Retro Movie Thoughts: The Last Jedi

I was cruising through Facebook earlier, and my Memories came up with a post I had written on January 27, 2018 about The Last Jedi, my second favorite Star Wars movie (behind Empire but ahead of Rogue One. Fight me.). This was in the dark ages before I had a world-famous and influential blog (ADVERTISERS - SEND ME FREE STUFF!!!), so the only way to communicate my thoughts was to write overly long Facebook posts. Luckily, times have changed, so I can rectify that oversight.

Two things to note: (1) This post was written more than a month after seeing the movie. That's how fascinating I found the movie. (2) Because I loved the movie so much, I paid tribute to it in the best way possible: I pointed out its faults. It may sound backwards, but the choices made in the movie were so intriguing to me that I really felt compelled to point out where I disagreed with it - in a way, it EARNED that discussion. Alternatively, The Rise of Skywalker earned exactly 0 Facebook discussions.

With that out of the way, I present to you, my thoughts on The Last Jedi:

t's been more than a month and I still keep thinking about The Last Jedi. There's a lot to think about in that movie, and I've read some great pieces about many aspects of them - with so much to ruminate on, no wonder it's one of my favorite Star Wars movies! That being said, I'm going to write here about three things that I didn't like about the movie - at some point I'll follow up with the one thing I loved about the movie that I haven't seen too many people talking about. So, to get to it, the three biggest negatives to me were the following (oh, and SPOILERS!!!): (1) Does Captain Phasma have any purpose except to get punked out by Finn? I know the character was a late addition to The Force Awakens, so I understand her misuse there, but for this movie she wasn't a surprise. Didn't anyone think she would need to look strong after being brought to her knees in the last movie? I can't think of another character that needs a W as bad as her. (2) I love the fact that Rey's parents were not key characters or royalty somewhere, just ordinary people - that brings us back to the time when us kids in the 80s used to think that becoming a Jedi was something anyone could do if they had to courage and commitment and was in no way dependent on what kind of biome they had. On the other hand, though, I hate that Snoke (terrible Harry Potter-ish name, by the way) was dispatched before we got to know anything about him (Note: I'm comparing the two because that's how I'm interpreting the movie - saying that Snoke was nobody particularly important either, just a guy who became a Sith lord and ruled the First Order). I've read some views saying that it shouldn't matter who he was, and comparing it to how we didn't know who the Emperor was in the Original Trilogy. Here's my counterpoint: in the Original Trilogy, there were no movies based on what happened thirty years prior. In this case, we've got an Emperor-like figure who claims to have known Darth Vader and the Emperor personally - how did he know them? Where was he during the OT movies? Also, he is a Sith lord - who was his master? As far as we know, after Return of the Jedi the only two living Sith are destroyed (and if that is not the case then someone has some explaining to do), so did he learn from one of them? I'm sure there will be a Snoke book that will explain all this away, but I feel like it has to be explained in-cinematic universe and it's a mistake to include such a huge loose thread. (Further really nerdy point: As we learned from the Prequels, the general populace and even the military didn't know that the Emperor was a Sith - he really only revealed it to a handful of people - as far as the populace knew, all force users besides Darth Vader were enemies. So how did we get from that to a Sith in command who openly wields force powers while leading the First Order? Seems like an important point to me.) (3) Completely understand bringing back the OT characters to give the rub to the new characters - I mean, who didn't want to know what Luke was up to 30 years later? I will say there's one huge character we haven't heard hide nor hair of yet, and that's Lando. I read an interview with Rian Johnson where he said Billy Dee Williams was willing to come back but Rian couldn't figure out a way to work him in the movie. Off the top of my head, I could put him in place of two characters in The Last Jedi, one mostly evil and one mostly good: (A) Benicio del Toro (sp?)'s character - I think it was a great character, Benicio played him great, and he was a pure heel - he ended up a villain, but it would be very hard to tell him his motivations were wrong. As much as I loved del Toro's take on it, why wouldn't that be a place for Lando? You pick him up in the casino (great place to meet a scoundrel), he shows you how one side is pretty much the same as the other side (which would mean a lot coming from a former Rebel general), and, in a huge twist, ends up betraying them to the First Order. That would be a pretty sweeping character arc, but the motivations are there. The other one I thought of that's mostly good: (B) Leia's second in command (sorry, her name escapes me right now - I keep thinking Hodor!). She's introduced as a war hero, although we've never seen her before. You know who is a war hero that we have seen before? Lando. In fact, Lando can only ever be the second-most important person in any room at the very least. Why? Only because he BLEW UP THE FREAKING DEATH STAR 2!!! Remember that? The battle that ended the war with the Empire (at least for another 30 years)? How cool would it have been to see him introduced as the hero of the Battle of Endor, then see Poe's jaw drop as Lando Calrissian takes command? Again, as above, not quibbling with the acting decision that was made (Laura Dern did a great job), but when the script was in development I don't see how Lando couldn't have been considered as this character.

Again, loved the movie overall, just wanted to put these three negative thoughts down so they could stop rolling around in my head. At some point I'll follow up with the one huge positive that I haven't seen anyone talk about yet. Sorry for the long post on a sci-fi movie - this one's more about me writing down some thoughts than expecting anyone to read it - but if you made it this far and have any thoughts then comment below!