George Lucas Was Right About the Star Wars Fanbase

[DarthMetalliCube]

My first reaction to watching the Last Jedi in a word would probably be.. "Huh..?" (Sploilers ahead)

It's just.. such a bizzare movie. Nothing made any sense or went anywhere. Everything seemed disjointed and completely separate from The Force Awakens, and especially the original trilogy canon. A few minor positives I'd take from it is that at least it didn't follow Empire verbatim like I feared it would and like TFA followed the main beats of ANH, and of course the visuals were pretty solid, but that's about it. I guess I kind of appreciated some of the internal conflict of the characters like Luke.. but the main problem with that was that there was very little character development or background to supplement this. For instance, WHY exactly was Luke so bitter, depressed, and reluctant? WHAT exactly makes Rey so special? Who is Snoke, and why/how did he rise to power? Kylo Ren was the one character with a touch of real depth, at least in terms of depth that made sense and was somewhat explained.

And we still have little information about the First Order and Resistance. How did the First Order rise after the destruction of the empire 30 years earlier? There was very little on world building or politics of the galaxy here. I'm not saying have an overly convoluted political story ala Episode 1, but jeez.. Have SOMETHING at least to make sense of all of this..

And what was the purpose for Rose for that matter? That whole character and the entire subplot with Finn seemed utterly pointless and felt more like a Star Wars TV show than a movie, let alone part of a major chapter in the mainline series.. So many weird, nonsensical moments that seemed out of place and pointless. Leia floating through space, Yoda showing up to burn the Jedi archives and basically saying "fuck the Jedi." WHAT? Isn't that like, what a SITH would say? Poe, Finn, and Rose all failing in their missions. Luke doing this bizarre force projection to confront Kylo Ren only to keel over and die anyway?

There was just little substance in terms of character development/motives, progression, world building, and odd structure/pacing that made the whole film seem off to me. The characters have no depth outside from this weird oscillation from whiny teen angst and goofy lighthearted humor which felt totally out of place. More needed to be spend on backstory/exposition and less on pointless action scenes which generally took the plot nowhere anyway. Again, I'll at least give kudos for the movie diverging from Empire somewhat and taking a few risks, though I feel that Rian Johnson almost went on TOO much of a tangent and tried to have twists JUST for the sake of having twists rather than considering serving the larger story of Star Wars. And besides, the uniqueness gets somewhat tarnished anyway by ending the movie with a scene that completely mirrors the start of Empire. This movie as a stand alone film, in a vacuum, I suppose was "OK", but in the grander scheme of things and framing it as a STAR WARS movie, it just falls completely flat and feels utterly pointless. Like, if you want to really do your own thing, as it seems apparent after watching this, cool, but why make a Star Wars movie? Let alone a MAINLINE Star Wars movie? You can be as edgy or different/separate as you want from the original canon, but at the end of the day, your film still bears the name "STAR WARS" and you have an obligation to cater to fans of this particular series that expect a certain type of story and quality, of which Johnson simply did not deliver.

I have very little desire to see Episode IX after this, as this movie basically threw the original Star Wars cannon out the window and went on too far of a tangent, to the point where I found myself asking, why should I care about this? It felt too much like a super hero movie rather than a STAR WARS movie. To those that really liked this film, I'm not trying to knock your opinion of course, to each there own. But I am genuinely curious as to why? What did you see in this that resonated with you? Because for me there was just nothing there outside of the visuals and perhaps a sort of unique take on Star Wars (which didn't really feel like Star Wars to begin with)..

Last edited by DarthMetalliCube - on 21 December 2017