“… felt so out of touch with what makes Star Wars iconic, and it was populated by shitty jokes you would find on numerous internet forums.”

Last night I finally got around to watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi which is the eighth installment in the Star Wars franchise. I had heard that people were disappointed with the movie before I went into it, but I was surprised to find that all of these disappointments were ones that I shared. The Last Jedi picks up almost exactly where the last Star Wars movie left off, and then ends about three hours later with not much happening in between.

Now before I start shitting on The Last Jedi, let’s go back in time and talk about what is regarded as the best Star Wars movie: The Empire Strikes Back. I wasn’t a fan of The Empire Strikes Back when I first watched it (it has been a while) because I felt the story was spread too thin. In A New Hope we were introduced to all of these characters, and they all went on an adventure together. In The Empire Strikes Back, all of these characters are ripped apart and sent on their own adventures which makes the film feel a lot less focused than the one before it. This is the same problem that I had with The Last Jedi. We were introduced to all of these new (and some old) characters and we got to see how well they worked together. That’s what we fell in love with. Then The Last Jedi comes along and separates them in favour of covering more bases quickly, but in turn sacrifices what we loved about them in the first place. Everything just felt spread too thin, and because of that all of the stories lacked the depth that they should have had. Instead of us getting a full-fledged movie with Luke Skywalker, or an ultimate battle with Snoke, or an adventure with the Rebellion we got half-baked versions of all three. It was really disappointing, and this also led to the movie being pretty boring. I couldn’t get invested in any one of these storylines becasue, why should I? I knew that they weren’t really going anywhere, and the only saving grace were the cool action sequences that would show up from time to time (like the throne room scene. It was fucking kick ass).

I also really had a problem with how the overall story was handled in The Last Jedi in regards to the Star Wars franchise. When The Force Awakens came out, people were clamouring to find and discuss all of the fan theories they could. I remember going online and reading about the possible origins of Rey and Snoke and being blown away by the possibilities. Then The Last Jedi comes along and essentially gives anyone with an imagination the middle finger by either not explaining anything or explaining it in such a lackluster way that you imaging they wrote it in five minutes while waiting for their Uber to pick them up. And it wasn’t just the overarching story that obviously suffered some sort of brain-malfunction from the writer, but the many plot-holes in the film as well. I don’t want to go into all of them because that would take too long, but I would like to speak to Rian Johnson directly here: Hey, buddy? People can’t just fly in space. That’s not how space works. Or people, for that matter.

And apart from everything else there were just too many moments where things just felt off in The Last Jedi. For example, Yoda didn’t look right. And not only did he not look right in general, he didn’t fit with the rest of the movie either. And was Mark Hamill always this mediocre of an actor? I mean, I don’t hate the guy but holy shit. Every single one of his lines made it sound like he was really struggling to deliver them. And all of this gets compounded into what is the bizarre comedic moments found in The Last Jedi. The Force Awakens was funny, but it knew when to have some time for serious moments. The Last Jedi almost felt like a star wars parody. It was like a bunch of Youtube videos that would get posted in a kind of “What if this happened instead? wouldn’t that be hilarious?” way, all stitched together in an actual Star Wars movie. A lot of these moments just felt out of place, almost as if the “jokes” were the priority. Scenes would unfold and I would be scratching my head wondering what the fuck the point was, and then one character would crack a joke and instantly I would understand. Rian Johnson assumed that he was writing a movie for the Wayans brothers instead of the next Star Wars movie. And it wasn’t only jokes, but also just weird shit. The Last Jedi really embraced the bizarre parts of the Star Wars universe, and that isn’t a good thing in the slightest. When I go to watch a Star Wars movie I want to be glued to the edge of my seat, so invested in the action that I forget that I’m actually sitting in a movie theatre surrounded by a bunch of other people, not smile and laugh awkwardly as if my grandma is telling me a racist joke and I don’t want to be rude.

Overall Star Wars: The Last Jedi was just wrong. It felt so out of touch with what makes Star Wars iconic, and it was populated by shitty jokes you would find on numerous internet forums. There were some high points of the film, but overall it was a steady decline from Episode 7.

I give Star Wars: The Last Jedi a C