for the next two installments. Director J.J. Abrams also really nailed down what made A New Hope so great in the context of a trilogy: that it made you intrigued to want to know more about this universe and where it’s going. Abrams really made me intrigued to see where things would be headed for The Last Jedi, but unfortunately director Rian Johnson didn’t seem to be very interested in continuing the mystique that The Force Awakens left us with. Instead, he opted to take things in his own direction.

As far as I can tell, this is where you’re either going to love or hate The Last Jedi. Since I personally loved what The Force Awakens teased at us for the future, I was very disappointed to see it abandoned so easily. Some spoilers will follow here for the rest of this paragraph, so if you want to avoid that, skip ahead to the next paragraph. Anyway, the clearest examples of this lie with Snoke and with Rey’s heritage. Both of these elements played a crucial role in The Force Awakens, but the identity of who Snoke really was and who Rey’s parents were was never actually answered, and so fans were waiting to find out more. However, The Last Jedi throws these two things completely out the window. Snoke gets killed off very easily without us ever finding out anything else about him, and Rey’s parents are revealed to be nobodies that don’t matter. It can be argued that we won’t know for sure whether the latter is true or not until the trilogy is concluded (which is why I said earlier that the future may be kinder to The Last Jedi if Episode IX is handled better), but regardless, as it is now, these are the directions that The Last Jedi chose to go with, which is disappointing to say the least. It just seems kind of pointless to set up these big mysteries in the first movie, only to abandon them in the sequel.

Okay, though, so specific details aside, what is the overall general plot of The Last Jedi? Well, we find our three main new heroes (that is: Rey, Finn, and Poe) separated in this movie, and each of them is handling their own storyline. For me, Rey’s is the most engaging, and ultimately has the most payoff. Rey finds herself trying to train her newfound abilities with the infamous Luke Skywalker on a deserted island, while also trying to convince him to return and help the rebellion against Snoke and Kylo Ren. There are some interesting relationships found in this storyline, mainly between Rey and Luke, and Rey and Kylo. I found myself most interested during these moments. However, the rest of the story is a bit…underwhelming, as well as pointless in some areas. A lot of the movie is actually just preparation for a final fight in Episode IX. But for this particular movie, the Resistance finds themselves being chased by a First Order ship. They don’t have enough gas to keep moving, so they have Finn go off and try to find a way to get rid of the First Order’s tracker. This plot just simply isn’t the caliber that it should be for a Star Wars movie. Poe finds himself needing to learn patience, instead of always being so impulsive, which is interesting enough, but not really anything groundbreaking. However, Finn’s storyline proves to ultimately be pointless, and so the whole affair is just a bit of a mess.

I feel as though the plot is the main issue here, but The Last Jedi also treads shaky ground in how it handles its characters overall. As I said earlier, its biggest mishandling is with Snoke. It was disappointing to see a potentially amazing villain just not be given the respect he was due. The trade-off for this, however, is that Kylo Ren continues to be handled amazingly. His journey was fascinating in The Force Awakens, and he continues to be interesting in The Last Jedi. My one complaint with him is that I felt like by the end of The Force Awakens, he had moved past being conflicted into just going full-on evil, but now that apparently isn’t the case since The Last Jedi retreads that same ground. As for our three new heroes, Rey is handled very well. I’ve completely disagreed with any complaints about her being “an overpowered Mary Sue” since The Force Awakens, and I feel as though her character keeps being explored really well in this. I felt as though I wanted to see more of Poe in The Force Awakens, but now that we got more of him in The Last Jedi I find him to be a bit less interesting of a character. He’s interesting enough, though. However, the real disappointment in The Last Jedi is Finn. This is through no fault of John Boyega, but rather that Finn is given nothing interesting to do in The Last Jedi. In The Force Awakens, it seemed as if he and Rey were sharing close to equal footing as far as being main characters, but now in The Last Jedi he’s sidelined pretty hard.

