A Reasonable Discussion of The Last Jedi - Part 10

            At last we come to the final act.  All the stories have come together and landed on Hoth... I mean, a completely different planet because Rian Johnson made it clear we are supposed to let go of the past.
            To be fair, it is a very clever world.  I once filmed my own movie in a ghost town just off the Salton Sea.  The sea had overflowed into the town, then dried up, leaving only the salt behind.  Just beneath the surface was a soggy, blood red clay.  It gave off an ominous, semi-horrifying appearance.  This could really make for an interesting environment.  Rian Johnson and his cinematographer make the best of this location, creating some of the most beautiful images ever put into a Star Wars movie.

            Unfortunately, the story doesn't live up to it.  First, it continues to copy Empire by having literally the same AT-AT's walk slowly toward the rebel base while a line of infantry fire useless shots at them and a bunch of air speeders fly out to defend it.  Again, I'm less offended by this series of choices than I am by the fact that Rian smugly told us to let go of the past while he clearly clings to it like a safety blanket.

            When Fin lined up to sacrifice himself for the cause, I felt a little bad because I wanted to see John Boyega do more than they had let him do in this movie.  But it would be a truly heroic death scene.  When Rose ran into him, I at first was a little relieved.  He'll be able to do something more.  But when I found out it was on purpose... and her reason...

            Basically they turned her into a little girl talking about war.  Her views are naive and immature.  This belief that you fight for what you love, not kill what you hate is admirable, the type of thing we all go "awww" when a five year old says it.  But adults understand that unfortunately, when evil people are set on killing us, we have no choice but to try to kill them before they can continue to kill us.

            I'm sure all those people who stormed Normandy Beach would rather be saving those they love back home rather than trying to kill the ones they hate.  But they understood that this was the only way to stop the killing, and they sacrificed themselves for the greater good.  Rose's naive line is a slap in the face to anyone who made that sacrifice.

            And what makes this line so particularly crazy is the fact that she says it literally as the big gun shoots the front entrance, thus dooming the ones they love to death.  It's almost like Rian Johnson realized his own hypocrisy at this moment and pointed it out, but he didn't do anything more about it but add a kiss.

            At last, with all hope lost, Luke Skywalker enters to save the day.  This gave me hope that it would all wrap up with something amazingly memorable.  It was incredibly touching to see Luke and Leia together at last.  This literally brought a tear to my eye; not just because of the Luke and Leia reunion, but because Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were such good friends.  Seeing them connect one last time was absolutely special.  For a moment I was glad they didn't kill Leia off on the ship.  Story-wise, it would have made a lot more sense, but that was such a beautiful scene between the two that I no longer gave a damn.

            Then the music starts marching triumphantly to the beat of Luke's feet walking out to face Kylo Ren.  It is on, and the boy in me is getting pumped up.  The shots of him striding out on the field to meet those AT-ATs are spectacular.  We have waited decades to see what the Jedi are capable of.  The originals had mere shadows of the Jedi.  The prequels showed us the Jedi, but now Luke is supposed to be the chosen one, the height of what the Jedi could achieve.  Vader had said in the original that the power of the Death Star was insignificant next to the power of the force.  That's saying a lot, that a literal planet killer is nothing compared to a force wielder.

            Now we're going to see why.

            Then the AT-ATs fire.  I'm not going to lie, it looked cool because of all that red thrown up from beneath the salt.  And as the dust settles and Luke comes out dusting off his shoulder, again, I have to be honest, I laughed.  I laughed because I was excited.  This is the power of the Jedi, something more powerful than a planet killer.  Kylo's going to have to go down and face him.  This is going to be awesome.
            Now, to be honest, I did see an idea later that would have worked better.  How it Should Have Ended did this scene with Luke freezing all the laser bolts in the air, then he deflects them back at the AT-ATs, destroying them.  This not only would have been an awesome show of power, but it would also have brought something around full circle from Force Awakens.  The first power we see Kylo use is to freeze a laser bolt in the air.  This would have harkened back to that, shown that Luke can do it with a lot more laser bolts, thus showing his dominance over Kylo, and it would have revealed that Kylo learned this skill from Luke, the man who was about to kick his ass.

            But oh well, now we get to see this duel between two titans, great sword play and force powers to be used against one another.  This is going to be great.  Inside the Resistance base, not much made any sense.  They had to figure out that they needed to get out, even though Luke could have told them he was stalling the bad guys.  And for some reason they can't find the back exit, even though they're the ones who freakin' built the damn...

            Okay, back to the battle between the two force wielders.  It looks great.  The cinematography is awesome.  They could be using their powers a bit more, but whatever.  The lines are a bit cheesy, but it's the two best actors in the movie, so whatever.  Then Luke looks like he's going to sacrifice himself as Obi-wan did.  Well, I wish I'd had more saber battle, but whatev...

