Review: The Last Jedi
Jan. 5th, 2018 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenThinking some more about The Last Jedi, now I've had a few weeks to digest it – and gotten back from my holidays. Indonesia's national parks are beautiful!
I think there's two main issues I have with it. One's somewhat unavoidable and unintentional, but the other is a real weakness of the film as it stands.
The first – the general, overwhelming grimness of it all. Everyone fails. A lot of people die pointless deaths. It's a very cynical film; it takes The Force Awaken's Empire vs Rebels redux setup, and turns it into something more like the Clone Wars, an unnecessary war being manipulated for the benefit of third parties. That's potentially interesting, but the cruelty of it all just becomes exhausting to watch. The heroic plan doesn't just fail, it gets almost everyone killed. The Resistance isn't just scattered, but obliterated. The final nail, and I think the part where it goes too far, is to have Leia's call for help be completely ignored.
And this is the unavoidable problem; on top of its deliberate cynicism, this is a film haunted by Carrie Fisher's death. I think pretty much everyone in the audience expected Leia to die in space – drowned in moonlight – and even after she survives, we're all pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop. That she makes it to the end of the film was, I suspect, intended as a symbol of hope that Episode IX would build upon – but, of course, we know she's not going to be there, and so instead we have Leia's story come to an end with her abandoned and deserted by the galaxy she sacrificed so much for. The Skywalker saga becomes a hideous shaggy-dog story.
The second, and I think more significant flaw, is its general lack of care with characterisation. I think to a degree this goes hand-in-hand with the cynicism. This is a film that doesn't care much for heroes – but, unfortunately, Star Wars has always been about heroic characters, and so it ends up being a film that doesn't care much about its own characters, and often wastes their potential in pursuit of its broader themes. And this is, I would argue, an objective flaw that turns it from a film I personally didn't enjoy into one that I can say is absolutely far weaker than it should have been.
Enough's been written about Luke's characterisation; suffice to say, I think it doesn't work, and feels like the specific character of 'Luke Skywalker' has been forced to conform to the generic role of 'Old Jedi Master'. It's to Mark Hamill's credit as an actor that I can almost accept this as the same character we last saw in Return of the Jedi, but he's doing a lot of the heavy lifting in making the character work. Still, at least this version of Luke has a character and plot arc – it's the new characters who I feel this film really misuses.
Rey basically fades into the background as her role in the narrative is usurped by Kylo Ren. The apparent need of the writer to constantly invert expectations mean she's left with very little in the way of coherent motivations; she seems to confront Ren purely so we can have the inversion of Luke and Vader's interactions. There we get a scene that's powerful for the audience at the expense of making sense for the characters; admitting her parents were nobodies is something that shocks an audience expecting some great revelation, but Rey was never presented as hoping her parents were anything special – she simply wanted to find her parents because she wanted family. Vader forced Luke to completely re-evaluate everything Obi-Wan taught him; Kylo's words have no real lasting impact. It's an inversion, but replacing shock with apathy is hardly an interesting choice.
Poe gets forced into a 'brash hothead' characterisation we saw no sign of in the previous film, and his storyline with Holdo relies on miscommunications that a romantic comedy would probably baulk at. He effectively becomes the antagonist of his own story, and is destroyed as a heroic character. And yet we get no sense of his own feelings or motivations throughout, and by the end of the film he seems to be right back where he started, with no real sense he's learned anything from the horrific fallout of his decisions.
And Finn – poor Finn. Practically a sidekick in his own story – which wouldn't normally be a problem, I like Rose – but his potential is utterly wasted. Here you have a former Stormtrooper sent to infiltrate a First Order ship. So many interesting ideas, so many possibilities! And yet, the film barely seems to remember his background, barely lets him interact with the other characters who's friendships had been the highlights of The Force Awakens. I was convinced he was going to die in his suicide run – not because of the cynical nature of the film, but just because it felt like the film had no idea what to do with him anymore.
In short, I feel this is a film that doesn't care enough about its characters to bother doing anything interesting with them. You could sent Poe to Canto Blight and have Finn butt heads with Holdo, and entire scenes could play out identically. You couldn't do that with the characters of the original trilogy, you couldn't even do that with the versions of the characters seen in The Force Awakens. But that's the problem when your film is built around this sort of cynical contempt for its own genre; it can't muster the enthusiasm to do anything interesting with characters who's only role is to fail.
