Soooo... Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi came out recently. I don’t know if anyone heard about it. It’s kind of a low key thing. Anyways, I went and saw it last night. As soon as those tickets went on sale a couple months back, I bought up a handful of them. I went with a couple of my roommates and my brother and we had a blast!
But how was the movie itself?
A difficult question. I’ll start by saying that I really enjoyed it overall. It had some really high moments, but then it definitely had some weak spots. I couldn’t say if it was better or worse than The Force Awakens. I think it definitely had stronger moments than that movie which made it significantly more awesome, but because of its weaker moments, it brought it down a little.
I’ll start with the good:
I was super into it for the most part and it had me actually applauding and fist pumping at parts. I mean YUUUUUUSSSSSS! It was like everything you were waiting for, those moments were that good.
All my favorite moments had to do with the Force, the Jedi, and Luke Skywalker. Man, it was like the guy never left. Mark Hamill flawlessly jumped right back into that role, with the same dramatic attitude and mannerisms, while still showing how age and experience can change a person. His character is just... it cannot be put into words how awesome he was in this movie.
All the scenes involving a lightsaber were so freakin’ amaze-balls! I was so enthralled by all of them. The choreography of them, the emotion behind them, those subtle little moments, just YES!!! Holy moly!
Two characters that surprised me with their likability/interestingness: General Hux and BB-8. Now, BB-8 has always been cute and awesome, but this movie really kicked it up a notch to the point of suspending your disbelief (but I didn’t care. He’s great!) and he really saved all the scenes he was in with the subplot that he was involved in. As for General Hux, he didn’t have a ton of screen time in the last film and his role was pretty standard and cliche, but in this movie, he fascinated me. It’s not that he was turned into this major complex character or anything, I think it was just that his actor was given more to work with and I was impressed.
Then, obviously, it was an all around gorgeous film. The sets, the colors, the costumes, the cinematography, EVERYTHING! It was fantastic!
As for Kylo Ren; I wouldn’t classify his story as good or bad, just interesting. This movie definitely delves deeper into his past and his relationships with other characters. I haven’t decided how I feel about some things about him yet.
Now, for the bad:
The subplot involving Finn and Poe was very contrived and literally led nowhere. I was unimpressed with the whole thing. It was trying too hard to be interesting and exciting and then had a disappointing payoff. It was like the writers didn’t know what to do with Finn while they were focusing on the other characters, so they decided to stick him on this random pointless mission and it was kind of an insult to his character. It’s not to say that there weren’t some interesting parts during the whole thing, but I think that overall, there could have been something better.
Then the repeats of previous films. The biggest criticism of The Force Awakens was that it was too similar to A New Hope. I boldly defended it saying that it was trying to prove to fans after the disaster of the prequels that they could make a Star Wars film and make it right by calling back to the films that fans liked. I said that the next film would probably stray away from copying the older films’ plots. However... after seeing The Last Jedi, I can’t exactly say that I was proven right. I don’t think that it was as bad as The Force Awakens in copying and pasting the plot from previous movies, but I feel like sometimes it felt a little too familiar to not just The Empire Strikes Back, but also Return of the Jedi. It wasn’t completely awful, it was just something I noticed and think that the writers should try to stray away from a little more.
In its defense though, it did take a very different route than I expected, because I was expecting it to completely follow those previous movies, but it did make an original move.
The last thing was that sometimes it was just sort of confusing and almost felt disorganized. And (I feel almost dirty making this comparison), but it was that kind of confusion and frustration I felt when watching Batman v. Superman. Now, before people get up in arms about that, let me just say, it only happened a couple times. There are two moments in particular that stand out to me where I was like “what the actual heck?” and then there were just other parts throughout the movie where it just felt a little random (mostly with the subplot involving Poe and Finn).
So, I think (at least for now before I see it again), I’ll give this movie an 8/10.
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