The Ultimate Disappointment That Is Star Wars: The Last Jedi

The Good: The animals, The final third is watchable
The Bad: Direction/Editing, Painfully forced humor, Problematic time aspect, Whiny Luke Skywalker, Evil is stupid, Ridiculous set-up, Plot contrivances
The Basics: Star Wars: The Last Jedi might well be the worst of the Star Wars films.


Like most Alpha Geeks, tonight I rushed right out to the first possible showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that I could find. The best possible way I can describe how truly disappointing Star Wars: The Last Jedi was is by saying this; on the drive home, I prioritized what I was excited about doing upon returning home and the list came out: 1. See my wife, 2. Reheat the nachos from last night, 3. Clean out the cats' litter boxes, and 4. Consider and review The Last Jedi. Without any spoilers, the simplest explanation for my antipathy toward Star Wars: The Last Jedi would be summarized with the idea that it took an hour and a half into the two and a half hour film for there to be a scene that was exciting and watchable. I know this because the local theater I went to has glowing clocks near the exits near the screen and as I waited for something good to happen in The Last Jedi, my eyes frequently drifted there.

Right now, it seems impolitic to criticize Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but I feel like I am on pretty solid ground with this one (outside just how I feel). Remember how people's initial reaction to Attack Of The Clones (reviewed here!) was overwhelmingly positive at the time? Have you ever gone back to A New Hope (reviewed here!) and caught just how whiny and annoying Luke Skywalker actually is in the film? Remember the feeling you had at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here!) where it seemed like there were a ton of compelling directions in which the franchise could go? Have you ever watched a Star Wars trailer and just gotten excited by how it presented information? Well, The Last Jedi is getting praise that is likely to collapse when people actually let the hype fade and consider the actual work, Luke Skywalker reverts to his pathetic and whiny adolescent-sounding self, the film concludes at a place that is almost entirely impossible to create a compelling continuation to the franchise, and director Rian Johnson and editor Bob Ducsay created a film that spends its first hour and a half (at least) cutting as if it were one long trailer. The comparatively quick cuts - especially for reaction shots - feel more like a commercial or a trailer than it does a cohesive film.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi begins with an absolutely ridiculous premise and it sets up a film that has such a muddied view of time that it is almost impossible to take the film seriously. Following the destruction of the Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens (reviewed here!), the First Order has become more powerful and consolidated its power throughout the galaxy in such a way that the Resistance is on the verge of utter destruction. All this in the time it took for Rey to get to Luke Skywalker's planet where he has been hiding for the past thirty years. And, much like George Lucas beat to death the "there's always a bigger fish" idea in The Phantom Menace, Johnson is obsessed with illustrating "there's always a bigger ship." I can completely get why Supreme Leader Snoke would not bring his massive ship into the field with any frequency, but when the Rebel base is being bombarded, it is by a dreadnaught and Poe Dameron notes that it is not the only one. So, one has to wonder why the hell the First Order didn't have a dreadnaught near the vastly less-mobile Starkiller base to prevent their super weapon from being menaced.

So, the First Order is on the verge of wiping out the Resistance and Poe Dameron makes a daring, unauthorized, attack on the First Order dreadnaught that has come to finish off the rebelling force. Dameron is able to cut down the heavy weapons on the dreadnaught, but the Resistance bombers are effectively attacked. While a daring sacrifice allows the Resistance to take out the dreadnaught, the Resistance fleet is all but wiped out and when it comes out of hyperspace, the leaders are horrified that the First Order fleet - including Supreme Leader Snoke's massive command ship - are right behind them, picking off their vessels and harassing their final remaining command ship. Finn comes out of his coma and immediately asks after Rey. Rey, of course, is with Luke Skywalker, who refuses to teach the young woman the ways of the Force.

With Leia wounded, Poe Dameron demoted, Rey watching Luke wander through his days, and the last three Resistance ships running out of fuel and unable to make the jump to hyperspace because the command ship can track them, Finn and the Resistance engineer Rose go on a mission to find a codebreaker who can get them onto the command ship to disable the First Order tracking device. And Rey and Kylo Ren suddenly find they have a psychic connection and communicate and they debate with one another the nature of the Force.

Much like Thor: Ragnarok (reviewed here!), where the plot set-up is that the end of an entire world is imminent, but the film throws out joke after joke after joke, Star Wars: The Last Jedi belabors the humor and most of the characters - save Poe Dameron - sound nothing like they did in prior installments of the Star Wars franchise because they are joking so much. So, the Resistance in the galaxy is almost wiped out, but people sure are taking it with an amazing sense of humor. Except Luke Skywalker. Skywalker has become introspective, sad, a liar, and whiny . . . so whiny.

And while the first major joke of Star Wars: The Last Jedi lands, it completely recharacterizes the First Order as a bunch of idiotic buffoons. Evil is seriously stupid in The Last Jedi. Every major villain in The Last Jedi is tragically wrong at key moments of the film and it guts their credibility; how they have created an empire based upon dominance and slavery is beyond the suspension of disbelief.

And the time aspect of The Last Jedi is painful. With only hours of fuel left in their capital ship and the Resistance on the verge of utter collapse, Rey spends days and nights training, leaves a planet so remote that Skywalker successfully hid there for years, boards Supreme Leader Snoke's ship, gets captured and has a climactic battle with Kylo Ren; how the hell does that work?! And, on the subject of Rey, Daisy Ridley plays Rey as angry in almost every scene, so it's hard to believe she would not be an agent of the Dark Side.

What works in The Last Jedi are the themes. While Rose is abruptly saddled with a ridiculous romantic subplot, she is given a decent amount of character. She loathes the rich who profit off weapons sales and she has a real love of animals. The Last Jedi takes a nice divergence to illustrate that cruelty toward people and animal cruelty are directly analogous.