I liked the Porgs, though.
I think there's two main issues I have with it. One's somewhat unavoidable and unintentional, but the other is a real weakness of the film as it stands.
The first – the general, overwhelming grimness of it all. Everyone fails. A lot of people die pointless deaths. It's a very cynical film; it takes The Force Awaken's Empire vs Rebels redux setup, and turns it into something more like the Clone Wars, an unnecessary war being manipulated for the benefit of third parties. That's potentially interesting, but the cruelty of it all just becomes exhausting to watch. The heroic plan doesn't just fail, it gets almost everyone killed. The Resistance isn't just scattered, but obliterated. The final nail, and I think the part where it goes too far, is to have Leia's call for help be completely ignored.
And this is the unavoidable problem; on top of its deliberate cynicism, this is a film haunted by Carrie Fisher's death. I think pretty much everyone in the audience expected Leia to die in space – drowned in moonlight – and even after she survives, we're all pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop. That she makes it to the end of the film was, I suspect, intended as a symbol of hope that Episode IX would build upon – but, of course, we know she's not going to be there, and so instead we have Leia's story come to an end with her abandoned and deserted by the galaxy she sacrificed so much for. The Skywalker saga becomes a hideous shaggy-dog story.
The second, and I think more significant flaw, is its general lack of care with characterisation. I think to a degree this goes hand-in-hand with the cynicism. This is a film that doesn't care much for heroes – but, unfortunately, Star Wars has always been about heroic characters, and so it ends up being a film that doesn't care much about its own characters, and often wastes their potential in pursuit of its broader themes. And this is, I would argue, an objective flaw that turns it from a film I personally didn't enjoy into one that I can say is absolutely far weaker than it should have been.
Enough's been written about Luke's characterisation; suffice to say, I think it doesn't work, and feels like the specific character of 'Luke Skywalker' has been forced to conform to the generic role of 'Old Jedi Master'. It's to Mark Hamill's credit as an actor that I can almost accept this as the same character we last saw in Return of the Jedi, but he's doing a lot of the heavy lifting in making the character work. Still, at least this version of Luke has a character and plot arc – it's the new characters who I feel this film really misuses.
Rey basically fades into the background as her role in the narrative is usurped by Kylo Ren. The apparent need of the writer to constantly invert expectations mean she's left with very little in the way of coherent motivations; she seems to confront Ren purely so we can have the inversion of Luke and Vader's interactions. There we get a scene that's powerful for the audience at the expense of making sense for the characters; admitting her parents were nobodies is something that shocks an audience expecting some great revelation, but Rey was never presented as hoping her parents were anything special – she simply wanted to find her parents because she wanted family. Vader forced Luke to completely re-evaluate everything Obi-Wan taught him; Kylo's words have no real lasting impact. It's an inversion, but replacing shock with apathy is hardly an interesting choice.
Poe gets forced into a 'brash hothead' characterisation we saw no sign of in the previous film, and his storyline with Holdo relies on miscommunications that a romantic comedy would probably baulk at. He effectively becomes the antagonist of his own story, and is destroyed as a heroic character. And yet we get no sense of his own feelings or motivations throughout, and by the end of the film he seems to be right back where he started, with no real sense he's learned anything from the horrific fallout of his decisions.
And Finn – poor Finn. Practically a sidekick in his own story – which wouldn't normally be a problem, I like Rose – but his potential is utterly wasted. Here you have a former Stormtrooper sent to infiltrate a First Order ship. So many interesting ideas, so many possibilities! And yet, the film barely seems to remember his background, barely lets him interact with the other characters who's friendships had been the highlights of The Force Awakens. I was convinced he was going to die in his suicide run – not because of the cynical nature of the film, but just because it felt like the film had no idea what to do with him anymore.
In short, I feel this is a film that doesn't care enough about its characters to bother doing anything interesting with them. You could sent Poe to Canto Blight and have Finn butt heads with Holdo, and entire scenes could play out identically. You couldn't do that with the characters of the original trilogy, you couldn't even do that with the versions of the characters seen in The Force Awakens. But that's the problem when your film is built around this sort of cynical contempt for its own genre; it can't muster the enthusiasm to do anything interesting with characters who's only role is to fail.
