‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’: Good but not out of this world (Review)
WARNING: spoilers ahead
The latest addition to the Star Wars franchise may actually leave you laughing more than on the edge of your seat.
Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi is the second movie in the new sequel trilogy. The highly anticipated film was released on December 15, 2017.
Continuing from the previous episode, Rey seeks out training from Luke Skywalker who is hidden on an island. Meanwhile, the rebels try to escape the First Order.
The movie was unnecessarily long, being well over 2 hours in length. Finn, a stormtrooper that deserted the First Order to join the Rebellion, awakens from a coma attempting to desert the Rebels. An engineer named Rose stops him and they go on a mission assigned by the recently demoted Poe.
The Finn and Rose random mission that lasted 30 minutes and amounted to nothing could have been entirely cut out the movie. Instead, Finn could have stayed in the coma for the entire movie.
Snoke could have been fleshed out with some backstory, but I think his death was fitting for making Kylo Ren the big bad guy in the next movie.
I also see Luke Skywalker’s death being completely pointless. Luke is painted as a dynamic character but from the beginning of A New Hope and The Last Jedi he only intervenes when he is angry. His death lacked feeling behind it because he could have stopped Kylo without force projecting his life away; however, Luke executing the most impressive force projection the series has seen so far was interesting.
Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) had an excellent performance that portrayed the inner turmoil of his character yet Daisy Ridley’s (Rey) performance seemed plain and boring during this movie. Maybe it was more of the writing than her performance because she had no focus. The only emotion she showed in the whole movie was crying about her dead parents.
However, the attention to detail was amazing. Having the salt turn red when stepped on gave the audience a hidden clue that Luke’s presence on the battlefield was actually a force projection. Viewers that pay attention to detail picked up on this subtle moment and it was very visually appealing.
This new movie is worth watching in theaters and I will be purchasing when it is released on DVD. Overall, I rate it a 9/10.
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Admir Durakovic is a Bosnian-Russian who was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and later moved to Carlisle. He enjoys pizza rolls at 12 A.M. and hot...
William Cantwell • Jan 26, 2018 at 8:03 am
I honestly think that this is one of my favorite Star Wars movies. I wasn’t thrilled about reboots when I heard about The Force Awakens, and Rouge One was way too cliche for me, but i think the plot, character development, and emotional pull of this movie definitely blew me away. Except for the characte Rose, pretty much everything in the film was well above my expectations.
Bryce Walker • Jan 10, 2018 at 8:50 am
I agree with you for the most part but I have some gripes of my own. The most prevalent one in my eyes being Admiral Holdo’s failure to communicate her plans with anyone else on the ship. She is steering the fleet towards an old rebel base on the planet Crait, and plans to use their distance from the first order to slingshot the escape pots to the planet, however she tells no one until they are almost out of fuel and have lost their few remaining ships aside from the one they are on. Poe perceives this inaction as her giving up, which is what prompts him to not only send Finn and Rose off to find a code breaker ( and yes I agree, this subplot was unnecessary in a movie already pushing the 3 hour mark) but he then attempts a mutiny and is finally able to get Holdo to reveal her plan. If she would have just been on the same page with everyone we could have gotten a more unified resistance team, and more screen time could have then been devoted to Rey and Luke. I still do enjoy the movie though, I give it an 8 out of 10