Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Movie, 2017, PG-13

Premise - The eighth installment in the Star Wars phenomenon, our newest heroine Rey seeks out the iconic Luke Skywalker for help saving the Resistance. Meanwhile, the Resistance struggles to keep out of range of Snoke's ship, as Finn and Poe devise a plan to become untraceable for long enough to escape at lightspeed.


Review - I have a lot of mixed feelings towards this film. Most of them are positive (by my own choice, as I will always decide to view a film in a good light when I can), but I can't escape some of the disappointment I faced. I think it's best to list out pros and cons, as a lot of them are scattered and unrelated....

Pros:
-Beautiful music. John Williams has done it again.
-Fantastic cinematography, editing, and directing style. Just beautiful.
-The new creatures were very entertaining. The porgs were the cutest, but there were also the island natives, and the big things Rose and Finn ride that I thought were great.
-Original plotline regarding the Resistance vs. the First Order. It wasn't another Death Star this time, and as great as that story always is, it's good to have something new (Or is it? I'll get back to this point...)
-Very entertaining. It's a long movie, but there was never a dull moment.
-YODA RETURNS!!

Cons:
-Finn is my baby, and he got demoted to the B-plotline after being a main character of The Force Awakens. Speaking of which, that means there was a B-Plotline, and even a C-plotline, as opposed to one singular story. They are all interconnected, of course, but because there was so much going on, it dilutes the power of each individual plotline.
-So many characters. This film was flooded with characters.
-Back to Finn, his backstory was not explored. Very little character development regarding his role as an ex-Storm Trooper. And they gave him a new character to interact with, Rose, who alone was a great character, but had no chemistry with Finn. So the love story element was... very disappointing.
-Luke didn't really feel like Luke. He was a hero, an icon, who had fantastic moments in this film. But it didn't really feel like Luke Skywalker the character, more like Luke Skywalker the legend.
-Everything they did with Kylo Ren. I thought he had fantastic potential as a character in The Force Awakens, but this film just had me confused. We don't know anything about Snoke or the ideas he put in Kylo's head, nor why Kylo turned on him. And after Kylo killed Snoke and asked for Rey's help to start anew, I thought it was the start of a redemption arc (though perhaps a misguided one). But now, he just instead becomes Supreme Leader and goes straight back to the First Order. So... where does that leave his character? Did anyone else find this difficult to follow??? Why was he so quick to return???

I would say this film is not as good as the original trilogy, nor The Force Awakens, but better than the prequels. Overall, it was definitely not what I had expected. The story went a different direction that I had predicted in pretty much every way. Now, whether or not this is a good or a bad thing is difficult to resolve. Like I said before, the upside is the originality, which is usually valuable. However, in a film series like Star Wars, is originality really the best way to go? Oddly enough, what made The Force Awakens work is it followed the same formula of the originals. And that's exactly what Star Wars does - follows the formula for the most optimal plot. It's the Hero's Journey that has been effective for centuries. Rian Johnson very deliberately broke away from this formula, and the archetypal characters associated with it. Some make the argument that he even inverted it. It plays into the theme of the film, which is to move on from the past and start anew. The problem is... that theme was carried by Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker, both "villains" in this film. Luke Skywalker abandons this idea of moving on by the end, as he returns to the Force and allows the Jedi to continue. That's what made the film work. So maybe breaking expectations isn't really the way to go. We'll see if they return to classic Star Wars by Episode IX, but in the meantime, this was still absolutely a worthwhile film (88/100???).

Director: Rian Johnson
Distribution Company: Disney