            Luke turns out to be projecting himself.  Okay, that made this fight a bit more lame because the personal stakes were gone.  But it means Luke will be coming back in the next movie.  That's the one positive element to him not actually being there.

            Then he dies anyway.  What... the... fuck.

            Look, if you're going to kill someone off, you might as well do it as dramatically as you can.  Think of when Obi-wan died right in front of Luke.  He screamed in horror and chaos broke loose.  Think of when Han died and Chewy screamed in agonized sadness.  Imagine that same sort of thing but Leia is watching; all of the Resistance is watching.  That could be so dramatic.

            But no, he instead just fades away on some rock.  It literally reminded me of a joke my girlfriend and I had been telling where we'd see a movie, and then during the credits we'd say, "And then he died of a staph infection."  Here is one of the most iconic characters in cinematic history, and they literally have him, as General MacArthur said of old soldiers, just fade away.

            Ugh.

            And with him fading away, so too did my interest in Star Wars.  I was left depressed, realizing that the guy who created this would be doing the new trilogy, and the guy who set up all the problems in it would be completing this trilogy.  The Last Jedi made more than two billion dollars and was the most well reviewed Star Wars film of all time, so why should they care what I thought?  It was like the commercials for Abrams' Star Trek atrocity, "This isn't your father's Star Wars."  It certainly isn't.  I held a torch for this series for decades, hoping it would one day live up to the potential it always had that I feel was never realized.  And now I won't ever see it.

            Oh well.  I'll just have to tell my own version through RPG games and fan fiction.  Plus, the first two original films and Rogue One can always inspire me to make great stories of my own.

A Reasonable Discussion of The Last Jedi - Part 9

            The idea of arms dealers selling to both sides was actually a very good idea.  It's a statement of the real world without being too direct, and it builds out the Star Wars universe in a dynamic way.  What's more, this could have led us to the explanation of how the First Order formed.  We could have followed the money to find out that the First Order is really just made up of investors wanting to build up a conflict to make money.

            To be fair, the movie might be implying that.  But I say might because there's no firm evidence that this is what they're saying.  We see that they sell weapons to the First Order and the Resistance, (apparently not to the Republic, adding to the confusion of that whole situation,) but this implies that there's already a conflict that the arms dealers are exploiting, not creating.  So it's yet another missed opportunity for the filmmakers to explain to us what the whole conflict is about.

            But on to the dreadnaught, and the return of Phasma.

            I think everyone was excited by the prospect of a special stormtrooper who stands out from the rest.  Phasma had the potential of giving us an insight into the common soldiers of the Empire... I mean First Order, while also standing out in a unique way.  It looked like she might be the Boba Fett of this season.

            Then she turned out to be too much of the Boba Fett of this season.  See, while Boba Fett looked awesome and started off with outthinking the heroes, he was killed off unceremoniously in his second film.  Now we have a character who appears once, says some threatening things, then turns out to be useless.  She then returns, says some threatening things, and turns out to be useless.

            First, after capturing Fin and Rose... well, not capturing, but coming in and ordering everyone around once they've captured them, she then decides to have them executed in the slowest way possible.  She claims that it will be slower and more painful, but when you look at the way they're going to do it, beheading, it will be much faster than a blaster to the chest.  If they were going to slowly slice their heads off, okay, that's painful.  But the stormtroopers lift the axes over their heads, and...

            And why is Phasma even here, anyway!  She lowered the shields of the Star Killer Base!  If she somehow got out of the member berries trash compactor, and somehow got off the planet, she's not going to retain her rank!

            Sorry, I had to get that out of my system.  So anyway, the fleet gets sliced up by the Resistance ship going to light speed...

            Quick note about that.  I actually don't have a problem with a ship going to light speed destroying another ship.  It's well established that ships in hyperspace can be affected by things in our universe, ("fly to close to a star, or bounce off of a supernova...") and there's no arguing the shots look amazing.  But it was one ship.  When you look at the Imperial fleet, all of the ships are destroyed by this.  Unless they're lined up one in front of the other, I don't see how that's possible.

            Anyway, back to Phasma.  Wait, she's already been killed again?  Damn, she was hardly there.  But not before the heroes try to shoot her, but their shots bounce off her armor...

            Wait!  If the shots bounce off her armor, why was she concerned about Han shooting her during Force Awakens.  She literally lets in the Resistance to destroy her planet because he had a pistol to her head which was apparently useless.  Man, she must feel awful about that.

            So that's all I'm going to say about Phasma.  If they don't care enough about her to give her an actual story, then why should I?