Last year's Rogue One is the grittiest and most mature entry of the series but for some reason writer/director Rian Johnson thought it would be a good idea to "fix" what worked so well and to go in the opposite direction. The Last Jedi's chronological predecessor, The Force Awakens, notoriously remixes 1977's Star Wars. TLJ, meanwhile, cast a much wider net and recycles not only Star Wars but also imitates The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, 2009's Star Trek and, believe it or not, Mary Poppins. The result is a nonsensical, campy mish-mash that more closely resembles Spaceballs than Star Wars.
Johnson undoes so much of Awakens' director/co-writer J.J. Abrams' storytelling that it makes me wonder if there's some sort of unpublicized animosity between the two filmmakers. It's eerily reminiscent of Donald Trump's ongoing campaign to eliminate all of the policies instituted by his predecessor, President Obama.
Here's a list of some of the dumbest shit that takes place in The Last Jedi:
1. The Prank Call
TLJ gets off to a great start: the familiar theme music; the good ol' opening crawl; the beginning of a space battle -- and then it's all immediately derailed by Poe Dameron's prank call to General Hux. Right then and there you have to wonder if you're watching a Star Wars movie or Abbott & Costello in Space.
2. Purple Hair
One character, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, sports purple hair. That's something you'd expect to see in a SyFy Channel original movie, whose filmmakers would understandably scramble to visually convey their film's intergalactic setting using limited resources -- not in a feverishly-anticipated sequel with a $200 million dollar budget.
3. Kylo Ren Removes His Helmet
One of the most disappointing scenes in The Force Awakens was the moment when Darth Vader-wannabe Kylo Ren granted Rey's request to remove his helmet. The second the headgear came off, Ren lost all of his mystery and intimidation. The revelation that he was really a goofy-looking herb with a babyface transformed him from an intimidating Sith warrior to a boy band reject in the eyes of moviegoers. To make matters worse, in TLJ Ren destroys the helmet during a tantrum ensuring that he'll never wear it again, and thus, never be taken seriously again. There's a reason that Captain Phasma had the bestselling Force Awakens action figure on amazon.com.uk: she never took her helmet off.
4. Leia Poppins
One of the jankiest aspects of TLJ is Princess Leia's fabricated mastery of the Force. Though "the Force is strong" in her family, there has never been even the faintest hint that Leia underwent even the slightest amount of training so as to cultivate any latent abilities that she might possess -- not in the previous five movies in which she appeared, anyway (Leia trains to be a jedi in the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels but those have all been infamously rendered non-canon by Disney).
But all of a sudden and out of nowhere she demonstrates the proficiency needed to somehow protect herself (and it couldn't have been with a Force-shield since she clearly had ice crystals on her skin for fuck's sake) from flying debris and the vacuum of space when her ship is fired upon by a TIE-fighter pilot -- and in the split-second in which the section of the craft in which she's standing is shot the fuck up. On top of all that, she impersonates the most famous nanny in film history as she somehow manages to fly back into said ship. The only thing that missing was the umbrella. WTF, indeed.
5. Bizarro Luke
Some people do indeed grow cynical with age but Luke Skywalker's mischaracterization in TLJ is ridiculously unbelievable. The same guy who refused to fight the father he never knew, despite the fact that he witnessed the guy kill his mentor; knew he was complicit in the murder of an entire planet's population; and even cut his right hand off became the kind of dude who seriously considered murdering his twin sister's only child as he slept? Riiight.
6. Return of the Ewoks
The biggest consensus fan complaints about the original trilogy revolve around the Ewoks featured in Return of the Jedi. But for some reason Johnson figured it'd be a good idea to duplicate that cyncial, overt attempt to manipulate kids into pressuring their parents into buying plush toys and thereby further lining the pockets of the Lucasfilm top brass. Rian Johnson: "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Porgs!"
7. CGI Casino
Rian Johnson is no Martin Scorsese. Why he insisted on slowing the movie way down in order to focus on a detour to a space casino followed by a fake-looking horse chase beats the hell outta me.
8. Phasma's Quick Exit
After 38 years of apparent sexism, Star Wars finally admitted (in The Force Awakens) that women can be just as evil as dudes with the introduction of Captain Phasma. Unfortunately, she followed in the footsteps of Boba Fett as an ever-helmeted badass who falls to his or her death in only his or her second movie appearance. In Phasma's case, the shiny-armored stormtrooper commander meets her end after going toe-to-toe with former stormtrooper Finn onboard a Star Destroyer.
