And what better way to give opening to this than discussing the movie I have been waiting since December the 17th, 2015. This year gave me very pleasant surprises in the movie world, but to me this entire year was all about knowing who the hell was Rey, who was Snoke, what had happened to Luke Skywalker, and whats uo with Kylo Ren!
The day finally came and i suited up with mi SW jersey, my Stormtrooper badge and my Green Luke Lightsaber and entered into the cinema, as always missing the 20th Century Fox music announcing movie is about to start, and so it began a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away...this is my 110% personal review of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi...
oh and one small thing:
SPOILER ALERT IN EFFECT
I was never a fan of the color red for the Star Wars (hereafter refered to as SW) title, yellow looks just so good on SW, but so the movie began: First i want to say that i always beared in mind that this movie was and is a "Middle Chapter" , which means there are still 130 minutes left of SW, so The Last Jedi in order to be a good movie could NOT give me all the answers.
Having said that i always liked the quick pacced start for SW movies, and The Last Jedi reminded me a lot of that intense space battle at the beginning of Revenge of The Sith, X-Wings lead by Poe against the cruisers of the First Order in an effort to allow the Resistance to escape. As always SW graphics are amazing, you cant help feel overwhelmed by the huge First Order ships closing in upon the Resistance petty cruisers, and this part is where we start with what i will call Waste of Time Scenes (WOT), the scene im refering to is the one in which the bombers from the Resistance start to unexplicably foolishly blow up, and there is supused to be this character that heroiclly dies while making the bombs effectively destroy the “Dreadnaught” ships (sound like a Mortal Kombat character), in this entire scene 9 minutes are spend to no relevance whatsoever, the only thing it provides is that later we will know that character is sister to a more relevant character, that’s about it, yet this first chapter in the movie is saved by the emotions felt when after being traced the Resistance is under heavy attack and we see Kylo Ren almost ready to blow up Leia and hesitates to do so, and if there is one thing you have to look forward to is Leia using the Force to save herself in the floating space, just loved it .
Now to what most of us waited that after the initial 25 minute battle…Luke Skywalker and his encounter with Rey in the beautifully crafted planet of Ahch-To (LOVE the Porgs) , I very much liked the reluctant attitude of a washed out Master Luke and his efforts of living his life ignoring Rey´s presence and barely noticing the presence of Chewbacca refusing to train Rey, I appreciate the acting effort Hamil poured into this unseen Luke Skywalker, reminded me a lot of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and of the very Han Solo in The Force Awakens. However the spark which ignites the acceptance was in a way a mood killer, the scene of R2D2 finding Master Luke and showing him again the hologram of Leia in A New Hope, this idea was most creative and could have been emotionally speaking of immense depth, yet…it was a 2 minute encounter that changed Legend Master Luke´s mind.
The training days between Rey and Luke are very pleasant to watch, a copy paste of Luke and Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, but still very enjoyable and fun, the brief moments in which Luke explains or reminds the actions of the past are beautifully portrayed, loved as much as most of you seeing Luke with his green lightsaber tempted to kill young Ben Solo. It tooked me a while to understand the strange interfaces between Rey and Kylo, but you can smell from the very start that Rey will succumb to the emotions and reach out for Kylo, Rey now having mixed feelings concerning everything abandons Luke, Daisy Ridley plays brilliantly this internal conflict scenes which deserves the recognition of all audiences.
I didn’t like at all the crazy almost without sense plan of Poe and an awoken Finn to disable the First Orders trackers since inexplicably now Tracing through lightspeed is possible, and the First Order is chasing the Resistance cruisers which eventually will run out of fuel to literally run away ergo ending in the grasp of First Orders canons, another almost copy paste scene from The Empire Strikes Back when the Millennium Falcon running from the Imperial fleet. Finn and his new friend and character Rose who jumps into a ship with him and completely unaware to everyone go to the Canto Bight planet, of this planet and its entire crafting I enjoyed how it was made to be a criticism to the modern society system, with the powerful and rich enjoying the spoils of supplying the weapons to the war while under their very noses people are oppressed and mistreated, as a Venezuelan I very much related to the scene of rich people gazing at a horse like race while in the very stable children are beaten, thank you Mr. Rian Johnson. Other than that it was mostly boring and pointless the presence of Finn and Rose in this planet, they just went there to find a certain “hacker” whom they didn’t find and instead found a classic Benicio del Toro character, and in the end head back to the cruisers.