I liked the Porgs, though.
no subject
on 2018-01-05 05:05 pm (UTC)That said, I don't think the characters are drawn as badly as you say they are. Their storylines are not interchangeable.
You could not have sent Poe to Canto Bight (I love your misspelling, though ;) because he would have sneered at it even more overtly and angrily than Rose. You couldn't have sent Rey, because Rey wouldn't have been impressed -- all that bling means less than nothing to her. If Canto Bight had been an actual lush forest coupled with a city, think Lothlórien, maybe yes...but as it was, no.
Likewise, and I can't believe I'm saying that, because I thought there was wayyy too much time spent on Kylo Ren, I thought Rey's characterization holds water throughout the movie. First, her time on Ahch-To is lovely -- frustrated and lonely, sure, but oddly realistic for it; I could almost feel the cool chill from the sea and the gravelly rock under her feet. Then, of course, she's saddled with what I think of as the tired storyline of a sweet lady looking to redeem a young lord, which I have zero interest in...but of course, the storyline works because Kylo Ren is in fact irredeemable, and because ultimately Rey was not giving up even an inch of her soul. The Star Wars buzz about Rey "being tempted by the Dark Side" is utter horseshit; everything Rey wanted here was to drag Ren to the Light Side, kicking and screaming if need be! The fact that she willingly sacrifices her physical well-being and potentially her life is perhaps a little more Christian than Star Wars usually skews, but it doesn't change her fully fixed moral stance. And that, I think, is a powerful hero's journey right there.
Finn does have the smallest part of the tale, it's true, but again, I think it works for his character. Again, I disagree with the reviewers who talk about him wanting to desert -- he is not escaping because he fears for his own life; he is escaping for Rey, Rey who needs to be able to find him: He wants to be her beacon in the darkness of space. Does he factually desert? Haha, yes. But the Canto Bight story is about exactly that: Although your intent may be sweet and loving, its effects are devastating (Rose tells us as much, and again, she is not just a new sidekick; she and Paige stand in for all the previously nameless Resistance fighters that have kept the whole thing running). And on Canto Bight, Finn and no one else learns the lesson that you can't be a lone ranger, can't single-mindedly pursue your own end without destroying others' goals. One, he learns so because of his failed mission, and two, he learns so by example of DJ.
no subject
on 2018-01-06 12:35 pm (UTC)I agree, the Ahch-To scenes were all excellent, and one of the main reasons I'm putting the movie in the 'interesting failure' category rather than the 'total mess'. It really feels like that was the story Johnson wanted to focus on.
Maybe I'm just uncharitable, though, because I don't see any reason Rey should be interested in 'redeeming' Ren in the first place. It has, after all, only been days since he was torturing her, days since she saw him kill Han. She seems to lose her own motivations so she can play out - as you said - a tired old story just so we can have that inversion of expectations. But at this point, they've set up Kylo too well to be irredeemable that it becomes increasingly implausible that people keep trying to give him second chances.
Maybe I just really hate the guy too much. Not Adam Driver - he's doing a fantastic job portraying an utterly loathsome little worm given too much power. But I'm kinda looking forward to him meeting some ignoble end, and am hoping the writers will have enough sense not to give him a third chance.
Finn's story frustrates me the most, because there's a lot of potential there, but it all felt very vaguely sketched out. It just throws ideas out there - the galaxy being built on slavery and greed, which should really impact on Finn, given his background, but he's almost literally just along for the ride when Rose smashes up the casino. Being forced to confront his past by infiltrating the First Order, but nothing specific to him comes of it - I hear there's a deleted scene where he tries to convince other storm-troopers to desert? I wish that had made it in. And the way it ends, with him almost literally being told the moral by Rose, rather than reaching that conclusion himself, is just utterly awkward storytelling.
no subject
on 2018-05-11 05:40 am (UTC)I could not agree with you more on the relentless grimness of this film. I also agree it really was weighed down by Carrie Fisher's death, which impacts the first viewing (we're all wondering when and how she dies) and then makes the next sadder.
I was hoping I would grow to like this film, but instead, I like it less over time. :(