hail the new – heedless of the wind and weather

Watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).

I’ll try to make it as spoil­er-less as pos­si­ble, but you will have a clear­er idea of what to ex­pect in the film, so I give you a mod­er­ate warn­ing if you want to avoid spoil­ers at all.

It’s over­all very sat­is­fy­ing film, thank­ful­ly with less of nos­tal­gia fan ser­vice and its own plot and char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Un­like The Force Awak­ens (2015) which felt a lot like A New Hope (1977) re­make, The Last Jedi does not im­i­tate The Em­pire Strikes Back (1980) so much (though the two are the most alike).

Al­most all ac­tors did a won­der­ful job, es­pe­cial­ly Mark Hamill and Car­rie Fish­er. They were both the best since The Em­pire Strikes Back. Daisy Ri­d­ley was su­perb, and Andy Serkis de­liv­er­ing an­oth­er near-per­fect job act­ing as an an­i­mat­ed char­ac­ter. Those who I didn’t like are prob­a­bly due to the script, not nec­es­sar­i­ly their act­ing. Among the new char­ac­ters, I was very glad to see Lau­ra Dern back in a block­buster. Now all the ma­jor char­ac­ters in Juras­sic Park (1993) tick the space sci-fi check­box in their CV!

The sto­ry is full of mem­o­rable mo­ments that made me gasp, all of which are orig­i­nal ideas that were not done in Star Wars be­fore. Those are the real gems of the film, for which I praise the film high­ly. It is not per­fect, how­ev­er; in fact, I have a ma­jor is­sue with a cer­tain sub­plot in the mid­dle part. It felt to­tal­ly out of place and un­nec­es­sary, and I was think­ing to my­self ‘WTF am I watch­ing?’ And the char­ac­ters I do not like are re­lat­ed to this. 

The film is the longest in the Star Wars his­to­ry, and the film would have had much tighter sto­ry and bet­ter flow had it not been for the said scene. This is like the Re­turn of the Jedi prob­lem, in which a ton of char­ac­ters were in­tro­duced to sell more toys (also the same rea­son why Na­tal­ie Port­man wore so many dif­fer­ent dress­es in the pre­quel tril­o­gy). On a mi­nor lev­el, the three main char­ac­ters’ in­ter­ac­tion is a lit­tle weak, and I think the movie is suf­fer­ing from hav­ing too many char­ac­ters, old and new.

The edit­ing is a tad too quick, and there were a lot of cuts that I thought they need­ed a bit more room to breathe. And if I re­mem­ber cor­rect­ly, the clas­sic wipe tran­si­tion was used very lit­tle where it had a lot of chances. Over­all the edit­ing job did not feel quite like Star Wars apart from the ac­tion scenes, which were very well shot too.

The mu­sic is a miss for me again. The Force Awak­ens did not have mem­o­rable songs, and the sound­track was the weak­est as­pect in my opin­ion. The Last Jedi has more re­cy­cled bits of the old songs, which are sprin­kled around sim­i­lar­ly un­in­ter­est­ing mess. The end­ing cred­it song was so messy that the mo­ments of fan ser­vice re­al­ly got my nerve (and the open­ing theme was also un­sat­is­fac­to­ry, I’m get­ting re­al­ly picky here). You may not like the pre­quel tril­o­gy, but its sound­track was orig­i­nal and strong. I think they should move to a new gen­er­a­tion in the mu­sic de­part­ment too, in­stead of keep hir­ing John Williams whom I con­sid­er no longer ca­pa­ble of han­dling Star Wars. Peo­ple have done amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the Star Wars sound­scape in the past, most no­table among them are Joel McNeely’s The Shad­ows of the Em­pire (1996).

The en­e­my army is just di­verse in terms of gen­der and eth­nic­i­ty as in The Force Awak­ens, though they are still only hu­mans. The con­flict be­tween to­tal­i­tar­i­an all white men (ba­si­cal­ly space Nazi) and the unit­ed di­ver­si­ty was a great con­trast of ideals, and that’s what makes us root for the rebels. Star Wars get a lot of out­cries for di­ver­si­ty (e.g. more Asian, more fe­male), but ap­ply­ing that to the guys we are sup­posed to hate weak­ens the mes­sage in my opin­ion. It’s not a ma­jor or new prob­lem, but i’ve nev­er dis­cussed this, so I put it here.

In my opin­ion, this is the first post-orig­i­nal Star Wars that tells a new sto­ry suc­cess­ful­ly. The pre­quel tril­o­gy was a long pre­de­ter­mined path to the start of the orig­i­nal, to which I give a lot of cred­it for orig­i­nal­i­ty but it was un­for­tu­nate­ly writ­ten and di­rect­ed by George Lu­cas. The Force Awak­ens had to win back the fans’ trust by mak­ing it very close to the orig­i­nal. And Rogue One (2016) is just an of­fi­cial fan-made Star Wars porn that my opin­ion keeps get­ting worse. Now that the apol­o­gy for the pre­quels are out of the way, the The Last Jedi is what the sea­soned fans re­al­ly want. Com­pared to The Force Awak­ens, the sto­ry is less fo­cused but tak­ing a lot of chances, just as brave as The Em­pire Strikes Back. I will prob­a­bly have bet­ter im­pres­sion in sub­se­quent view­ings now that I know what to fo­cus on. 

As for now, the score is 8.5/10. Giv­en the way it end­ed, I hope the last one will be small­er in scale but much more per­son­al. Af­ter all, that’s why I liked The Em­pire Strikes Back the most.

While I left the the­atre most­ly sat­is­fied, I am start­ing to wor­ry that they may be in­tro­duc­ing too many things and ideas, and dis­pos­ing then rather quick­ly. This is re­flect­ed in the script and edit­ing to some ex­tent, as every­thing felt a lit­tle dis­con­nect­ed, con­ve­nient, and short-lived. The ques­tions from the pre­vi­ous films are ei­ther unan­swered or ex­plic­it­ly dis­re­gard­ed, while new el­e­ments are con­tin­u­ous­ly added. I have a feel­ing that the last episode will ei­ther be a big mess try­ing to tie up every­thing, or bla­tant­ly ig­no­rant of any­thing pri­or, still adding new stuff and throw­ing every­thing out of the win­dow with a slop­py con­clu­sion (I am wor­ried be­cause the di­rec­tor J.J. Abrams has done ex­act­ly that in the past, in LOST (2004–10)), or just keep them as idea for an­oth­er new tril­o­gy which Dis­ney has an­nounced al­ready. Yes they did.
 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2017 Toshi Omagari.

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