The Biggest Problems With The Last Jedi

Warning: Here be spoilers!

I really wanted to love this movie. I love Star Wars and The Force Awakens is a great movie, so I expected great things from The Last Jedi. There is so much potential for the second outing in the new franchise. We have the return of Luke Skywalker, revelations about Snoke and Porgs! Surely the movie can’t do anything wrong with all that to offer? Sadly, it turns out it can. In no particular order, here are the things that I think ‘The Last Jedi’ got wrong.

• Rian Johnson is a smart ass
  • So, I think the voice inside Rian’s head sounds something like this… “So that epic moment where Rey offers Luke his father’s light-saber back? You know how it could be an incredibly awesome moment connecting the old with the new. Well screw it, we’re not gonna do that! Oh and you know Snoke? How we built him up so that you’d think he was some incredibly powerful being and could have been older than the Sith themselves? Fooled ya! He’s just some guy who knows a few tricks, and we’re gonna kill him off without actually telling you who the hell is. Oh god I am so terribly clever! I can play you fanboys like a Stradivarius. Don’t you just love me?’
• Poe Dameron is completely wasted!
  • No, no no! Not THAT kind of wasted! Though admittedly that’d be an interesting new angle. What I mean is that, as the most charming member of the next generation of The Resistance, Poe shines when he is diving head first into the action. So who decided the best use for Poe was sitting on a battle cruiser for almost the entire film?! Oh yeah, Rian Johnson.
• Luke makes some great points about the Jedi, then pisses all over them.
  • There’s a really interesting conversation between Luke and Rey where Luke says that the Jedi were basically victims of their own ego. It’s interesting because it’s true. If you look at The Phantom Menace, which admittedly sucked, they all bang on about balancing the Force but don’t for one moment stop and consider what balance would mean. Despite all their wisdom not one goes ‘Hang on boys, there’s loads of us and the Sith are extinct. Maybe balancing things out wouldn’t be the best idea?’ With that in mind Luke’s salient comments about it being time for the Jedi to end really resonate and make total sense. It’s possibly the only time that Luke has ever shown some Yoda level wisdom in any of the films. Then he does a total u turn and declares that he won’t be the last Jedi. Oh FFS!

• Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo is an absolute moron.
  • When Leia gets critically injured Holdo steps in to take the reigns on the Resistance’s escape plan, but for some weird reason decides not to tell anyone the plan. From a scripting point of view this makes total sense, because if she had there’d be almost no movie left. While some of the film concerns Rey’s trip to see Luke, most of the film concerns Finn and Rose trying to save the Resistance from the First Order, while Poe tries to save it from Holdo. If the Vice Admiral had stopped being so damned smug for a moment and told Poe or Finn, who at this point are critical members of the Resistance, what she was planning to do then rather than go on some ridiculous crusade they could have just said ‘Oh right! We’ll just hop on one of the cloaked ships then. That makes way more sense.’ I know what you’re thinking. The cloaked ships were discovered by The First Order, so everyone would have died. Ah! But if Holdo had told the others about the plan DJ would never have actually been there to give the game away. And how did he even know they were there in the first place?! He had zero contact with the Resistance till he met Finn and Rose, which had to have been a coincidence because they didn’t tell anyone about their plan. Maybe it’s because Holdo is a dumb hick red neck. She might deny it, but I am sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed she’s actually called Amy-Lynn.

• Luke is a lazy ass bastard.
  • In the closing scenes of The Last Jedi Luke shows up to kind of save the day, only it turns out he doesn’t really and it’s all a mental projection with his mystically Jedi powers. That would be fine if his goal was self-preservation. Not taking a risk by facing someone he considers so powerful he considered murdering them in their bed makes perfect sense. The problem with that is that self-preservation had nothing to do with it. As soon as the jig is up he promptly declares ‘Fuck it!’ and merges with the force. If he was always going to do that then why the hell not just show up? Aside from the fact it would prove that he actually still had a pair, it would have been a lot more respectful to Leia. Luke is that one relative who can never be bothered to visit at Christmas. He would apparently rather be miserable and alone and appease the family with a quick phone call.

There are a lot of other things that I didn’t like about The Last Jedi, but if I keep going this will be a book. At the same time, I have to admit it had it’s good points. Whilst The Secret Diary of Darth Emo is never going to win me over, the revelation that Rey came from nothing was an awesome twist. Why the hell does everyone have to be the son or daughter of some other hero anyway. If they kept on like that we’d soon start getting Jedi with 12 toes as things got progressively more inbred. Overall though, I think The Last Jedi tried too hard to be clever and forgot to try and be fun. Ironically, Rian Johnson seems just as full of his own hubris as his script accused the Jedi of being.