Star Wars: The Last Jedi Is a Terrible Film

—My Spoiler-Filled Rant for Those Who’ve Seen It

I’d say there are spoilers ahead, but I doubt my power to spoil this film any further than Rian Johnson and Disney have already done. Instead, let me just say that the following review discusses important plot points of the movie.

Let’s start with the basic structure of the film. It’s a chase movie, with the First Order relentlessly pursuing the Resistance and the Resistance suffering heavy losses along the way. The First Order fleet can now track ships that jump to light speed, but apparently if they’re traveling at sub-light they all have to go at the exact same speed as the Resistance vessels. The latter only have enough fuel for one light speed jump, so instead they flee at sub-light and even then will run out of fuel in 18 hours.

So why don’t the First Order ships simply split their fleet and jump to light speed just ahead of the fleeing vessels? They have an entire fleet of ships that are not running out of fuel. Why not use their superior numbers and fuel reserves to surround the Resistance? I suppose one could argue that maybe ships in Star Wars can’t make short jumps at light speed, except that Laura Dern does exactly that later in the film. And in any event, the First Order could simply have some ships jump away and then jump back. Or call in more ships. It is not an understatement to say that the entire narrative structure of the movie revolves around this incomprehensible slow-motion pursuit. It destroys suspension of disbelief. Why must we endure it? It’s just terrible, lazy, stupid writing. It undermines the entire rest of the movie because the entire rest of the movie centers on this pursuit.

Apparently, 18 hours is enough time for Finn and Rose to cook up a mutinous plan with Poe, jump to a totally different star system, look around, get thrown in prison, find a guy who might be able to help, break out of prison, run around the casino some more, run around on the race track outside, run around in some fields, get rescued by the guy they met, jump back to the fleet, and infiltrate the lead First Order ship. The film devotes 30+ minutes to this sub-plot. At the end of it, Finn and Rose totally fail and are captured. They develop not one bit as characters on this excursion, unless you think that the realization that illicit arms dealers are bad people counts as character growth. What’s the point of it all? To give Finn something to do? To give screen time to an Asian character to help juice the overseas box office? Sure, of course.

But the bigger reason is to satisfy director Rian Johnson’s infantile need to subvert Hollywood narrative tropes. We expect this nonsensical plan cooked up by Finn, Rose and Poe to work—because they are heroes and because the film invests so much into it, thereby forcing us to do likewise. So when their plan fails, we’re surprised—though our momentary surprise due to this trope-challenging is a very poor pay-off for a long and ultimately irrelevant sub-plot.

Similarly, we’re surprised at Luke’s cowardly betrayal of the ideals that Episodes IV, V, and VI establish so firmly in him. We’re surprised that Snoke dies. We’re surprised that Rey’s parents are nobodies. In The Force Awakens, Rey clearly has a connection to Luke, Ben Kenobi, and Vader through Luke’s lightsaber, implying that she is related to one of them. (She has no visions of Mace Windu, for instance.) So, given that she is not a Skywalker or Kenobi, what possible explanation is there for her force visions in Force Awakens? Don’t hold your breath that we’ll ever be given a logical explanation, because Johnson will happily violate logic in favor of subverting expectations. It’s a cheap trick.

Snoke dying, on the other hand, isn’t a cheap trick; it’s just a dumb trick. Why should we care that Snoke dies? Johnson has publicly made clear that he never thought it necessary to develop Snoke. We never learn anything about Snoke’s backstory or his motivation, so why should we care that he’s dead? It’s a fake-out for fake-out’s sake only. It’s the junk food version of subverting expectations: something that will fill you up momentarily but ultimately leave you wanting and worse for wear.

