Ben sat down on a log in ROTJ. And Yoda was on the Ewok village railing at the end. I imagine some physical contact is possible. Even more so when in a location strong in the Force.
Also, the vision of Vader Luke encountered in the Dagobah cave was solid enough when he fought with it.
The Last Jedi: A movie made for stupid people with ADHD
by The Star Wars ReviewerLost somewhere in the middle of this interminably long, disjointed, boring, and often cringeworthy construction of a heretical film, there was an especially poignant - if unintentional - scene. Luke Skywalker, the now grayed and bearded old Jedi master, reunites with his long time trusted droid, R2-D2 aboard the Millenium Falcon. Forty years ago, it was this duo that first met in the original Star Wars film, when the droid’s iconic hologram message from Princess Leia, “Help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!” captured Luke’s attention and sent him on his way, battling for freedom against the evil forces of the Galactic Empire.
During that first meeting, Luke was a young, fresh-faced hero. He was brash. He had his entire life ahead of him, and he wanted nothing more than to leave his middle-of-nowhere existence and find adventure and greater purpose in life. The beautiful Princess Leia’s message was urgent. Her desperation was a call for immediate action, to save her, to save everyone in the galaxy, and Luke was ready and able to accept that heroic task.
Fast forward many decades to this latest abomination of a Star Wars sequel, The Last Jedi, and what director Kathleen Kennedy gives us…erm, I mean director Rian Johnson… is yet another tired retread. More calls for nostalgia. A very visibly aged, yet distinguished, Mark Hamill (Luke) looks around the set of the ship, acknowledges he wants nothing to do with the plot that these writers have drawn up, and then watches the famous hologram before telling his sidekick, “Those were the good old days, huh? Is this what Star Wars has really become?”
No, of course Luke did not say those words, but the audience could hear him thinking them out loud anyway. In the middle of another bad movie, one with so much clutter and attention-distracting junk filled all over the screen, one that felt like an unfortunate mashup of Spaceballs meets Marvel Superheroes, this one scene was the only thing that felt like Star Wars really should feel like. It was vintage, plucked from another time, from a galaxy far far away, and inserted for reflection into a highly corporate toy and game commercial. To answer the pertinent question: yes Luke, like Sitting Bull doing racist stage performances for white men in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, mockery for corporate money is indeed what you and Star Wars have become. Well done.
The Last Jedi starts out with perhaps the single most mustache-twirling villain of all mustache-twirling villains, General Hux (Domnall Gleeson), commanding a fleet of the generically evil First Order as it pursues Princess Leia (the late Carrie Fisher) and her band of freedom fighters across the galaxy. The audience is treated to space pursuit shots, followed by close ups of Hux sneering one liners into the camera. Then the audience gets to see more space pursuit shots, followed by more sneering one liners. General Hux honestly feels like a parody James Bond villain, taken straight out of an Austin Powers movie–inspiration The Last Jedi returns to over and over again.
The rest of the plot continues as follows:
After the evil villains engage in off-tone comedic buffoonery (wait, what??) reminiscent of Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz, the less than intimidating bad guys counter-intuitively manage to blow up the protagonists’ main ship, killing (General) Princess Leia in the process. But wait…what happens next? What happens next could best be described as Leia’s Space Jesus Moment, where her dead body floats through space and then magically comes back to life. She extends her arm forward and flies across the darkness, until she reaches the safety and oxygen of another friendly ship and its intensive care unit. She then sleeps in a coma until the end of the film.
After this bizarre and awful opening, the story cuts away to a remote island location, where Luke Skywalker is hiding like a coward from his enemies, abandoning his friends, and having visions of that one time where he tried to murder a young boy. Ha ha! But if that doesn’t sound like Star Wars to you, don’t worry, the good filmmakers at Disney have so much more! There are cute and cuddly CGI animals which multiply like rabbits all over the screen. You are sure to notice them, so make sure you look in the online catalogue and buy, buy, buy! There is also bathroom humor. And AT-STs. And Yoda, there has to be Yoda. Now Disney can merchandise him too!
Meanwhile, talented Jedi-in-training Rey (played competently enough by Daisy Ridley) has sought out Skywalker’s help and instruction at his remote medieval fortress. She needs to become stronger in The Force if she’s ever going to beat that Kylo Ren bad guy (Adam Driver) who she already beat in the last movie. Or maybe she needs Luke to come out of retirement and defeat CGI monster Supreme Leader Snoke, who dresses like Goldmember from another Austin Powers movie, and gets killed with little effort by…you guessed it…the bad guy Rey already defeated before.
So much for challenging our heroines, huh?