9. Snoke's Insignificance
The mystery of the Emperor's past worked in the original trilogy because there was so much going on and Star Wars cultivated an air of infinite possibilities. But now that we're familiar with the Empire and how it was established -- how this guy rose to the top and who he is is sort of important.
10. Rey's Ancestry
Kylo Ren reveals to Rey that, despite rampant online speculation and several very plausible clues dropped throughout The Force Awakens, she's not a Skywalker, Kenobi or a Palpatine. Anti-climactically, her parents were, in fact, a couple of winos who sold her for drinking money. I get that force-users can be born to non-force-users. But tell me why exactly, given the absence of a familial connection between the two, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber "called" to her and showed her scenes from his life? I gotta call bullshit on this one.
11. Master Rey
Unlike Leia, Rey did manage to get some Jedi training under her belt. But the two days or so she spent nagging Luke for lessons was nowhere near enough time to explain the Zorro-like prowess she displayed against Snoke's personal guard alongside Kylo Ren.
12. Yoda's Powers
After three movies featuring Force-ghosts (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and somehow Anakin Skywalker) Yoda reappears in phantom-mode and whatta-you-know...thirty-some odd years after his death he now possesses the ability to manipulate lightning. Yep. Somewhere along the line he turned into Thor. But the question is: If ghosts are so powerful in this galaxy, why aren't they the ones going out to save everyone else from evil? Yoda should've saved Luke and everybody else some trouble and faced off against Kylo himself. What's he got to lose? What can the First Order do? Kill him?
13. Miscegenation
All signs pointed to a blossoming relationship between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens. But TLJ features another woman, Rose, confessing her love for the former stormtrooper and giving him a wet one after refusing to let him sacrifice himself for his fellow-Resistance members. Although Finn and Rose do have different ethnic backgrounds, I gotta say, it kinda seems like Johnson went out of his way to prevent the Black dude/white chick romance that we all saw coming.
14. The Dance Battle
One of TLJ's climactic moments featured what amounted to a cringe-worthy dance battle. Notice how Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker never make physical contact during You Got Served: Star Wars Edition.
15. Womansplaining
In a scene featuring the Millenium Falcon engaging TIE fighters, Rey (in one of the gunner turrets) tells Chewbacca (flying the ship) to lead the enemy aircraft away from the Resistance fighters on the ground. Well, duh. No subtitles appeared onscreen to translate the wookie's response but he may have said something along the lines of: "I got this, lady. I've been in battles just like this in this very ship since before you were born. When I need tactical advice from someone whose only been in one previous dogfight -- ever -- I'll let you know. Until then -- stay in your lane."
A little later, Rose tells Finn: "We shouldn't be fighting what we hate. We should be saving what we love." This comes shortly after she rammed his vehicle in order to end his suicide run against the First Order, thereby robbing him of his choice to sacrifice himself for a cause in which he strongly believes. Funny enough, this sermon is in direct contrast to Rose's actions earlier in the movie. You see, moments after she met Finn she prevented him from doing just that. After realizing that Finn was attempting to leave a losing
16. Sexual Assault
Immediately following Rose's sermon to Finn, she kisses him -- without his consent and in spite of the fact that he's been fairly open about his love for another woman.
17. CGI Wolfpack
Not satisfied with the Porgs and the muppet casino, some of TLJ's special effects budget was also wasted on a pack of fake-looking wolves made outta diamonds.
18. Ghost Hand?
After casting a Force-projection across the galaxy (Smh), Luke follows in Obi-Wan Kenobi's footsteps and vanishes leaving his Jedi robes to fall to the rock on which he was sitting. Except...Luke wasn't completely organic. The former Tatooine farmboy was outfitted with a robotic hand in The Empire Strikes Back and rocked it ever since. So why didn't it clatter to the ground when the rest of him de-materialized?
Speaking of which, one of the movie's many low points is its handling of Luke Skywalker's death. The death of a beloved hero can be done well and be well-received, to boot. Case in point: mutant anti-hero Wolverine, who sacrificed himself for the comrades of a daughter of sorts (Sound familiar?) in Logan -- which was released a mere nine months prior to TLJ.
The best thing that writer/director J.J. Abrams can do for Episode XI is to cast a young Mark Hamill look-a-like and frame all of the events since Return of the Jedi as a Force-nightmare endured by Luke Skywalker. If you haven't seen The Last Jedi, do yourself a favor and skip it. I'm just gonna pretend that it never happened. To paraphrase a line in the movie: "It's time for Rian Johnson's influence on Star Wars to end."
Originally posted 5/20/18
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