As far as other characters go, it’s mostly nothing too special. I felt that the real highlight was Luke. One of the biggest polarizing aspects of this movie was how Luke’s character was handled, as people aren’t a fan of him becoming “a grouchy old man.” However, I actually felt that, given the circumstances that the story of this new trilogy had already presented thus far, The Last Jedi shows a natural progression of his story. He plays a pretty prominent role in The Last Jedi, and it’s very interesting getting to see the conflict within him about whether he should help Rey since he previously failed with Kylo. My big disappointment as far as Luke is concerned, though, is that (SPOILERS HERE) he dies for seemingly no reason after having a big triumphant character moment at the end (END SPOILERS). Leia is handled well enough, but isn’t featured too much in the movie. The elephant in the room with her character is the fact that Carrie Fisher passed away between the filming of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, so it was sad to see her farewell performance. As for minor recurring characters, Hux is still pretty one-dimensional, and Phasma is literally featured in the movie for less than 5 minutes, so it’s hard to care when she finally does have her big scene. There are two main new characters that are introduced in this movie, Rose and DJ, but both of them are pretty terrible and feel out of place in the series overall.

One really interesting part of my personal experience with The Last Jedi is that despite all of these complaints I’ve just lodged against it, I actually did enjoy myself while I was watching the movie. The movie is crafted well enough to be exciting, and so it’s hard to not be entertained while you’re watching it. It was only after the credits rolled and I was starting to actually think about the movie that it disappointed me. This was most obvious when I thought back on my favorite parts of the movie. I have three specific examples of this, so spoilers will follow for the rest of this paragraph again. Perhaps the best scene in the entire movie is watching Kylo Ren kill Snoke, followed by he and Rey fighting off the rest of Snoke’s minions. This was a hugely shocking moment and feels very exciting while it’s happening. However, then when I thought about things afterwards, the disappointment over discarding Snoke overshadowed the enjoyment of the twist. The second example is that Finn gets to fight Phasma, which is a payoff from The Force Awakens. However, then not only is this ruined by the context of this being Phasma’s only scene in the movie, the fight was also extremely short. Finally, there’s a really great final fight scene between Kylo Ren and Luke, which is such an amazingly crafted scene, and packed full of excitement. However, then once it’s over, Luke just drops dead (I’m not kidding), which taints the enjoyable experience that preceded it.

I’ve read and heard other complaints about the movie that I just don’t agree with. One minor complaint I’ve read about is that people hate the Porgs, which are new furry creatures introduced (basically to sell toys). They are The Last Jedi’s version of Ewoks. I always disagreed with the unnecessary hatred of Ewoks as it is, but even so, Porgs are much less featured in The Last Jedi, so it’s ridiculous to make a big deal out of them. Some people have complained that the movie has too many jokes in it. I didn’t feel this way at all. The movie might have a few more comedic moments than previous Star Wars movies, but the movie knows when to take itself seriously and when to make a joke, so the comedy didn’t feel out of place, and it definitely didn’t go into “parody territory” like some people claim. Finally, I’ve heard complaints about the acting in this movie, which I think is the most undeserved criticism of it. Like I said earlier, I may not be a fan of how a character like Finn was handled, but you better believe that John Boyega played his part. The same can be said for the entire cast, in my opinion. I think the big standouts are Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, and Adam Driver, though. All three of them really got into their roles, and I think they deserve huge props for it.

Really, when it comes down to it, I think the only thing that’s really terrible about The Last Jedi is its story and how some characters are handled. However, these things tend to be pretty big dealbreakers for movies, so it’s weighted a lot more heavily than some of the praises I have for it. Like I said, the weird thing about The Last Jedi is that I actually did mostly enjoy it while I was watching it. It’s only when I sat down and started thinking about it that it really made me mad. I do think that some of the criticisms against the movie are unfounded, but for the most part I do err on the side of the debate that The Last Jedi just isn’t a good movie. I think that if it was being held to normal standards, it might not be so bad, but the Star Wars series is put on a pedestal for many people, and so when you have such a huge legacy to live up to, it’s easy to view The Last Jedi as a failure. This isn’t coming from someone that thinks it’s impossible to live up to the legacy of Star Wars, either, since I genuinely think that The Force Awakens is one of the best Star Wars movies. However, unfortunately its follow-up, The Last Jedi, is one of the worst Star Wars movies. I do hope that in time The Last Jedi can follow the same trajectory as The Empire Strikes Back and be held in higher esteem when looked back on, but as it stands right now, The Last Jedi is just a big disappointment. All I can hope for is that Episode IX redeems this trilogy.

2.5/5