And then there’s the ghost of Yoda, using the force to call down a huge lightning bolt and destroy the tree housing the sacred Jedi texts. They’re sacred! They hold great power! Nah, says Yoda, they’re just boring, dusty old tomes so I’m gonna destroy them. This is Rian Johnson’s entire thought process—if you can call it that—in making this film, but it opens up a huge kettle of fish to have force ghosts like Yoda be able to interact with the physical world and use force lightning to destroy things. Does this mean that all force ghosts can do this? Why haven’t Qui Gon, Obi Wan and Anakin all come back to fight for the Resistance? Or at least help them? They could have lifted those heavy stones blocking the Resistance’s escape. Except, no, Rey has to do that because she’s the hero—but, wait, I thought this movie was about nothing so much as subverting those expectations?? One imagines that force ghosts who can still exert their power could do any number of helpful things, great and small. But Rian Johnson doesn’t care about logic or internal consistency. He just wants to blow stuff up, and unlike Yoda who at least had a reason, it doesn’t have to make any sense.

It’s strange that Johnson is so obsessed with subverting expectations when he’s making a Disney movie. Does he think he’s tricking his corporate overlords? Or just tricking us? It’s also strange that from the failure of Finn, Rose and Poe’s insurrection against Laura Dern (and Laura Dern being proved right and heroic in the end), the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is they all should have followed orders all along and obeyed the Resistance leadership?? In a movie so devoted to subversion? What a thematically muddled mess this film is.

Perhaps the biggest victim of Johnson’s need to subvert expectations—aside from the audience—is Luke. Part of what made the original Star Wars such a phenomenon was that it came out during a terrible time in US history. In 1977, America was still reeling from Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis and the Iran hostage crisis. Star Wars lifted the entire country’s spirits. Many of us particularly related to Luke—the farm boy destined for more, the innocent who saw terrible wrong and sought to right it. He had some hard lessons on the way, but he didn’t waver. When his friends were being tortured, Luke flew off to face Darth Vader alone. When Luke thought he could redeem Vader, he again flew off alone to confront Vader, and the Emperor. And after the Emperor—a man so evil and powerful that he defeated all the Jedi and conquered the galaxy—tried his utmost to corrupt him, Luke still did not waver. Yet Last Jedi would have you believe that Luke was so scared of a Jedi trainee that he finally betrayed all his own principles, that a man who would face any challenge even if it meant his own likely torture and death would just give up and skulk off to die when he could still clearly play a very useful role in the galaxy.

At best, this is just nonsensical. Luke is not some new character. Three movies were made about him! It’s fundamentally illogical, in the way that the slow-motion chase that undergirds the entire film is illogical: these things occur not because they make sense but simply because the director wants them that way. At its worst, though, it’s the careless discarding of a character who was a hero for my generation and subsequent generations. It’s clear the Disney wants to pass the baton to a new generation of Star Wars characters. So why include Han, Luke and Leia at all? It’s because they want my generation to be excited, to come, to pay, to bring our kids and indoctrinate them. Making movies with all new characters would have lowered the box office. So instead they pulled a bait and switch. The original big three didn’t have to be the main characters to make us happy—look at The Force Awakens: Han had a noble death trying to redeem his son. And Force Awakens has a Rotten Tomatoes fan score of 88%. But the original big three didn’t have to be cheap props either, which is what Rian Johnson turned Luke into. And then Johnson does what the Empire never could: he turns Luke into a weak-ass punk and then he kills him.

Then there’s the “humor.” The funny moments in this film weren’t funny. The holding on the phone bit at the beginning is so weird and jarring that it offends one’s suspension of disbelief. If it had been momentary and they’d nailed it, it might have been okay, but it just dragged on. It’s bad writing. In The Avengers, when Cap says, “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that,” it’s funny, but it doesn’t break the scene. It makes sense that he’d say that. Movies like this need light-hearted scenes. But they should be, you know, actually funny. They shouldn’t be painful to watch.