But for most of Star Wars: The Last Jedi the film oscillates between being painfully boring and an utter mess. One character speaks normal until his last scene where he suddenly develops a stutter, Leia does an impressive impression of Mary Poppins, and the physics of how Paige gets the control pad needed to activate the bomber's doors are troubling. How the Resistance gets trapped in a building with only one exit and entrance and, after they are sealed in, manage to get an entire force of soldiers out into the trenches in front of that door is a mystery.

Ultimately, The Last Jedi is a film that even the appearance of new, super-armored AT-ATs cannot save.

For other works in the Star Wars franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace
The Clone Wars
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 2
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Rogue One
Star Wars - Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
Caravan Of Courage - An Ewok Adventure

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Looper Is The Terminator Without The Cheese & Robots, For Fans Of The Terminator!

The Good: Plot, Characters, Special effects, A few moments of performance
The Bad: Use of voiceovers/Much of the acting
The Basics: Looper is solidly one of the best films of the year, by virtue of being smart, well-conceived science fiction!


Say what you will about the classics of science fiction, but there are many that do not hold up nearly so well over the years. I know I took a lot of flack when I reviewed The Terminator (here!) because I find it to be exceptionally dated. The Terminator had some decent themes and interesting characters, but it also had pretty hammy acting and some objectively lame catchphrases. Now, however, writer and director Rian Johnson has a cure for that. That cure is Looper.

Looper is a small, bold, science fiction film that is largely a conceptual rewrite of The Terminator with a surprising amount of X-Men III: The Last Stand (reviewed here!) thrown in. Returning Bruce Willis to a role much like his one in Twelve Monkeys (reviewed here!), Looper effectively creates a compelling reality of its own, even if its scope is one mob and a future the viewer never truly sees.

In Kansas in 2044, Joe is a Looper, an assassin whose only targets are individuals sent back from the future a part of the mob’s machinations. It seems thirty years from then, time travel will be a reality, but it will be illegal and because people have tracking devices in them, it will be exceptionally hard to make hits. So, the mob sent back Abe and Abe has a network of Loopers who stand at specified places in the middle of nowhere waiting for a specific time when a person will pop into existence from the future and they blow them away with their blunderbuss and dispose of those bodies from the future.

Joe is very good at what he does and he ruthlessly kills for the mob by day and by night, he goes and gets high on a drug that he drops into his eyes. But the mob of the future appears to have been abruptly taken over and Loopers find themselves killing their future selves (“closing the loop”) and their contracts ending as a result. After Joe’s friend Seth inadvertently lets his older self go, Joe sees very vividly what happens to Loopers who fail to close the loop and end their contracts.

When Joe encounters his future self, Old Joe gets the drop on him and urges him to run. Joe, however, is actually eager to stay in good standing with the mob and he begins a pursuit of his older self. After a discussion at their favorite diner, Joe learns that his older self is motivated by events thirty years in the future. His elder self is on a mission to kill the Rainmaker and thus save the life of the woman he loves.

Looper is pleasantly smart. The film addresses the paradoxes of temporal mechanics and it is very sensible for that. The older version of Joe describes how memory works, as he is able to recall events in current time as his memories, moments after they happen. Similarly, Joe is able to send a “note” to himself by carving it into his flesh and the Older Joe suddenly finds scars on his body. Looper treats time for variable it is; in order to have a time loop like the one that Joe experiences, he must go through the timeline once in order to be sent back. That means, the first time through the timeline, Joe actually kills his future self as he is supposed to. The montage that illustrates that is very clear and reasonable.

As well, the mission is a compelling and personal one. Joe sets out to stop his older self from killing Sid, a child that is one of the candidates the older Joe believes will grow up to be the Rainmaker. The older version of Joe is a sympathetic character because in his future, his wife is the one who cleaned him up and his love for her is real and vibrant. Looper plays off the classic and universal themes of love and death and it does that exceptionally well.

Moreover, almost all of the pieces are sensibly put in play very early on. The older version of Joe makes reference to what little is known about the Rainmaker, so viewers watch Sid and his mother, Sara, for clues to see if he might actually have a similar backstory. Furthermore, the “universe” of Looper establishes supplemental characters like Sara, Kid Blue, and Jesse (a hired gun) who are every bit as vicious as Joe is, making for interesting allies and adversaries. Looper also has a distinctive vernacular (“letting your loop run,” etc.) that makes it feel fresh and different.

Like Dark City (reviewed here!), Looper has compellingly quiet moments. Instead of constant gun battles and chases, Looper features characters like Abe and the older version of Joe simply talking to one another, usually Joe. And it works and manages to be entertaining.

The acting in Looper is fine, though no one gives really extraordinary performances. Bruce Willis does seem to be channeling Cole from Twelve Monkeys and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s big acting twist in the film seems to be taking on a squint much like Bruce Willis’s. In fact, as the film went on, it became clear that Willis was miscast. (I never thought I would ever argue for work for him, but . . .) As Looper goes on, it becomes clear that the ideal actor to play Old Joe would have actually been Gerard Butler, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt spends much of the film looking, acting, and even sounding like Butler. Emily Blunt shows up late in Looper and while her role is important, it does not give her much to do with it.

Jeff Daniels steals his scenes as Abe, just as Garret Dillahunt steals his as Jesse. The only real noticeably bad performance comes from Noah Segan, who plays Kid Blue with an annoyingly inconsistent limp.

Ultimately, Looper is an engaging puzzle film; the pieces are put into play and almost all of them are utilized in ways that make sense or are compelling, even a few that seem like gratuitous throwaways early on lend the film some surprising scenes later. Looper is, as the hype insinuated it could be, an instant science fiction classic.

For other films featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Rises
50/50
Inception
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
Havoc

8.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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