Last Jedi: Overview
Dec. 26th, 2017 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackMy reaction to the last jedi. I agreed with what most people said positively and negatively (leaving aside the people who were going to hate it for the things I liked), and people's overall reaction tends to be which of those they felt more strongly. For instance, the humour worked for some people but not for others.
I really loved the increased diversity. I really loved most of the humour (I felt it did fall a little flat sometimes). I loved all of the characters and most of the character arcs.
Much of my criticism is things that I felt were good in concept but didn't come through as strongly as I wished. The whole "empire ships pinging away at rebel ships at edge of gun range" was a really great, tense middle of the film. But I felt it was muddled and unclear why they were in that situation, as opposed to the imperial ships being able to catch up at lightspeed, or the rebel ships being able to load everyone into the (apparently lightspeed capable?) escape pods and scatter, etc.
Likewise, I liked the concept of "see a planet what it's like living under the imperial order", and the casino sections did that well in many ways, but felt forced in other ways.
One thing I did note, was compared to JJ Abrams films: Abrams films suffer from the problem that "everyone can go everywhere in the galaxy at infinite speed regardless of the technology available, unless they can't for plot reasons", which for me massively centres the weakest point in the plot, that we're supposed to care about these characters being stuck somewhere, when every time it's NOT urgent, they can just zip across the galaxy with no trouble. This film has the opposite problem, that people usually can't zip across the galaxy, but occasionally they can, which I find annoying, but a much less fatal flaw.
Overall, I found the film tried to pack too many different characters in. I liked all of them so I'm not sure what I'd be able to cut. But it felt like it was trying to have a "is poe a maverick or not" plot, and I just didn't feel the tension, like, I'm already in love with him, I didn't think "oh no, bad decision", or "rah, go poe", I thought, "oh no, forced character development, I hope it doesn't get everyone killed". I loved Rose and Finn, but it felt like their parts of the plot weren't integral enough to the rest of the film in terms of character. I may view the original trilogy too rose-glasses-ly, but it felt like each film centred on three main characters, even if they had several different sections of the film, but Last Jedi spread itself too thin.
How about the Last Jedi's treatment of Luke and Leia? I think this was mostly set after the first of the new trilogy, so Last Jedi couldn't do much about it. I love that Luke became Jedi mentor figure, and Leia became famous general. I'm sad that, for this film trilogy to work, basically everything they achieved needs to have crashed down again putting them as badly off as they were to start with. It's awkward because the force is so ambiguous in what it encompasses: is Luke right to give up and flee to a remote island? Was he right to try to teach Ben, and right to think Ben was falling into evil? Who knows, it depends whether the force is actually more dangerous for more powerful force users or not, and we don't really know. I felt like the story the last jedi told worked under its own lights, but Mark Hamill felt it betrayed Luke's character, and I feel he'd know.
Coming next, all the things I liked, and all the things I didn't like.
I really loved the increased diversity. I really loved most of the humour (I felt it did fall a little flat sometimes). I loved all of the characters and most of the character arcs.
Much of my criticism is things that I felt were good in concept but didn't come through as strongly as I wished. The whole "empire ships pinging away at rebel ships at edge of gun range" was a really great, tense middle of the film. But I felt it was muddled and unclear why they were in that situation, as opposed to the imperial ships being able to catch up at lightspeed, or the rebel ships being able to load everyone into the (apparently lightspeed capable?) escape pods and scatter, etc.
Likewise, I liked the concept of "see a planet what it's like living under the imperial order", and the casino sections did that well in many ways, but felt forced in other ways.
One thing I did note, was compared to JJ Abrams films: Abrams films suffer from the problem that "everyone can go everywhere in the galaxy at infinite speed regardless of the technology available, unless they can't for plot reasons", which for me massively centres the weakest point in the plot, that we're supposed to care about these characters being stuck somewhere, when every time it's NOT urgent, they can just zip across the galaxy with no trouble. This film has the opposite problem, that people usually can't zip across the galaxy, but occasionally they can, which I find annoying, but a much less fatal flaw.
Overall, I found the film tried to pack too many different characters in. I liked all of them so I'm not sure what I'd be able to cut. But it felt like it was trying to have a "is poe a maverick or not" plot, and I just didn't feel the tension, like, I'm already in love with him, I didn't think "oh no, bad decision", or "rah, go poe", I thought, "oh no, forced character development, I hope it doesn't get everyone killed". I loved Rose and Finn, but it felt like their parts of the plot weren't integral enough to the rest of the film in terms of character. I may view the original trilogy too rose-glasses-ly, but it felt like each film centred on three main characters, even if they had several different sections of the film, but Last Jedi spread itself too thin.
How about the Last Jedi's treatment of Luke and Leia? I think this was mostly set after the first of the new trilogy, so Last Jedi couldn't do much about it. I love that Luke became Jedi mentor figure, and Leia became famous general. I'm sad that, for this film trilogy to work, basically everything they achieved needs to have crashed down again putting them as badly off as they were to start with. It's awkward because the force is so ambiguous in what it encompasses: is Luke right to give up and flee to a remote island? Was he right to try to teach Ben, and right to think Ben was falling into evil? Who knows, it depends whether the force is actually more dangerous for more powerful force users or not, and we don't really know. I felt like the story the last jedi told worked under its own lights, but Mark Hamill felt it betrayed Luke's character, and I feel he'd know.
Coming next, all the things I liked, and all the things I didn't like.