Be ye forewarned traveller; Star Wars: The Last Jedi is barely three days into it's theatrical release as I write this but I'm probably going to have to have held fire till after Christmas just so people don't get precious about it being ruined for them. They will be blissful unaware that it's already a ruin and frankly has me doubting whether anybody involved has the faintest clue what they're doing, but that's way beyond my control. That being said, if you haven't seen it yet, maybe don't read this post until you have.
The Force Awakens, for all its many, many faults got a bit of a roasting (https://angerinamansuit.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-force-should-have-hit-snooze.html) but in retrospect I'm also giving a bit of a pass; basically everyone said that they'd lifted all the themes and in some cases locations to ease the audience back into the trilogy and after the abominations that were the prequels, I kind of see why they would do that to an extent. I still think it's lazy as anything, but at least there was a logic to it. What I don't get is why you'd do that in the next movie in the trilogy. I got the exact same feeling about Last Jedi; where have I seen this before? Luke has become a grumpier version of Yoda and swapped the swamp for an Island in the Star Wars Universe's version of the Outer Hebrides (replete with submerged X-Wing for that fresh Dagobah vibe). Snoke is completely just the Emperor and even steals Rey's lightsabre before showing her the rebel fleet about to get blown to bits by a fully operational Empire Weapon That Isn't A Space Station But Still Apparently Has An External Weak Spot. I'm genuinely starting to think the First Order's engineering division needs to have a word with the HR department about possible disciplinary procedures and capability assessments. There's a bit that's a touch reminiscent of the Pod Races from the prequels, the Millenium Falcon gets chased through some tunnels that genuinely look in parts like they rotoscoped the backgrounds directly from Return of the Jedi's Death Star run and during the climactic battle Rian Johnson goes to great pains to make sure we know that it isn't a snow planet the AT-ATs have just dropped in on, it's salt. He does this by having a random trooper stick his finger into someone's footprint, lick it and say "salt?" because that's totally a thing someone would do. I've lost count of the times I've tested a field that way to make sure it's really dirt. It's not Hoth v2.0 people, honestly. I think I actually sneered at that point, but that doesn't really say much; I sneer a lot at Star Wars movies nowadays which genuinely makes me sad.
To be fair, the fact that they're still content to just rip off the old movies isn't the worst thing going on here. There are much worse things, in my opinion.
First of all, for some unfathomable reason they've decided to try and inject some direct humour into proceedings. Not just sardonic wit or clever asides, but full on prat falls, physical comedy and one-liners. It's terrible. Just like Darth Vader cracking out dreadful punning skills in Rogue One (why dear God did anyone not stop them? They must have had table reads, script development sessions, something!) here we get much worse. Poe plays for time by pretending he can't hear General Hux over an intercom which goes on too long and seems tacked on trying to capture the Marvel movie action/one-liner vibe and falls completely flat. The Porgs for example that apparently everybody finds adorable are just pointless and annoying, much more so even than BB-8 and Jar Jar Binks. Yeah I went there; at least that floppy-eared twat served a purpose within the plot. The Porgs are literally just there to provide about four completely unnecessary sight gags, including a Puss in Boots wide-eyed cute face rip off that made me want to punch the stupid little orange bastard in where I guess the throat would be. (Apparently they're actually there because the island they were filming on is chock full of actual puffins that they weren't allowed to displace or murder so they just covered them up in post. Still awful). Luke switches between darkly sombre and winking cheekily at C-3PO, briefly stopping off at sarky git along the way in a character arc that is so far removed from the Luke we're used to that it's painful. At one particularly low point a drunk Goblin from Gringotts mistakes BB-8 for gambling machine, filling him with coins he later uses as ammo from his convenient coin launcher, because of course he has one of those. Awful.
Second, even if you put all that aside, humour being subjective at all, there are some very strange and frankly dumbfounding decisions based on what Force Awakens set up. Who is Snoke? Who are Rey's parents? Did killing Han Solo accomplish anything at all? Answer to all of those questions is genuinely; it doesn't matter. Snoke, it transpires, is nobody. He's also apparently so shit at being a Sith that he can use the Force to psychically link two people across the galaxy but can't tell that he's about to get a lightsabre to the liver. Rey's parents, it transpires are nobodies (or are they? Dun dun dun... nobody cares). Killing Han Solo literally achieved nothing, seeing as Kylo Ren got a bollocking for being conflicted anyway and had a bit of a moment when tasked with killing off his Mum as well. JJ Abrams' fingerprints are all over this; Lost, if you recall, asked no end of suspenseful questions and then gave us nothing but crap answers if any.
It's not just poorly answered questions that leave you scratching your head. Chewie is in about three scenes and does literally nothing of interest other than fly the Falcon a bit and go completely out of character getting all prissy about eating one of the space puffins. Captain Phasma is in about two scenes and gets offed without doing anything remotely memorable at all. Maz Katana makes a brief and odd cameo via holographic plot exposition, I don't even remember who Benecio Del Toro plays, but he at least has a point in terms of plot development. It's almost like they had too many characters (read; actors under contract) and had to struggle to try and fit them all in to the already bloated two and a three quarter hour running time.
Two things really stuck out for me though.
I don't know about you, but I think there are probably better ways of showing how disinterested Luke is in training Rey than having him go about his daily hermit duties; catching giant rubber-looking fish is one thing, but do we really need to watch him milk a giant alien sea beast, then take a good old slurp of it before offering it to his wannabe protege? It's like the Got Milk advert in space.
Last but not least, Princess Leia. Although it's a shame that Carrie Fisher passed away, it also meant you spend the entire movie waiting to see how they write her out. It's not a happy fact, but it is one. So when she gets blasted into the icy void of space, you think, "hey, that's a pretty heroic way to go out, I bet she'd be ok with that". No no folks, demonstrating Force abilities never previously displayed by our beloved heroine, not only does she survive the freezing temperature and crushing pressure of the vacuum of space, she manages to pull herself back to the ship looking like Superman if he'd finally succumbed to those deeply hidden urges to dress like his Mum. I now have the sneaking suspicion that she will either mercilessly dispatched off-screen during the next title crawl or worse yet be rendered in CG during her next outing in all too brief of a cameo; let's hope that's more dignified than it sounds.
Sadly, I wasn't expecting much out of the Last Jedi and I got even less than that. Cameos and character assassinations for all my old favourites, nonsensical comedy and poor acting from the newbies. As Kylo Ren dramatically intones "Let the past die. Kill it if you must". Well that's fine, but if you are going to kill the legacy of one of the greatest science fiction trilogies in cinematic history, at least make it quick and painless. Quick and Porgless would be great. Better yet, maybe don't do it at all.
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