Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi

After the side story of Rogue One, I was excited to come back to the Skywalker saga and watch Episode 8: The Last Jedi. What I left with though, was the feelings of disappointment and of hopelessness. There were so many chances for this movie to do great things, and leave the viewer in shock, but it never took them. More mediocre acting, poor plot choices, and lack of action all added to the downfall of The Last Jedi, and it had very few redeeming factors.

Let’s get this over with, the plot of this movie was bad. One story arc had the slowest space chase of all time which lasted most of the movie, another had two characters run off trying to save the day and end up doing literally nothing but give up their plans to the bad guys, and one had Rey stalking Luke Skywalker after he told her to leave. His demeanor in the movie was laughable (and not in a good way) and made the character seem like a joke. While he came through in the end to have a pretty cool scene where he battles Kylo after seemingly withstanding the shots of dozens of battleships, this doesn’t make up for his storyline leading up to it. I know a lot of people hated on Kylo and his master Snoke, but this was the one storyline that I enjoyed. Snoke’s demise I remembered being silly that for someone who was reading Kylo’s mind, the fact that he didn’t realize he was about to be killed was insane. Watching it back though, it made sense and felt earned.

The action in this one was good at times, and bad at others. Like I mentioned earlier, this movie had the longest and slowest space chase I’ve ever seen. They kept coming back to this and it was as though it was the tortoise and the hare, if the hare was actually just another tortoise. Finn and Rose had their own adventure on an interesting planet of Canto Bight, but everything that intrigued me was simply passed over as the two ended up in jail and escaping pretty much immediately to leave the planet. The best action came from an amazing battle where Kylo and Rey teamed up to defeat the guards of Snoke. Back to back, it appeared that the two might join forces, but in the end part ways as if nothing had happened. The battle with Kylo and what turned out to be a force ghost of Luke was also intense, and helped Luke redeem himself as a character before he passed on to the afterlife.

The one scene that I cannot emphasize enough of being an issue for me, was when Leia was blasted out of the command deck of her ship and she was left suspended in space. This was the perfect opportunity to kill off the character, having her son see this happen in front of his eyes, and allow us to forget about the old and care for the new. Instead, she somehow uses the force to fly back to the ship, and is saved. It was an unfortunate and unexpected turn of events that saw Carrie Fisher pass away during the filming of this movie, and this would have been a great send off for her character with great impact and meaning. Instead the character is now still alive and is anticipated to be a key part of Episode 9, with the actor not being able to come back to play the role.

Despite a few cool moments, The Last Jedi left me truly less excited for Episode 9 than I could have imagined. The finale of both other trilogies were by far my favorites, so who knows, maybe The Rise of Skywalker can do it again. But if it’s anything like what episode 7 or 8 have taught me to expect, I can certainly assume that the best of Star Wars is behind us.