Now…the encounter I so dearly waited, Supreme Leader Snoke himself, face to face with his desired Rey and now disappointing apprentice Kylo Ren, Rey obviously arrived and obviously was taken as a prisoner and presented to Snoke in an impressive throne room with some badass looking red guards defending Snoke, this scene is a tense one, with a Rey filled with outrage and hate towards Snoke, the more Snoke I defied the more he shows his power as a Dark Lord, I just loved how Snoke showed with every minute passing how mighty he is and how he has all figured out, very similar to The Empire with Luke in Return of the Jedi, you just can’t help saying “Snoke you’re the man” , you yourself feel seduced to been under Supreme Leaders orders, and just in the highest point of “evil always triumphs” Kylo very smartly kills Snoke with Anakyns Lightsaber…yeah just like that the most powerful evil Dark Lord died and was cut in half, it took me a few seconds to process the death but Rey and Kylo had already teamed up killing Snokes guards, and after they are done with them you have the bitter taste of thinking come on Rian don’t make Kylo a good guy, thank God Rian knows logic and the course remained, Kylo the bad guy seducing Rey and Rey saying no, simultaneously Finn, Rose and DJ (Benicio del Toro) fail to disable the tracker in the First Order ship, due to the fact that DJ ratted Finns plan, surprise? Not really, what a cliché way to have Finn and Rose busted (WOT scene).
Oh and ill make a brief return to Ahch-To, cuz it is priceless the appearance of the one and only Master Yoda who appears to Luke just after Rey left, he sees Luke trying to burn the Temple but as always he gives Luke and us heck of a lesson by destroying the Temple and speaking about failure, I have heard Yoda would appear so the question was in my mind: how will they design it? Because I wasn’t particularly fond of the Yoda from Attack of Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and once again thank you Rian for making him like the puppet from the original trilogy, we all got a beautiful Yoda making us nostalgic and making us feel he is more alive than ever.
The sideway plot of a mutiny in the Resistance cruise with the irrelevant Vice Admiral Holdo, played with great effort by Laura Dern, (what a waste of talent) was a complete to my view WOT scene, it added nothing whatsoever to the story an instead made me yawn in a Star Wars movie, yeah, that bad. This entire part of the movie until the final battle of a cornered Resistance is lost in its own attempt of greatness, to many back and forth’s with no sense, obviously Finn and Rose escape from the hands of Phasma which after five minutes in screen appears to finally die (what a waste), Rey also escapes and the dull attempt of plot twist of the Resistance escaping to a nearby planet barely made me move from my seat.
Now we have the Resistance cornered in a cave in a copy paste scenario from Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, Kylo Ren is now leading the attack and again we come to see him in his worst as a character, a spoiled child with deadly toys, the emotional bursting when he sees to the surprise of us all a Luke Skywalker that appeared in the middle of the battle (a younger Luke) which already made gave me a red flag, Luke and Kylo when coming face to face it was meant to be a fight with the intensity level of Anakyn against Obi Wan, it was not, instead we got a slow-motion battle with a Luke acting as Neo in Matrix and for a moment we thought Luke got killed in the dumbest way ever but happy surprise it was this new unknown to us ability of Force projecting itself, Luke was never there, him stalling allowed the Resistance to escape and an even angrier Kylo Ren at his best teenager spoiled child mode, something I thought would have been left behind in Force Awakens, we are quickly sent back to Ahch To where a satisfied Luke gazes into the Horizon and then woosh! Vanishes into the Force the way Yoda did, the movie by this point had been already too long that I did not catch the depth of the moment the first time I saw it, unlike what happened with Han Solo in The Force Awakens, thus…the Resistance once again called the Rebellion escapes and Rey in more than ever set as the successor Jedi. Just when you think the movie is about to end we go back to Canto Bight where one of the mistreated kids grabs a broom with the Force and gazes into the sky and that’s it.
Final remarks of this review, The Last Jedi was a satisfying middle chapter, not at all matchable to The Empire Strikes Back, but still I would place it in the Top 5 Star Wars movies, I believe that it could have depended less from Episode IX, as I said it was only logical for this movie to leave questions unanswered but it abused in the amount of unclosed moments, characters, an plots and that now it will be up to Episode IX to fill, in a couple of years the greatness of The Last Jedi will depend a lot on how the trilogy ends, if Episode IX sets another course then we will be left with extremely lame and underdeveloped characters (Rose, Maz, DJ), this trilogy will have completely wasted a huge character that could have been or can be Supreme Leader Snoke, and also we could be left with very lame and weak explanations concerning the characters (Rey´s parents, Knights of Ren what are they?, maybe a little more on Finns background). But despite all of the previous observations that now depend on J.J. Abrams to solve or make aside, The Last Jedi was a good Star Wars movie, with a very rich plot even maybe too rich for just one movie, and fullfielded nicely its job as the middle chapter to keep us in love with this sequel trilogy.
I give SWVIII 7.5 of 10! Feel free to comment and grade for yourself!
Originally published by me in www.yourmoviecop.blogspot.com