But difficult challenges would only serve as distractions from what really matters in these movies, and that’s all of the bullshit that has been intentionally designed to sell something to every demographic Disney can possibly imagine. The days of Star Wars invoking archetypes and its stories serving as communal bonding experiences that drew people together through common struggle are long since gone. Watching these new films is like watching a series of commercials while on an amusement park ride. There is some Star Wars-y stuff here, and some things that kind of resemble Star Wars over there. But even if you come across a scene you like, there is no time to let it breath or develop on its own. The car must quickly whisk you away, because after all, there are many more attractions that must be seen and many more products that must be sold.
Just beware of the warning signs: stay off this ride!
0 out of 4 stars
(this was personally the worst Star Wars movie I have ever seen)
No respectable reviewer starts off by insulting people. And I think the ADHD bit is uncalled for.
They did live to fight another day, which may be enough.
Don’t drag real life tragedies in here to excuse your poor taste in humor. Just don’t.
I came out of it feeling… empty. Sure, it’s enjoyable on its own merits, but the excess comedy and frankly quite drawn-out cop-outs leave something to be desired. I didn’t hate the Pogs, they were just sort of owls without beaks. I like owls.
“I can’t believe I’M gone.”Also, Ade Edmondson was in it, apparently! He’s always good.
Pogs.
Porgs.
Know the difference. And knowing is half the battle! 😉
What if that’s not salt on Crait, but coke?
It would be a great Carrie Fisher hommage indeed.
Not funny.
I think what is throwing some people off is this movie goes against expectations. It was a huge gamble to go against the grain and go darker than ESB ever dreamed of being. The Rebels were on the run in ESB, but never did we see them decimated like this, literally down to one command ship and enough people to fit in the Falcon. And the last sliver of hope allies will come and save the day is met with radio silence. Things have never been this bad for the good guys.
Luke has felt the burden of being the hero of legend and a few seconds of fear and indecision has cost everyone dearly. We are light years from that night on Endor with our heroes surrounded by happy Ewoks.
I honestly don’t know where the next film will take us, because a lot of this felt like what should have been saved for it.
There is a power vacuum in the First Order now, and I doubt Kylo is going to be able to throw everyone who disagrees with him into a wall. Someone even worse than Snoke could be waiting in the wings seizing the opportunity to take control.
Maz did seem kind of shoehorned into this.
I think I heard audible gasps in the theater during that shot.
Here’s a pretty good article about the film: https://www.avclub.com/part-kurosawa-part-wile-e-coyote-the-last-jedi-boldl-1821291545
RE: Ackbar vs. Holdo, the author of this piece has a good point in a response to a comment:
Lotta folks seem to think that her role should have gone to good ol’ Admiral Ackbar, but I get Johnson’s intention: Everybody likes Ackbar, and the audience needs to be fooled into Poe’s point-of-view.
Probably why she didn’t get a proper ‘hero’ introduction as well. It’s a trade-off, but one I liked given where and how it’s taken: this is all Poe’s point of view - to the very end, and that’s why his turn into a proper leader works in the finale.
The more I think about it, the more I appreciate how well-written this film is.
Poe got a bunch of people killed because he was reckless and disobeyed orders. But it’s cool because ‘Ah, that’s just how Poe is, the little scamp’.
It’s war, and that’s not his first, nor his only deed.
If he kept pulling stuff like that in an actual war, his superiors would have him shot in the head.
Thankfully, this is drama (with a slant towards action adventure). This is a character flaw, not a movie flaw - I really don’t get the complaints here. At worst, I’d put this in the same ballpark as Chewie being best friends with Lando at the end of ESB, even though he probably should’ve murdered that traitor the first chance he outgrew his usefulness (which would have been almost immediately).
I’m sure when Chewie calmed down he realized Lando had no choice if he wanted to protect the workers of Cloud City and their families. Did you even watch ESB?
What a horrible film
J
Demand a refund next time. 😛
There was a shot of an X-Wing under the water. And when Luke showed up at the end to fight Kylo Ren. I had thought he pulled the X-Wing from the water and flew it there. But of course we learned it was just a force projection or something. Though this whole force projection thing is pretty lame. It’s just a way to get Kylo and Rey to interact without using a telephone or something.
You’re forgetting that Vader was in thought communication with Luke at the end of ESB. ROTJ would have had a similar scene, but it was cut. The way Rey and Kylo were communicating was new even to him. And Kylo wasn’t able to see much beyond Rey. I doubt either could interact with the other’s surroundings.
If Anakin can make himself look like he never fell to the Darkside as a Force ghost, I have no issues with Luke appearing to everyone looking like when they last saw him. (Or a last known image of him.) Had Rey been there, she probably would have seen him differently.
Think of it like the Salt Vampire posing as Dr. McCoy’s old flame on The Man Trap episode of Star Trek. McCoy sees his old love, looking exactly as he last saw her. Kirk sees an older woman. Soon the be drained of all salt in his body Redshirt #1 sees a hot blonde.
