I think this movie has numerous obvious flaws and the criticism doesn't ever have to go to misogyny, complaining about Luke or whatever. I think it has some amazing moments, which are fun and a joy to watch, and some terrible things that, unfortunately, drag the film down in its entirety. In that regard, it reminds me a lot of
Attack of the Clones, which I think is the one of the old six movies that I have watched entirely the least times because I used to just watch the "good parts" and skip the bad stuff.
First of all, I think that the writing of TLJ is sometimes very lacking. As has been pointed out before, RJ sacrificed the integrity of the plot and the rules of this fictional universe in favor of "cool" or surprising moments. You don't even have to discuss Holdo's lightspeed jump at all, just watch how the film starts off. Like, Poe Dameron should not be able to take out the weapons of a Dreadnought on his own. Their inabilities to defend themselves against a single, small fighter not only makes little sense, Canady's failure to launch his own fighters in time to counter Poe's attack also comes off as complete incompetency on his part. I get what Rian Johnson was trying to do here: re-establish Poe Dameron as a damn ace pilot who doesn't afraid of anything, to get us back to where we left the character in TFA and then move on in displaying some of his weaker character traits and his problematic attitude, to get his character arc going. The idea itself is legitimate and fine, but the execution is horrible. Call me biased because the space battles are pretty much my favorite thing of Star Wars and I happened to consume all sorts of flying games about it, but in my eyes, it's all but established that within this universe, a single fighter does not go toe to toe with a big bad battleship. Usually, there will be groups and squadrons of fighters and the casualties will be high. What good is a Dreadnought if one single fighter can deal a great deal of harm to it, leading to its destruction because it cannot fend off enemy bombers anymore? It seems very unbelievable to me. Just imagine what the Resistance could get done if they happened to have
two pilots of Poe's caliber, then...
Still, I can enjoy the opening battle and all, even though I have to shove aside my brain for a moment here and there. This alone does not make or break the movie. But there's multiple occasions the movie works that way, and they add up to what I think is a noticeable lack of consistency in the writing quality. Which is a goddamn shame, because the parts that are well written, they are
damn well written. So with RJ's work, I think it really is very, very hit-and-miss for me. Which wouldn't be too bad if it was in a movie-to-movie basis, but if it happens multiple times within one single film, it feels uncomfortable to watch for me.
Next. Even though I am less fond of the lightsaber throw every time I watch it, I mostly enjoy the Ahch-To parts. Luke is great, Rey is good, Chewie's got very little to do, porgs are good fun and R2-D2 is way too unimportant, but it still all works, mostly. During this time of the movie, I think we have some of its best moments actually. The confrontation between Kylo Ren and Snoke is great, and the exchange between Poe and Leia is fantastic. In fact: I like Leia in this movie more than I did ever before, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that we won't see Carrie return to the role. The following battle is very well done, I don't even mind Leia's space scene. I actually love it. I have zero problems with how it was portrayed and don't make any fun of it. I am glad that as a kind of parting gift, it gives us some of the most beautiful, clearest high definition shots of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in a unique and beautifully composed scenery.
And the music is some outstanding greatness from Williams, with a wonderful rendition of Leia's theme climaxing in the Force theme, bringing the character and her abilities, of which the potential has only ever been hinted at in the original movies, full circle thematically. Call her Carrie Poppins all you want. For me, this is Princess Leia showing that she is a
Skywalker.
After that, we slowly start to get into problematic terrains. Rose Tico is a fine character actually, it's just that she was displayed unfavorably, imho. Her first exchange with Finn comes off as pretty pathetic to me. Her dialogue is bad and doesn't feel very Star Wars to me. I cannot put it into better words. How she talks and acts is representative of very modern takes on light humor and doesn't fit with how people act and talk in the Star Wars universe for me. The scene where she stuns Finn and the camera zooms out behind the window of the escape pod dramatically is very uncommon cinematography for a Star Wars movie, adding further to the experience that this entire part of the movie feels very... off. I'm not saying that you cannot introduce new stuff to Star Wars or have the films and their cinematographic language evolve, just like cinema as a whole evolves all the time, but in this instance, it's just a lot of little elements that add up together to a strange experience for me. Then, the subplot kicks in that will lead them to Canto Bight, and we are down a really bad road this time. First of all, if you have a universe with space travel for millennia, introducing new technological elements that have been unheard of before in said universe must be done with great care. The whole "Oh, they have a new locating technology, it's super new and obscure but
I happen to know about it and precisely how to turn it off" thing – it just looks kinda lazy to me. There's a plethora of technological things to do, and RJ still couldn't manage to work within those frames but instead had to come up with something like that to create an obstacle for our protagonists. I just don't know. Again, it's not so much the idea itself, but how it is presented to us. It feels very on-the-nose for me. So, they talk with Poe about it, and in this scene I like Rose more because she comes off as stronger, more determined. But there's still something odd: why is
Poe the one to suggest to contact Maz Kanata – instead of Finn?? If we remember the last movie, Finn has definitely met and talked to her, while as far as we know, Poe Dameron might not even know who she is at all. What happened? Did Rian Johnson just forgot who was on Takodana in Maz's castle and who wasn't and didn't have time to look it up when writing TLJ? Weird! Well, it's followed up by a horrible cameo of Maz anyway, where she gives the characters what is pretty much an obvious sidequest. This is the part that had me literally facepalm the first time I saw this movie. It was
so badly written, presented in such an overly obvious and on-the-nose way that I thought that I would even criticise this in a B-tier videogame, but in a critically acclaimed movie by a supposed star writer? The only thing missing was that Maz Kanata would activate a mark on their minimap that tells them where to go next. It was just... ugh.
