OK, here’s something a little different: a blog post that has nothing to do with superheroes…but considering Star Wars is very popular both among the general public and “nerds”, I feel pretty comfortable putting it here.
Unfortunately, I hate The Last Jedi. I haven’t made any super-negative posts on this blog yet, so I feel a little awkward saying this. But the truth is, I found it an awful watch despite its technical competence. I don’t feel like I can “pull my punches” without belying my actual opinion.
I’m glad some people are able to find enjoyment in it, but I find it terrible for many reasons, including its poor plot and characterization that mismatch horribly with the other Star Wars movies. But in this blog post, I don’t want to talk about that, or about everything wrong with the film in general, since that would be very lengthy and would feel redundant in light of how well-discussed this movie’s issues are. (For a great example of this discussion, check out this Jedi Council forum thread, which also contains posts from people who actually like or love it.) It’s possible I might someday make an exhaustive review of The Last Jedi, but I’m not super eager to do so when it’s probably one of the most talked about movies ever.
Instead, I’m going to focus on 3 complaints that are more rare for people to talk about or are generally referenced as minor side notes. Along the way, I will reference the movie’s other flaws, but they won’t be the main focus.
Chekhov’s Gun? What’s That?
This is certainly not one of my biggest complaints about the movie, but it’s still really annoying. I have so many serious complaints about this film that even the relatively small ones are significant.
Stories oftentimes have surprises and twists, but those surprises and twists should still build on things that are already established. A good surprise isn’t something that no one could ever even imagine happening. In fact, with a good twist, you can look back at what happened before and see that it actually makes sense, that there were indications this was a possibility.
In sci-fi and fantasy settings, many things are possible that aren’t in the real world, but good writing makes establishing what is possible a priority. Introducing a major new fantastical aspect suddenly to make a dramatic plot change, with no prior indications anything like that was possible, is usually a bad idea, unless done carefully. And the farther you are into a setting, the worse it is, since people will naturally feel like they understand “the rules” of your world and will be annoyed if you suddenly change them.
Unfortunately, in The Last Jedi, Force powers we’ve never seen before in any of the many movies prior to this are suddenly introduced to make dramatic moments happen. If these force powers existing was so essential, the movie’s creators should’ve had the common courtesy to make them Chekhov’s guns – to let us know of their existence in a fairly minor way before using them for huge plot points. But that doesn’t happen, leaving me extremely annoyed. How are we supposed to have tension in this setting if the Force can just let characters do whatever the writer feels like?
The first major example of this happening is the scene of Leia flying through the vacuum of space using the Force and surviving. Not only is the Force letting you survive the vacuum of space a new invention of this movie that was not set up prior to this dramatic moment, but we also haven’t even been told about Leia learning how to use the Force. We know she’s Force-sensitive, but she hasn’t been shown actively doing things with the Force. But now, she can suddenly use the Force in a major way that we haven’t even been shown is a possibility for Force users to do! As a result, the drama, emotion and intensity of this scene are nullified and replaced by annoyance and amusement.
The other instance of this problem is the climax of the movie. Luke fights Kylo Ren, but it turns out it was just a Force-powered hologram. This was not established to be something a Force user could do in this film or any previous. Annoyingly enough, Rian Johnson (the movie’s writer and director) has apparently justified this by pointing out this ability being mentioned in a minor book that was already declared non-canon with the rest of the old Expanded Universe material. It’s frankly insulting to imply that obscure, non-canon supplementary material that the vast majority of your audience won’t even know about is adequate as setup!
There’s a lot of subjectivity in terms of how much setup is or is not needed for concepts in fantastical settings. But the Star Wars movies have given us so much exposure to Force users and their powers over the decades that radically different powers suddenly being introduced feels obtrusive. They’re not like superheroes who can have a wide range of different powers or traditional wizards that can learn all sorts of spells. Millions of people have a pretty solid idea in their head of what Jedi are capable of, so adding onto that is something that requires a lot more care than The Last Jedi took.
Tone and Humor
Unlike the above, I actually would consider this one of my biggest problems with The Last Jedi. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a piece of media with as much of a tone issue as The Last Jedi. The movie as a whole feels depressing and hopeless, but it thinks nothing of interjecting childish, obtrusive humor at seemingly random times. It doesn’t help that this movie’s sense of humor doesn’t amuse me (despite me having a pretty immature sense of humor) or fit the Star Wars series. The humor doesn’t provide genuine levity or enhance the characters. It’s just there, sticking out like a sore thumb, providing nothing but annoyance. If anything, it makes the movie’s dour atmosphere feel more artificial and meaningless.
Humor can certainly work against a dark and sad backdrop, especially considering humor is often a coping mechanism that references the negative aspects of life. But here, I see no congruency between the sad atmosphere and the jokes. It’s not as though the tragedy of situations leads into the jokes in any way. We’re just feeling morose and then – bam! – (terrible) joke. Several times, these jokes happen right after cutting away from a different scene, and it’s not as though they’re referencing the scene that was cut away from. We just are thrown into a joke randomly.
There are further issues with the tone, but these overlap with the other big problem I’m going to discuss in this article, which is the film’s issue with theme.
