The Last Jedi: Your Last Resort
Written by: Andrea Drake
Long, long ago–41 years ago, to be exact– in a town near Los Angeles, George Lucas began on a journey to make Star Wars one of the biggest successes of all cinematic history. To this day, the Star Wars franchise has been making oodles of money through all of their products. Their raging success has earned the recognition as a tent pole film- and rightly so. However, if one is looking to watch a good, old-fashioned Star Wars movie, they should avoid The Last Jedi.
Looking into reviews for this movie, the biggest critics also seem to be the biggest advocates. When reading the user comments, however, one can find out more about what the average movie-goer thinks about this newest 2017 edition to the Star Wars movie collection. In response to Manohla Dargis’s chirping, positive review in the New York Times, Steve from San Francisco said, “I’m not sure you actually watched this film. It was incredibly boring.” This is just the tip of the iceberg. Many more reviewers of this article had much more to say about their disappointment in The Last Jedi. Michael from Austin said, “This movie fails almost every basic test of a good movie. Poor character development, and significant problems with plot, just to make a few of its many crimes.”
Erick, from California, chips in: “Amusing that… the phrase beating all others by leaps and bounds in frequency is ‘hot mess…’ This was just terrible writing, which always makes for a mediocre movie at best. I know Star Wars has been for kids since Return of the Jedi, but this seems to have been written by one… Probably the most cliché-driven movie ever made, with all serious dramatic scenes, which are gold mines of philosophy and storytelling potential, give a few obligatory lines of dialogue and then cut short… This should have been the first draft of many. Accomplished writers next time, please?” Unfortunately, this slew of problems is noticed by most of the average commenters. Unlike the George Lucas Star Wars films, Disney seems to be taking Star Wars on a downward spiral towards viewer disappointment.
One user brought up one of the most disappointing things in this movie when he said, “When we were kids we thought Luke Skywalker was the greatest… he represented everything that was good and pure and right… Rian Johnson’s version of Luke Skywalker has nothing at all to do with the character we loved; there is nothing recognizable about the character other than it was played by the same actor… No great character has ever had such an anticlimactic ending.” And this viewpoint is shared even by Mark Hamill- the great (or in The Last Jedi, the loser) Luke Skywalker. According to Us magazine, Hamill shares that he and director Rian Johnson had a “fundamental difference” about how Luke was portrayed. Hamill says that any Jedi wouldn’t give up, and he had to think of Luke as if he was a different character that he was portraying. “Maybe he’s ‘Jake Skywalker,’” he says. Nevertheless, Hamill didn’t feel as though this is the classic Luke Skywalker we all know and love- and neither did the fans.
QUESTION:
In what ways could Disney have improved The Last Jedi in your opinion? Or, if you think it doesn’t need improving, what is your argument for that?
