Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

I'm going to be completely up front with this. The Last Jedi is not my favorite Star Wars movie. That still goes to The Empire Strikes Back. It is, however, right in there with Return of the Jedi and Rogue One, making it at worst my 4th favorite Star Wars movie. My spoiler free review is as follows:

The movie is very well made. The character development throughout is excellent, the pacing is good, and the story is fulfilling. It feels like Star Wars, but doesn't just copy the movie that inspired it like The Force Awakens did. There are some extra plot lines that feel out of place and unnecessary, but the movie delivers emotional payoff and big amazing cinematic moments in a package that feels like it's already a classic in the Star Wars universe. If you like Star Wars at all, you should see this Star Wars movie. I'm betting you'll love it.

Now, It's been a while since release so I'm going to talk to all the people that have already seen it. If you haven't, there are spoilers below, and uh... you'll be doing yourself a huge disservice by reading spoilers for this movie.


Okay, you see-ers, let's level. This movie isn't perfect. There's a few plot holes, and the ones that bugged me the most were the ones that dealt with how fast and loose they were playing with physical concepts that are, just... really easy to understand, guys. So obviously we could talk about the few things the movie did wrong. But can we talk about what it did right for a second?

First, the characters. Ohmyheck, the characters! We had three characters with beautifully crafted character arcs that engaged me and genuinely surprised me at moments. Po, Rey, and Kylo all had me fully engaged with their stories, and the moments when those stories crossed were some of the most beautiful in the film. It says something about those characters that the bits of the movie that didn't feature those character arcs (read: that whole thing with Finn) were the least entertaining by far.

That's not to say I wasn't entertained by those moments. Getting to know Rose during those bits was lovely, and I hope to see lots more of her in the next movie.

Those main characters were also supported by the always fantastic Carrie Fisher as General Organa (who I will never stop missing), the oddly perfect Mark Hamill as Hermit Luke, and the brand-new-est Bad-A-est character in Star Wars cannon, Laura Dern's Vice Admiral Holdo. Everyone else turned in a solid performance, but those three in their supporting roles stood out head and shoulders above everyone else.

Literally in the case of Laura Dern. That woman is tall.

Then there was the sea of little minor characters, some of whom had names, that we were introduced to just to watch them die like three minutes later? Because those characters were some of my favorite microcosms of characterization in the entire thing. In particular, the struggle of Rose's sister at the very beginning, in the bomber. The way she was portrayed, the things she did and the way she did them, got us into her head just the tiniest amount right before she sacrificed herself to strike a blow against the First Order. Those little moments were... well, simply fantastic.

That character work was excellent, but can we talk about those moments for a second? You know which moments I'm talking about. Those moments that were some of the best nuggets of action film-making in recent memory. One caught us completely by surprise in a moment of pure character development that felt completely perfect (even if it deprived some of you of... whatever it was you wanted from Snoak. I mean, c'mon, he wasn't any Darth Vader surrogate). The other delivered on a promise made in the very first Star Wars (that we'd see something in hyperspace slam into something else) and cemented Admiral Holdo as, just, the coolest.

The movie had some great moments tied together with some seriously fantastic character writing, and it delivered a story that borrowed from Star Wars tropes while still giving us something unexpected and unique. All of that wrapped up under yet another beautiful John Williams score. It was, just really well done.

Sure, there were a few flaws. Objects flying through a vacuum don't accelerate and decelerate like that. That whole casino scene, which was strangely dull. Phasma, despite efforts to the contrary, is still exactly as useless and ridiculous as Boba Fett, yet people will continue insisting that she's awesome even though we never seen any evidence of that on screen. But on the whole the movie is fantastic. And if you disagree, uh... Well.

Well.

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