The Last Jedi

Hey Scott. Just saw the Last Jedi. I enjoyed it and would love to hear your thoughts on it/discuss it on your blog. Thanks!

OK, I was trying to avoid discussion on here previously due to spoilers and such, so be warned for anyone that clicks onwards: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Overall, I loved it. I indeed thought it was the best since Empire, and loved the way it subverted all the little plot threads left over by Force Awakens. Rey’s parents? Eh, a couple of junk dealers, who cares. Will Luke return to fight? Nah. What’s the deal with Snoke? He’s just some guy, now he’s dead, let’s move on. The theme of “Let the past die” was very prevalent, sometimes very literally so, and I’m really surprised it was Admiral Bitch heroically sacrificing herself at the end instead of Leia, because that’s what it seemed to be building towards. Although I did really enjoy the script turning on the screws on the viewer with the Poe Dameron plot, where we’re looking at everything through his POV and don’t get all the information needed to determine why he’s actually in the wrong. Normally the Star Wars movies would have the rogueish pilot be right in the end, and this was decidedly not so in this movie. Ditto for their adventure on the casino planet and meeting up with DJ, where it turns out that trusting a guy you met in a jail cell is a REALLY bad idea, go figure. Finn is not Han Solo or Luke Skywalker and he’s kind of dumb, and that’s a nice twist on the usual heroic archetype in these movies. And Kylo Ren is DEFINITELY not Darth Vader, and in fact he’s just really bad at the whole “evil bad guy” thing in general (the scene where he went shirtless to intimidate Rey and she immediately called him out on it had the theater howling) and the movie knows it. It’s a new Star Wars universe and now the table has been cleared again, so we’ll see where they go in the next one.