Canto Bight then was all sorts of horrible for a number of reasons that, I believe, has been discussed ad nauseum, so I won't get into that at all, since this post is already ten times longer than I intended it to be. So I'll just add two of my biggest gripes with what comes after: first, Holdo. Yeah, I know, I know. Misogyny, blablabla. Actually, no. I like Holdo. I actually like her character and her attitude, as in, I think it makes for an extremely great dynamic with Poe for the story. It's actually a fantastic and brilliant setup and idea and it's intruiging to watch how things unfold between them, and that Holdo actually states how she likes Poe in the end makes her tremendously sympathic, because you realize that she wasn't just being an asshole.
But. Her plan, or actually her secrecy about it, is so nonsensical, so entirely void of any logical reason, that it invalidates her entire character arc that came before. Her decision to not spill the beans on what's actually going on, not even after Poe freaked out about how frustrated he is that he cannot see a plan they are following, not even in the face of a goddamn mutiny, is so unreasonable and moronic that it really kills the integrity of her character. She knowingly and intentionally left Poe in the dark about what she wanted to do, even when he assumed command and she had to fear that he would now successfully prevent her plan from happening. So, being secretive about it until the last possible moment was
more important to her than the plan actually happening and succeeding? Sorry, but how does this make any kind of sense. Here is what would have realistically happened: the moment that Poe assumed command, Holdo would have told him that they do in fact have a plan, pointed out the abandoned rebel outpost, and when those dots connected, Poe would have looked like an idiot and his mutineers would have dropped their support and Holdo would have been back in charge and proceeded with her plans. But well, I guess she just didn't feel like doing that. Maybe she was glad that Poe intervened? After all, loading and coordinating a lot of ships is pretty stressful. Maybe she wanted a break from it. She's probably been up for a very long time at this point. Must be tiring, leading the Resistance all that time.
But oh well, at least it gave us a kickass scene with Leia ending Poe's mutiny and stunning him, that was great.
My second big gripe is Snoke and how he was simply discarded when RJ felt like he didn't have use for the character anymore. Sorry, but at this point, Snoke is an abysmal character. His role in the plot is too obscure to not follow up on it with any kind of exposition about who he was, where he came from and what was the deal with him. At least with TFA alone, one could speculate that Snoke just emerged after the Sith entirely, but RJ even goes the mile to hint at that Snoke actually knew Vader. We know for certain that he knew
about Vader. So, combined with his perceived old age, one must assume that Snoke was around during the time of the Sith. How? Why? Did Palpatine know of him? Was he a servant of Palpatine? Was Palpatine a servant of him? Did they have any relationship at all? If so, what kind? If not – why not? Palpatine went at great lengths to make sure that he is the most powerful Force user in the galaxy and to eleminate threats and possible opposition to him. So how does Snoke fit in this scheme? But oh well, let's kill him without exploring
any of that, just because. Now Rey and Kylo can be cool. And that's what the young people wanna see. Lightsaber combat action for the bois, and tragically romantic tension between supposed adversaries for the gurlz. Han Solo is dead, Snoke is in two, your parents were nothing, but I still love you. Yay!
Personally, what makes me so sad about the movie is that I am not
really excited for Episode 9 at this point. Because of how some story elements were handled in TLJ, and critics and executives think it's great, I kind of lost a lot of interest to see how things will unfold in the final episode. For all we know, another Dark Side Force user could show up now in Snoke's place and pull Kylo's strings again. It would certainly work within the frames set up by TLJ, because you don't need to explain your characters and their backgrounds anymore at this point. Have a new big baddie show up and be killed off again just for Episode 9, because why not? Nothing's stopping them after how they have dealt with Snoke. But I hope JJA comes up with something better.