Theme
Part 1: Hope and Bleakness
Ironically, though this is one of The Last Jedi’s greatest flaws to me, it’s also kind of one of its only good aspects. Because this movie touched on some intriguing themes that have a lot of potential in the context of Star Wars, but the exploration and development of these themes fails for me. There are multiple interesting themes The Last Jedi brings up but does not adequately resolve, but let’s start with the one that I already lead into with the previous section.
Just as The Last Jedi attempted to marry humor with its overall dark and dour atmosphere, it also sought to ultimately promote a theme of hope, particularly at the very end of the movie. In theory, this could be great – what’s better than encouraging people to find hope in the darkness? But the movie went so far with making the hero’s situation bleak (the Rebellion/Resistance is left with a dozen people and almost no resources!) that it honestly didn’t work for me. In order to promote a message of hope in such a context without it feeling artificial, it would have to honestly admit that the situation is, for all practical intents and purposes, hopeless, and that choosing to have hope is mostly for your own mental health as you simply try to survive.
To be clear, while it may be bleak, I think this is a fine thematic conclusion to have in a story. It feels horribly, grossly unfitting for Star Wars, but I might be able to appreciate it if it was well-executed. But that’s not what this movie did. After basically spending the whole movie assaulting the audience with negativity and hopelessness, it turned around and tried to make things straightforwardly hopeful at the very end. It was clearly trying to go for a “deconstruction and reconstruction” type of thing, but there was way too little of the “re” for it to work.
With most of its themes, it’s hard to tell what exactly The Last Jedi was trying to say, and they don’t dive deep enough into the themes for this to be OK. But I think I understand the hope theme…to some extent. Based on the hopelessness of the situation and the movie in general and the fact that the hope is caused by the formerly-failing Luke creating a hologram (but in a heroic fashion that is helpful and costs him his life), the movie is essentially trying to show heroism and therefore hope being fake and real at the same time. Luke has generally been a failure of a hero, but at the end he became a hero by projecting the illusion of heroism. I guess it’s trying to say that false hope can be genuinely helpful.
I think this is true to some extent, and maybe even a bit profound. False hope can become real hope because hope in general can inspire actions, and these actions can inspire further hope. But I don’t think the narrative supports the theme well enough, because to me, the situation still feels very hopeless. They try to show a random kid is Force-sensitive and inspired by Luke, which is nice, but is it really enough to turn this situation around? I guess the implication is that a lot of people around the galaxy will be inspired, but I don’t know if I buy that this will be enough to turn things around when it wasn’t long ago that the whole galaxy showed no interest in helping the Resistance. In short, I just don’t really believe that the hope generated by Luke’s action is going to be enough.
In the end, it almost makes everything feel bleaker, even though the movie is clearly trying to generate a genuinely hopeful feeling. Because the big “triumph of hope” is actually pretty lame. While thinking about it right now, I can appreciate there might be a deep idea here, but watching or thinking about the actual story undercuts it heavily.
Part 2: Other Themes
Some of the other themes in this film are developed and substantiated even more poorly than this. Because with the hope idea, the film is not that far from the theme working; if the hope actually made a big difference, it would work. Many of the other themes are a lot farther from actually saying anything.
In theory, one of the most interesting themes in this movie is Luke’s disillusionment with the Jedi, but the movie does a poor job portraying his exact perspective on the Jedi and what parts of his rejection are right or wrong. I loved the line where he said that the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi and is beyond them; that actually felt profound, to point out that the spiritual exists on its own as its own thing rather than its existence being owed to or controlled by the practitioners of spirituality. I felt moved by that. But it’s just one line, and we don’t go into detail about it, or about the other concerns Luke has about the Jedi. Heck, I’m not even sure if Luke has a serious problem with the Jedi as an institution or if it’s just excuses for his self-pity.
There are other attempts at messages throughout the film, and I don’t want to go over every single one. But I’ll just point out a couple of others that annoyed me. The subplot with Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron is deservedly infamous and seems to have a message about trusting or submitting to authority, which is not only ironic, but is also poorly justified, as the movie doesn’t do a good job demonstrating Holdo to be a leader worth following. This is not exactly a niche complaint, so I won’t belabor it.
This movie also seems to have some sort of theme about protecting good things being better than destroying bad things, which is most blatantly demonstrated when Rose tells Finn, “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Frankly, I find this message…rather confusing and annoying. Surely saving what you love frequently requires fighting what you hate? Especially in a literal war? I’m not sure what they’re really trying to say here.
Conclusion
The Last Jedi is a fascinating movie to discuss and think about. It tries a lot of genuinely interesting things. And the fact that it failed pretty horribly in so many categories makes it all the more fascinating to me, honestly. It seems to me that two people can passionately hate The Last Jedi for entirely different reasons. I kind of love that. It’s a bad movie that has a lot of depth to its badness. I have a certain genuine appreciation for it taking such big swings, making such outlandish decisions, and trying to use some genuinely promising ideas, even if the end result is a film that’s extremely off-putting to me and many others.
Criticizing The Last Jedi is often stereotypically associated with being a “fanboy” or even being racist or sexist, but in my experience, this is often not the case. Sometimes dissecting why a movie didn’t work for you or many others can actually be a surprising enriching experience. Looking into and discussing a movie in-depth can be rewarding even if, well, you hate the movie.
That’s how I feel about The Last Jedi, at any rate. I don’t criticize it out of anger, but because it’s an interesting enough movie that it deserves to be dived into…even if it may feel like a dumpster dive in some ways.