This may be an unpopular opinion. The new Star Wars movie – The Last Jedi – is a bit flabby and unfocused and seems to struggle to give all of its characters something to do. But it’s not a bad movie in the long run. It has a strong opening and ending sequence but gets bogged down in the middle with wandering, unfocused B plots.
The film starts up almost immediately after the end of the Force Awakens. Out heroes in the Resistance (Leia, Po Dameron, Finn, etc.) are now the target of an angry First Order attack while Rey is still handing over the lightsaber to Luke on the island. The focus is on how the Resistance and the First Order face one another, Rei and Luke’s relationship, Kylo Ren’s relationship with Rei and Snoke, and some action shenanigans with the rest of the cast.
I’ll try to avoid more spoilers than that which makes the movie hard to talk about. But I do think it’s worth seeing the story and the surprises it holds for yourself.
The film looks great, of course, and has good, fun actors running around being space wizards, cocky pilots, and the like. The humor is generally very good. The concern some have over the Ewok-ing of the series with the porgs (and the crystal foxes) is mostly unfounded. Yes, there will be many a porg toy but their use in the film was limited and fun.
There are some genuine surprises in the movie, some of which are done through misdirection and our familiarity with events of Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. I really appreciated that and the fact the trailers didn’t spoil very much at all. It does have a lot of call-backs to the earlier films… some say less than Force Awakens but I kind of disagree. The way this film uses those connections, however, is more interesting.
I still like the characters, they give Rey and Kylo Ren a lot to work with. Luke Skywalker has a satisfying journey even if it’s not exactly where we (and apparently Mark Hamill) might like to see the character. Carrie Fisher’s presence is constantly on the awkward side given her death and our uncertainty how that effects the story and Leia’s part in it. Not the movie’s fault… and I think they did her justice regardless.
The action scenes… well… they are uneven. There’s a great one at the start of the film and then it bogs down in the middle. There’s one cool and surprising lightsaber battle but it’s also a little underwhelming since it involves characters we don’t see much or care about. Hmmm…. I don’t want to say more. I will say, for a Star Wars movie, there’s less action in it than I expected. Which isn’t a bad thing if the focus is on the characters and their emotional journeys. In that way, the movie has a lot of Empire Strikes Back DNA.
But the real central problem I had with the movie was its running length and its story structure. It’s 2 1/2 hours long and has some B plot sequences that take up too much screen time without enough pay off. It’s this central portion of the movie where the story loses focus and wanders around, creating problems and plot that don’t ultimately matter and only seem to exist to give the cast something to do. It’s bloated and bogs the movie down.
I got bored. This is not a good thing to say in a Star Wars flick. Ultimately, due to this poor editing and scripting, I came away feeling this is the Star Wars movie that is better than the prequels but not nearly as good as the original trilogy, Force Awakens, or even the uneven Rogue One.
But, hey, there’s a lot of good in the movie that I don’t want to write about here for fear of spoilers. It’s still a generally GOOD movie, but it’s not on the level of the best the series has to offer. I wish they had cut a good 30 minutes out of it to make it more watchable with repeat viewings.
Score: 83