Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Star Wars: The Last Review

Title: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Director: Rian Johnson
Screenplay: Rian Johnson

Well, the movie's been out for almost a week, a period in which everyone who was going to see it has doubtless seen it multiple times and everyone who WASN'T going to see it has already explained how they're not really into Star Wars presumably because they hate fun, adventure and excitement, the bastards. Which of course means that, thanks to my impeccable, nay immaculate, sense of timing, it is time for me to provide the review that everybody, literally everybody, hasn't been waiting for. 

I feel a bit sorry for movies these days, swimming in an amniotic fluid of rumour, conjecture and leaks even before they've been pushed grunting into theatres, but then all the major names involved make multimillion dollar salaries, so fuck 'em. That's the movie business now, suckers.

So, a little bit divisive, hey? On Rotten Tomatoes, 93% positive from the critics but only 55% from site users. On Metacritic, 86 metascore, but only a 4.8 user score. Are reviews being carpet-bombed by irate fans and trolls? Are critics too scared of the Mouse to risk giving a negative review?

In a word: Yes.


I mean, it's good fun. It looks absolutely stunning, most of the time. The opening bombing run should be risible, with bombs falling down despite the zero-g and crewmembers surviving nicely without spacesuits, but is so expertly cut and framed it has you on the edge of your seat right from the get-go. There's a crimson throne-room fight that is all about fucking cool lightsaber moves, easily the best fight choreography since Darth Maul did his thing. There's a sudden cut to silence, in a monochromatic hyperspace kamikaze attack that is just jaw-droppingly phenomenal. A planet that bleeds red as the two sides battle across it. Imperial--sorry First Order, whatever--walkers hulking like Egyptian statuary against the skyline.

Oh, but the plot. Alas, the plot. Caught between the original trilogy and a new generation of movies, overstuffed with characters with too little to do even in the bloated 150 minute running time. Overburdened with expectations, too, all the mysteries JJ Abrams presented in The Force Awakens, apparently without bothering to have the slightest fucking clue how he was going to resolve any of them. And it shows, good lord, it shows.

There's a lot of talk of taking the Star Wars universe in a bold new direction, but let's acknowledge that it does so by almost immediately throwing over its shoulder every plot line left dangling from Episode 8. Who is Snoke? Who cares. Who are Rey's parents? Eh, just some guys. What's Luke doing at the Jedi Temple? Um, not much. Drinking space giraffe milk straight from the tit, mainly.

As a stand-alone movie, a lot of this would work fine. As the second movie in a trilogy, it just exposes the fiction of the emperor's new clothes. There is no trilogy, there's just a bunch of movies created so Disney can make back the money it spent on Lucasfilm. (Yes, yes, all movies are made to make money, but usually they also have the tiniest morsel of artistic merit to them, some message they wish to impart upon the world. Here? No.)

Some of the ideas are good, great even. There's a moment of tension when Kylo and Rey finally meet, and he urges her to forget the past. Jedi, Sith, it doesn't matter. That's a great direction to go--maybe the only direction, if the series doesn't want to mire itself in a hamster wheel of successive dark lords getting their laser-sword comeuppance from feisty youngsters, forever and ever, like infinite reflections repeating in facing mirrors--but then the movie immediately backs off by having the two revert to good/bad stereotypes.

The idea that anyone can be a hero, that it's who you are, not where you came from, is one I really, really like. It's the anti-Marvel effect: Evil is not defeated by the Chosen One or superheroes, but by ordinary people finally saying "enough is enough." That's a powerful and important message. That's weary cop John McClane saying "Yippe kai-yay, motherfucker." That's Ripley telling the Alien Queen to get away from her, bitch. That's fat gardener Sam Gamgee stabbing a 12-foot spider that tried to hurt his friend. But, oh but, it's a message that gets largely lost in a barrage of time-wasting silliness and too-close-to-home political posturing.

Which brings us to the parts of the movie that are just indefensible. A ropey CGI chase scene, punctuated by a stuttering bit-part character in service of a subplot that goes nowhere and achieves nothing. A plot device straight from the age of sailing ships, overseen by characters whose only role is not to tell each other things and then die heroically. A walk-on by returning character Captain Phasma that only serves to highlight how manipulative and pointless her return was. A finale that seems to go on and on before abruptly ending, leaving no clear way forward for the next Episode.

Like I said, it's really a stand-alone movie, not part of a trilogy.

But you know, despite all that, I still quite enjoyed it. I mean, it is AMAZING to look at. Whether I'll still think so if I try to watch it again is a question for another day.

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