Review: The Last Jedi
Thinking 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.