And Admiral Laura Dern, working with Leia, has a plan they could easily just tell Poe and solve half the conflict of the plot. Poe is supposed to be newfangled Han Solo. That’s democratic, but it’s not true to the storyline, and it doesn’t provide any drama.ĩ. I guess the idea is that we’re supposed to now think that small street urchins without any sort of bloodline can become incredible Jedi. But by sucking Rey out of the family drama, we’re no longer dealing with the central storyline - a point Kylo Ren makes to Rey openly.
STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI BAD GUY SERIES
The series wanted to reset so that anybody could have abilities with the Force - a laudable goal. Now, some of this is George Lucas’ fault for his midi-chlorians nonsense in the prequels, which made coordination with the Force a sort of genetic inheritance. Who were her parents? Was she Obi-Wan’s granddaughter? Did Luke have a kid he didn’t know about? Was she Han’s bastard? Then it turns out that she’s just a nobody. After the last film, there was an insane amount of buzz about who Rey was.
STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI BAD GUY PLUS
Why, exactly, should the Rebel Alliance be worried? Rey has bested Kylo several times already, plus Leia apparently has Force abilities, plus General Hux isn’t exactly terrifying.ĥ. By castrating Kylo Ren in TFA, it makes it difficult to think of him as the ultimate bad guy in the universe. Remember, Darth Vader literally doesn’t lose a battle until Return of the Jedi - and even that’s after Luke nearly turns to the Dark Side. In TFA, JJ Abrams did Kylo Ren a tremendous injustice by making him a petulant man-child who is stymied by a Mary Sue. It’s satisfying to see him go, but he can’t be that scary if Kylo Ren can take him out by activating a light saber.Ĥ. And then he’s dispatched in particularly easy fashion by Kylo Ren. But if you’re going to build up a big baddie who has the power to seduce Kylo Ren to the Dark Side, completely override Rey’s force abilities, and threaten Luke, you’ve got to tell us who the heck he is. Now, I’m not a fellow who spends a lot of time googling whether Snoke is actually Darth Plagueis or whether he’s Mace Windu. In the last film, JJ Abrams made a big deal out of this Snoke guy. But the bombers literally drop explosives in space. The opening sequence features bombers dropping explosives on a First Order dreadnought.
I’m fine with pretending The Force Awakens didn’t happen - it essentially ruined my childhood by turning Han Solo into a loser absentee father - but it’s tough to dismiss the ending and just start as though the Rebel Alliance didn’t do a whit of damage to the First Order.Ģ. It’s somewhat weird that the Republic was re-established and fell in less than 40 years thanks to weapons inferiority. It turns out that they’ve still got heavy advantages in weaponry, which they make obvious from the outset. At the end of the last movie, you’ll recall, the Rebel Alliance blew up the Starkiller Base, devastating the First Order’s capacity to make war. The Force Awakens Apparently Never Happened. So, without further ado, here’s what’s wrong with the film:ġ. The best way to break this thing down is to bifurcate between the good stuff and the bad stuff. There are great parts, there are terrible parts, and there’s a lot in between.
I’ll save my general rating for the end of this review, but it’s very difficult to put an overall grade on such a chaotic film. On Saturday night, I went with my wife and dad to see the new Star Wars film.