Please stop reading if you don't want major spoilers.
So first off, I thought The Last Jedi was great. It made me laugh, it made me tear up some, and it made me smile in awe at the lightsaber fight.
There were definite flaws in this movie. And I actually thought "wow, this movie is long" at one point, which is kind of a first.
I'm gonna break this character by character, to discuss what worked for me, and what didn't.
Let's start with Poe Dameron who got a massive boost in screen time and importance in this movie. His conflicts with Leia and Admiral Holdo made the Resistance a more complex organization. No longer is Star Wars about two unified organizations going after each other, but there is civil conflict within both organizations. Unfortunately the main conflict between Holdo and Poe ends up being that she didn't share her plan with Poe. Instead she asks him to just trust her, and he responds by forming his own crazy plan.
I liked Admiral Holdo, but ultimately if she had just told Poe that her plan was to retreat to the nearby planet, Poe and her wouldn't have had their conflict and could have worked together rather than sending Finn off on the lame sidequest.
By the way, I was sort of expecting that with the hyperspace tracker that the Resistance and First Order would be involved in a chase like the episode "33" from Battlestar Galactica, and I think that might have been a more compelling plot for this portion of the film.
But Admiral Holdo going into lightspeed to attack the First Order was bad ass. It is one of the three enduring scenes I took away from the movie.
Another enduring scene involved....
Leia flew in this movie. I know a lot of people have bitched about that scene, but reminder Star Wars is a fantasy series set in space. Jedis are wizards. Leia flying was awesome.
My only trepidation is that Leia still being alive at the end of this movie, means something is going to have to happen in IX to explain her death.
Now to possibly the weakest part of the film....
I want to give credit for casting an Asian actress, it is important to have women of color represented in film. Unfortunately I don't think there was the requisite chemistry between Rose and Finn to make their budding romantic interest work, and their plot involving going to a casino to find a hacker didn't really work for me. I liked how they set up that the Resistance is inspiring force, and I think Finn had a lot of character growth in this movie, transitioning from his original selfish persona, to only caring about him and his closest friends, to now being willing to die for the Resistance. I just wish the character growth hadn't happened during a weird sideplot that made the middle of the movie feel like it was dragging.
Snoke die. Lol.
And he was killed by....
Kylo Ren. Ben Solo. Not everything about this character works for me 100%, and him taking over for Snoke after his master's death is a little abrupt, but him trying to wipe out the past works for me. But every Ben/Rey scene in this movie was electric. And that lightsaber battle between the two of them and the Knights of Ren was the other enduring image I took away from this movie. It was possibly the most exciting lightsaber fight ever.
Rey is in a fight with Han Solo for my favorite Star Wars character ever. I loved everything with Rey in this movie. The reason why the casino planet was especially frustrating to me was because it took us away from Rey and Luke....
Luke's death made me tear up. Him learning the important of failure made me tear up. This was a very different Luke Skywalker, but he worked for me in this movie. And I think his death scene was perfect.
Phasma continued being the Boba Fett of the new films. Which makes me lol.
Feel free to comment below what you thought of the movie.
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