Due to these and other reasons, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is getting hammered by half the fan base. It’s at 56% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.9 on Metacritic, making it the worst rated Star Wars movie ever. But Disney is using the fact that the supposedly scientific Cinemascore rates it higher to claim that botters are deliberately lowering scores on RT. First of all, everyone wants to like Star Wars movies, and they come out of the theater still trying to like it—and that’s when they’re surveyed by Cinemascore. Second, Disney is clearly much better positioned to artificially influence survey scores than are a handful of random botters. Third, there’s virtually no evidence for botting save one or two folks who cop to it in comments sections. And fourth, there is no reason to believe that the botting is worse now than it was for Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. But Disney is already convincing gullible journalists that audiences secretly love The Last Jedi and anything to the contrary is fake news. It’s amazing: they’ve literally created fake news that accuses others of fake news. And they’re getting help. Due to all this subversion of narrative tropes, sundry Hollywood and media types who like to feel clever—or who want to maintain good relations with Disney—are now loudly proclaiming what a great film this is.

Disney is also crowing about how much money it will make. And, sure, it will. Because audiences tend to reward, or punish, the next movie in a series. The Force Awakens was very popular; audiences come out for The Last Jedi. Batman v Superman was unwatchable; audiences stay home for Justice League. I expect Last Jedi’s repeat movie-goers will be lower than those of Force Awakens, which will impact the box office some. Certainly, I won’t go again, which means my kids won’t see it until it’s on cable. I guess if you’re executive producer Kathleen Kennedy, bragging about how much money you’re making on a single film when you’ve just damaged your entire franchise might help you keep your job. But it won’t change the fact that a huge chunk of the Star Wars audience won’t come out for the upcoming trilogy of Rian Johnson Star Wars films. They better figure that one out fast, given how expensive these films are to make and the opportunity cost of missing the mark.

My advice for the producers would be as follows:

·        First, stop trying to sweep the fans’ concerns under the rug. Admit that this movie has serious problems and try to understand and learn from them.

·        Second, focus the next film on character and plot, not cheap tricks. The reason people love the original Star Wars trilogy so much more than the prequels is because the stories made sense, and we love the characters and the way they developed. We’ll always favor Luke’s light saber battle with Vader in Empire, not because of the choreography or effects, but because of how much it meant for Luke and Vader. The prequels were heavy in effects, but light on us caring. In The Last Jedi, Johnson has merely exchanged special effects with subverting expectations—a kind of narrative special effect upon whose altar he has sacrificed the rest of the film.

·        Third, add more great lines of dialogue. The original Star Wars had: “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways Lord Vader”; “I find your lack of faith disturbing”; “If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”; “The force is strong with this one” and many others. And Empire and Return added their own to the oeuvre. There are no good lines in Last Jedi. C’mon, take a little out of the effects budget and hire more great writers!

·        Fourth—and reasonable people will disagree on this one—bring Luke back. There are a couple of hints in Last Jedi that could help this make sense: at the end of their “fight,” Luke tells Kylo something to the effect of “See you around, kid” and Leia keeps referring to their allies in the Outer Rim. So Luke could conceivably have teleported (which, yes, would be a new force power) directly to the Outer Rim to rally them. Sure, this would seem like a cheap trick, and it would be criticized by some. But the rest of us will lump it together with all the other cheap tricks in The Last Jedi and never think of it again. This won’t fix all the things wrong with Last Jedi, but it will remove its taint from future films.

·        Fifth, while you're making each movie, convene focus groups of fans during production to provide an extra set of guard rails. I know you're obsessed with secrecy, so sign them to iron-clad NDAs. A bad movie kept secret is worse than a great movie with spoilers. The problems with this movie were preventable, but the right kind of feedback loops clearly weren't there.

I am no kind of film expert. I’m just a lifelong Star Wars fan, hugely disappointed in this film and hoping they do better next time. I don’t doubt that some fans loved the movie. That’s great! It made me miserable, and apparently a lot of other people as well. Doubtless, some people will read my criticisms and say “It’s just a movie,”—but that’s the mark of failure, isn’t it? “It’s just a movie” is what we say when we can’t actually defend a film on its merits. It’s the argument used to silence critics when there are no better arguments. It shouldn’t be too much to expect Star Wars movies that are warm, exciting, fun, funny, and full of characters we love and character development that makes sense. After all, just look at the original Star Wars.