After mulling over it some more, my view this film inches even more towards disappointment. The main crux for me all comes down to Luke and Kylo’s past. Okay so, Vader has tortured Leia, has blown up Leia’s home planet, has killed many of his fellow Rebel friends, has tortured Han and sent to Jabba’s, has sliced Luke’s hand off, etc. Vader has done some really horrible and twisted deeds, and Luke’s idealism never faltered, even when he was being electrocuted by the Emperor. "Father please!"
Luke’s unwavering determination and faith in his father to have the capacity to turn to the light was what finally convinced Vader to overthrow his master.
NOW…
An older, supposed wiser, Luke wants to murder his nephew in his sleep because he ‘felt’ some darkness in Kylo’s mind?? This isn’t even some random padawaan; his own family! Leia’s and Han’s! How the hell was he going to rationalize this act of murder to them?? Not without lying you couldn’t! I’m not even convinced or shown how Kylo was an issue in Luke’s academy prior to scary Luke the executioner shows up at Kylo’s bedside.Regarding Luke… we’ve all had 30+ years since ROTJ to imagine what might have happened to the character, and with Star Wars being a fairy tale the default position naturally tends to be “lives happily ever after”.
Remember we are shown three versions of events, the night the Jedi school was destroyed. “Scary Luke” at the bedside is Kylo’s version of events… it’s not until the 3rd showing that we see the actual version of events. And that fleeting moment of doubt, where Luke saw the terrible dark side and thought to strike it down is presented as Luke’s great failure. He feels shame. He IS acting out of character - that is the whole point.
This has beautiful symmetry with Obi Wan. Both Obi Wan and Luke are living as hermits after a perceived failure (“I thought I could teach him as well as Yoda, I was wrong…”).
Luke does get to be a hero one last time, as does old Ben. In their final acts both stand against the might of the enemy to create a distraction so their friends can escape, Kenobi in the Death Star hangar and Luke at the gate of the mountain, and both sacrifice themselves in that moment.
I think Luke’s return - and character - in The Last Jedi, is perfect.
Well said, Matt!
Here’s a pretty good article about the film: https://www.avclub.com/part-kurosawa-part-wile-e-coyote-the-last-jedi-boldl-1821291545
RE: Ackbar vs. Holdo, the author of this piece has a good point in a response to a comment:
Lotta folks seem to think that her role should have gone to good ol’ Admiral Ackbar, but I get Johnson’s intention: Everybody likes Ackbar, and the audience needs to be fooled into Poe’s point-of-view.
This completely. The other thing about Ackbar is… I’m sorry guys, he’s kind of a joke. When he showed up in TLJ everyone laughed. I think a lot of peeople wouldn’t buy the drama of him in an expanded role.
JEDIT: I need to be better about keeping all my responses in one post, rather than 4 back to back.
I don’t recall anyone laughing at his scene at my theater, nor the four times I saw TFA.
And we just had a Mon Calamari in a dramatic role in Rogue One last year. That also may have had something to do with it.
Robot Chicken has played Ackbar for laughs, but that shouldn’t overshadow the films.
In a Frink edit? I think not!
Wasn’t the original hologram footage shot on videotape though? I know it was shot off a tv screen to get the original effect.
was I hearing things or did Finn call someone a ‘bastard’ at the end? Sure, if you’re being pedantic it’s not a swear word…except, it actually is isnt it.
Yeah I heard it. That, a couple damns, and a “big ass door” from Poe. Still very mild, but I guess this is the most foul-mouthed SW flick to date.
Not counting all the times Artoo has cursed in binary. 😉
PM away!
When Artoo plays a hologram in the conversation with Luke, it’s a scene from the Holiday Special. Or Mark singing on the Muppet Show?
https://youtu.be/nfJwI9hVWlM
I like that Artoo gave Luke a bit of a beep lashing, (and Luke cautioning him not to curse) and finally guilt tripped him with the old Leia hologram. Was that the original footage or a recreation?
It’s not the holidays I hate. It’s how early the assault starts, often before Halloween. Feeling low when everyone around you is acting cheery doesn’t help.
As awful as large bits of my childhood were, I can’t recall any sucky Christmases. The only bad memory I have is the first time I was the victim of the dreaded Ho-Ho-Box.
I didn’t see any prequel level bad CGI, unless the 3D is masking it? Nothing could be as bad as Anakin riding those cow things with giant asses in AOTC. I’ll see how TLJ looks in 70mm next month hopefully.
And I don’t think all of Rey’s past has been revealed to us yet. Her parents being nobodies buried on Jakku does not square with the childhood trauma/memory of crying as a ship leaves the planet as we saw in TFA.
This is torturous.
I’m sure I’ve seen her in other things, JP was just the first thing that popped in my head. : )
