A Reasonable Discussion of The Last Jedi - Part 5

 While Luke and Rey are on the island, Snoke chastises Kylo.  What's odd about this interaction is that everything Snoke criticizes is stuff that was set up in episode 7; the fact that he's mimicking Darth Vader, the fact that he was beaten by an untrained girl, etc.  It was here I started thinking that this movie was an argument between Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams.  I really felt like I should leave and come back when they've finished the argument and written a pair of scripts that supported one another rather than tugged in two different directions.  I mean, when Snoke says, "Take that ridiculous thing off," he's literally calling something JJ Abrams came up with a "ridiculous thing."  This is not something that should be coming up partway through the second movie of a trilogy; it should have been in the writer's room of the first one.

            Had this been a conversation they had before episode 7 was made, I'd be more on Johnson's side.  It is better to be original with these films, and Kylo Ren's character arc is the most interesting one.  We want to see his face through most of it, so the mask needs to be gone for that.  But once something has been established, right or wrong, you need to go with it.  You can alter course, but as any improv actor will tell you, you don't just say the last person's idea was stupid; you try to run with it and make it better.

            But instead, Johnson wanted Kylo to be completely different from Vader.  That's why he had him jump in a ship just like Vader's and fly into battle, leading tie fighters just like Vader did, destroying apparently the only hangar in the fleet.

            When he turns on the bridge, it's an interesting moment.  He can't bring himself to fire on his mother, and there seems to be a moment where they sense one another.  This sort of interaction with Leia would be interesting.  Perhaps they can do something with it where they connect through the force and...

            Nope, a minion blew up the bridge.  And here is one of the biggest fuck you moments in the movie.  Johnson had several well known figures from the earlier movies on that bridge, including Admiral Akbar and Nin Num.  Okay, think about how old those guys would be.  To be an admiral you have to be pretty old already, and Akbar was admiral 30 years earlier.  Nin Num was also supposed to be high ranking.  For them to be still in their positions would be like having admirals from World War I in charge during World War II.

            What I'm getting at here is that there was no reason to even have them there.  They should be retired somewhere and it should be new people working the bridge.  But Rian Johnson placed them in the bridge with the sole purpose of killing them.  It was the equivalent of someone taking out your favorite toys from when you were a kid and pissing all over them; it's entirely unnecessary and just a dick move.  What was the point if not to just troll the audience?

            Then of course there's Leia being sucked into space, then flying back in.  Now, I've been looking forward to Leia using the force ever since Return of the Jedi.  I've always felt they ripped her off of being as strong a character as she could be.  I had hoped that they'd rectify it in these new movies, but instead, all they've given her is the ability to sense her husband's death and the ability to be Mary Poppins.  Now with Carrie Fisher's death, the idea will never be realized.

            What's even sadder about this being Fisher's final performance is the fact that she spends most of it in a coma.  I genuinely hope this haunts Rian Johnson at night.  He had Carrie Fisher for her final performance, and he wasted it having her lie on her back with her eyes closed for most of it.  And what did he put in place of her?

            Purple hair woman.  Now, don't get me wrong, I think Laura Dern is a fine actress; and I resent a lot of the cruel names people have called her.  However, to replace what they had with this character is insulting.  Consider this.

            When they made Return of the Jedi they hired teams of craftsmen and women to work tirelessly to bring alien beings to life.  Using the best that existed in make-up and effects, they created faces that expressed emotions and felt real.  Now...

I've got some purple hair spray!

            I felt insulted the moment that woman walked on screen.  My movie ticket cost more than they put into her character.  This is supposed to be a galaxy of different species, made by a studio with more money than entire countries, and the best they can do is a human with purple fucking hair???

            Now I get that they're trying to push forward feminism, and I'm completely on board with that.  I believe feminism is by far one of the most important issues in the world, (they make up more than 50% of the population for god's sake,) and women need good representation in movies.  Leia herself is a feminist icon, (which again leaves me baffled why they wouldn't leave her conscious throughout this movie.)  But women can be of all different species.  One of the concepts they always subtly pressed in Star Wars was the idea that the Empire was a racist organization, employing only humans while other species joined the rebellion.  They could have hit both of these points by making Holdo a female alien.  But no, purple hair.

            Also, she doesn't appear at all until the others on the bridge are killed.  If she's the highest ranking officer left, why have we seen others in command positions and she's only now showing up?  The way they portray her it's like they just brought her up from the kitchen.

            Then, of course, there's the problem that everyone has noticed, (even those who love this movie but refuse to admit this problem exists,) she doesn't tell anyone her plan, essentially forcing everyone with any initiative to mutiny.  But that's coming up.

A Resonable Discussion of The Last Jedi - Part 2

            To be fair to Rian Johnson, the major problems with The Last Jedi do not begin with his movie.  They begin with The Force Awakens; or more specifically, JJ Abrams.  Why Abrams is considered a mastermind capable of handling the largest franchises of all time is beyond me.  His breakthrough project Lost has literally the most infamously bad ending in television history.  He built up a mystery for years and abandoned the project so others would be blamed when no answers were revealed.  He then developed Star Trek with unsustainable world building, then abandoned it just when audiences lost interest so others would get the blame.

            He goes to Star Wars and admittedly creates a fun story with likable characters, but it's a repeat of the original with no coherent world building.  It also creates a mess which he once again walked away from, leaving someone else to clean it up.

