Days of Future Piff
Superstar
At this point, I don't know if there's anything they can do to save the trilogy.
Coming out of the theater after seeing TLJ, I found it entertaining as a popcorn flick until I let it marinate for a bit and began to realize how much this movie damaged the Star Wars mythos as a whole.
The most glaring issue with the movie for me was the total character assassination of Luke Skywalker. We're talking about a guy who's risked life and limb to save Leia/Han and later on risked his own life to bring VADER back to the light. It doesn't make sense for a character like him to just totally give up like that. Even worse...
There's no story momentum to keep us excited coming into this new one.
What is this story building up to? What is there left to resolve? Why does Rey want to even be a jedi to begin with? ...and why should we care?
The prequels are trash, but even those movies had a clear direction and story momentum that kept you wanting to see where they were going with things. (Anakin eventually becoming Vader)
The biggest problem with the Last Jedi is that they got so caught up in trying to be different, that it forgot to be Star Wars, and they messed up all the characters in the process. (More on that in the spoiler tag below)
TL;DR warning...
Coming out of the theater after seeing TLJ, I found it entertaining as a popcorn flick until I let it marinate for a bit and began to realize how much this movie damaged the Star Wars mythos as a whole.
The most glaring issue with the movie for me was the total character assassination of Luke Skywalker. We're talking about a guy who's risked life and limb to save Leia/Han and later on risked his own life to bring VADER back to the light. It doesn't make sense for a character like him to just totally give up like that. Even worse...
We never get to see him TRULY be THAT DUDE since they killed him off prematurely.
There's no story momentum to keep us excited coming into this new one.
What is this story building up to? What is there left to resolve? Why does Rey want to even be a jedi to begin with? ...and why should we care?
The prequels are trash, but even those movies had a clear direction and story momentum that kept you wanting to see where they were going with things. (Anakin eventually becoming Vader)
The biggest problem with the Last Jedi is that they got so caught up in trying to be different, that it forgot to be Star Wars, and they messed up all the characters in the process. (More on that in the spoiler tag below)
TL;DR warning...
We're two movies in and Rey has no interesting backstory, nor does she have anyclear motivation for wanting to be a Jedi. She's inexplicably better than everyone at everything for no reason and we never really see her struggle, take L's, or have to face any real adversity or consequences for making bad decisions. She's already so perfect that there's nowhere left to go with her as a character. That's cool that they want to switch up with a female protagonist for a change, but if we don't see any of the blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to get there, then there's no tension or drama to keep us interested in watching that character's journey. Think of how Luke Skywalker, Ellen Ripley, Spider-man, Sarah Connor, and even characters in anime like Luffy had to struggle, make mistakes, and take L's on their journey to get ahead. We don't get any of that with Rey. I almost wish Rey had turned evil at the end, which would at least set her up for a redemption storyline in the next one. She gets very little screentime with Finn and especially Poe, and the trio of Rey, Poe, and Finn feel like generally half-baked protagonists with no real chemistry with one another.
Finn's character was also completely wasted. They set him up to be a dope character who could have had an interesting internal struggle between his loyalties to the resistance and his past as a Stormtrooper. We could have seen him mature, grow, overcome his bad habit of running away from his problems, and maybe even develop a romance with Rey, but we got none of that. Instead, he got demoted to the comic relief role and has been stumbling and bumbling around like a character in National Lampoon's Vacation ever since. (Shout-out to Redletter Media's Plinkett reviews).
We'll never see a reunion with the OG trio now that they're all dead in the movies, if not in real life (RIP Carrie Fisher
) I already talked about how they messed up Luke's character above.
Snoke was killed off prematurely before we got a chance to learn anything about who he is or what he's after. Wasted opportunity.
Even worse, the only people left running the First Order are dude that came straight out of Spaceballs (again, shout out to Plinkett) and a straight cornball of a "sith lord" who doesn't have 1/10 of Vader's charisma. The OG Empire would have never taken those clowns seriously.
On the Resistance's side, we have Holdo, whose terrible leadership got nearly everyone killed. Compare her leadership to someone like Captain Picard, who actually respected his subordinates and held actual discussions with his crew over what to do next when faced with difficult situations. (and again, shout-out to Plinkett).
And that's just scratching the surface of what went wrong outside of the iffy writing, out-of-place humor, and logistical issues that many reviewers have pointed out online.
Why are Star Wars characters making "yo mama" jokes?
Why don't any of the the First Order's ships just jump ahead of the Resistance with light speed and cut them off?
How come Finn/Rose's craft has light speed but not the other Resistance escape pods?
Why doesn't the First Order run a de-cloaking scan to check for any Resistance ships trying to escape?
Speaking of escape pods, why didn't the resistance split their forces so that there would be a better chance of at least SOME of them escaping?
Why doesn't Holdo just have a droid or autopilot ram the enemy ship at the end?
Apparently, Rey stole Snoke's ship and flew down to the salt planet... but we never see any of that.
When Finn tried to sacrifice himself, how did Rose catch up to him so quickly?
And how did she drag his body all the way back to the base so quickly?
And why is the resistance celebrating even though there's only 12 of them left?
Finn's character was also completely wasted. They set him up to be a dope character who could have had an interesting internal struggle between his loyalties to the resistance and his past as a Stormtrooper. We could have seen him mature, grow, overcome his bad habit of running away from his problems, and maybe even develop a romance with Rey, but we got none of that. Instead, he got demoted to the comic relief role and has been stumbling and bumbling around like a character in National Lampoon's Vacation ever since. (Shout-out to Redletter Media's Plinkett reviews).
We'll never see a reunion with the OG trio now that they're all dead in the movies, if not in real life (RIP Carrie Fisher
) I already talked about how they messed up Luke's character above.Snoke was killed off prematurely before we got a chance to learn anything about who he is or what he's after. Wasted opportunity.
Even worse, the only people left running the First Order are dude that came straight out of Spaceballs (again, shout out to Plinkett) and a straight cornball of a "sith lord" who doesn't have 1/10 of Vader's charisma. The OG Empire would have never taken those clowns seriously.
On the Resistance's side, we have Holdo, whose terrible leadership got nearly everyone killed. Compare her leadership to someone like Captain Picard, who actually respected his subordinates and held actual discussions with his crew over what to do next when faced with difficult situations. (and again, shout-out to Plinkett).
And that's just scratching the surface of what went wrong outside of the iffy writing, out-of-place humor, and logistical issues that many reviewers have pointed out online.
Why are Star Wars characters making "yo mama" jokes?
Why don't any of the the First Order's ships just jump ahead of the Resistance with light speed and cut them off?
How come Finn/Rose's craft has light speed but not the other Resistance escape pods?
Why doesn't the First Order run a de-cloaking scan to check for any Resistance ships trying to escape?
Speaking of escape pods, why didn't the resistance split their forces so that there would be a better chance of at least SOME of them escaping?
Why doesn't Holdo just have a droid or autopilot ram the enemy ship at the end?
Apparently, Rey stole Snoke's ship and flew down to the salt planet... but we never see any of that.
When Finn tried to sacrifice himself, how did Rose catch up to him so quickly?
And how did she drag his body all the way back to the base so quickly?
And why is the resistance celebrating even though there's only 12 of them left?