            For instance, the basic logic of the story of Force Awakens makes no sense.  Luke Skywalker (whose name is always uttered with extreme reverence) has left a map to him which the heroes have to get back to the rebel... I mean "resistance" base.  If they get the plans, they can go find him, but if the bad guys get it, they'll go kill him.  Now, why the hell would Luke make a map to himself that could get in the hands of someone who could come kill him?  Why not just tell his sister, or someone he trusts?

            But the main problem this sets up for the next film is that now they have to explain why Luke has isolated himself on this planet, and why he made a map to be found.  Standard Abrams setting up an impossible to explain situation and leaving it for someone else.  Speaking of which, he has a scene where Maz hands Luke's lightsaber to Fin and literally tells him that the story of how she got it is "for another time."  Never before has Abrams been so blatant in his plan to pass the buck than that line.

            The biggest challenge of all that Abrams has left is how this galaxy even works.  He acknowledges the original trilogy and says it happened 30 years earlier.  But then he sets up a new empire called The First Order and shows the rebellion is still fighting under the name "the resistance."  With such a setup, one needs an explanation as to why that dynamic still exists three decades after the climax of Return of the Jedi.  He makes it even more confusing by saying there is a new republic which is somehow relegated to only one solar system.  This is confusing not only in that a GALACTIC REPUBLIC is only in one star system, but it makes it all the more confounding that the "resistance" is on their side.

            Someone might need to get a dictionary to Mr. Abrams so he understands that a "resistance" is set up to resist the government.  If there's a galactic republic, they're supposed to be fighting that.  If they're fighting for the republic, they're either a government entity, or mercenaries.

            He furthermore created a main character that has started out where characters should end up; already powerful enough to take on and beat the main bad guy.  She can also fly the ship that gets them around, and is adept at using the force.  Dramatically, there's little room for her to grow.  However, Abrams did set up a mystery with her parents, so perhaps they can explore that aspect, and there will be something interesting there.

            There's also a nitpicky thing that I still think is a bit relevant.  Abrams being the hipster that he is, only put in the ships that he liked from the original, and developed no others.  So the resistance has X-wings, and the First Order has tie fighters.  Nothing else has been developed in 30 years, and even the ships that had existed in the other movies, such as Y-wings, B-wings, A-wings, tie interceptors, etc. have no upgrades.  Only the ships Abrams thought were cool got to continue to the next film... with new paint jobs.  Oh, and of course, the Millennium Falcon.  Can't let the new characters have their own identity with a new ship.  Only Abrams' memories shall be allowed here.

            So that's what he handed off to Rian Johnson with the new movie.

A Reasonable Discussion of The Last Jedi - Part 1

            When I went to see The Last Jedi in the theater last December, I was hyped up beyond any other recent Star Wars movie.  It had been reviewed better than any other Star Wars film, and was lauded as better than Empire.  I told my girlfriend I would probably be coming back on cloud 11.  But as it unfolded, I got uncomfortable.  I started wondering what might be wrong with me.  If everyone thought this was so amazing, what was I missing?  I kept trying to make excuses for it; trying to go along with it.  But by the time the film was done, I was just depressed.  Not only had I not enjoyed the movie, knowing what the future held for the franchise, I wasn't interested in anything they had planned for the future.  I had just lost my love for the series.

            This was a big deal to me because I grew up with Star Wars.  The original Star Wars was the second movie I ever saw, (damn you, Benji!)  My first experience telling stories was playing with the action figures; and that literally caused me to become a writer.  Most of all, I always saw untapped potential in Star Wars.  The title alone implies so much.  "Star" - Within a galaxy there are hundreds of millions of stars, around which billions of beings live.  "Wars" - Within any war there are millions of stories, and this is plural, implying many, many more stories.

            My biggest disappointment with The Empire Strikes Back was that it only followed the main characters.  Though in retrospect it was the greatest of the Star Wars movies, I always felt that it could have branched out from there and done what the Marvel universe is now doing.  So when Disney bought the rights to the franchise, I thought they'd do something similar.

            And to be fair, they are; but unfortunately the people they've put in charge of it have turned out to be wanting to go in a direction I simply don't care about.  This was the crossroads where that's happening, where JJ Abrams has been brought back to finish the main storyline, and Rian Johnson is going on to create the new series, while Kathleen Kennedy oversees it.  These are the three people that have proven to be on a path I believe is detrimental to the franchise.

            By the time I got home that night, I was downtrodden.  I truly did not care what happened next.  I never thought that I would actively boycott the next films; I just had no interest.  It was the first time in my life that had happened, and I felt empty.  My girlfriend asked if I was on cloud 11, and I said, "There is going to be a huge backlash over that movie."

            I'm not a film critic.  I usually endeavor to tell my own stories rather than criticize others.  In the case of Star Wars I've been writing my own fan fiction to tell it the way I would  You can find it at:

            But this time my mind kept racing back to it.  For some reason it's really bothered me and I've wanted to speak out.  I didn't for a while partially because it's just not something I do, but also because my prediction of the backlash has been right, and there's been so much vitriol from both sides.  I didn't see how my voice would help.

            I doubt it will help now, (in fact, I'm probably just beating a dead horse,) but it's bothered me long enough that I just need to get it out on paper.  I'm not going to write a diatribe of how bad it is; I wish to be reasonable about it and even point out where it was good.  I also don't want to belittle people who liked it.  If you enjoyed it, that's fine.  In fact, I envy you.  I wish I could have enjoyed this as much as you did.

            This is intended to be a reasonable discussion on The Last Jedi, but bear in mind that there will be more negative than positive.