STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI -- My review

Okay, first of all I’m not a STAR WARS fanboy. I couldn’t recite the legend. I don’t remember if Chewbacca is really Princess Leia’s nephew or R2D2 is Darth Vader’s life coach. I just go to enjoy a rollicking space adventure film. I know who Luke Skywalker and the gang from the original STAR WARS are. And I know that family trees are important and everyone is searching for their father and when they find him they cry. Since we already have Ancestry.com and STAR WARS is in the future, you’d think it’s just matter of signing up for the six months free subscription. But I digress.

Point number two: I loved the original STAR WARS, clunky dialogue aside. I saw a preview screening before it was released and knew nothing at all about it. So I went in with zero expectations and was just blown away. No episode since has had the same affect, but that’s to be expected. So I don’t go into a STAR WARS movie ready to be knocked on my ass.

Point number three: These latest chapters are not targeted to my demographic. They throw us a bone by including Luke Skywalker and Leia and our favorite droids, but this is STAR WARS 2.0. It’s Rey’s world and Adam Driver has graduated from going backdoor on Lena Dunham to the new Darth Vader. Supporting rebel fighters prove that the Resistance now embraces diversity. And creatures in rubber masks round out the players. So if I don’t walk out of the theater with my world rocked, Disney is not going to give a shit.

But I do go into these movies wanting to like them. I want thrilling action scquences, swashbuckling lightsaber duals, space dogfights, overcoming incredible odds, dazzling special effects, heroics, villains dying horribly, magic, cliffhangers, exotic planets, comic moments, betrayal, mythology, advanced technology, a club scene featuring bizarre benign-looking aliens, combat, force fields, laser beams, explosions – and THE LAST JEDI had all of those. Every one.

And I was soooo bored.

Everything was expertly executed. But it was like watching ROCKY 17. The same tropes, the same storylines, the same jeopardy, the same goals, the same everything. They could have cut up the last two STAR WARS movies and reassembled them in a different order and I’d be hard-pressed to know the difference. Sorry. On it’s own or if it had been the first STAR WARS chapter I might have been completely awed. But all I could think during the movie was “why am I so bored? Giant alien ostriches are stampeding through an enormous casino sending space creatures flying while Rey and Adam Driver are using their lightsabers to chop down red storm troopers on a set left over from BARBARELLA and John Williams score is blaring and I’m checking my watch.

The movie was also bittersweet because of Carrie Fisher.

Disney will keep making these chapters until they drive the franchise into the ground.  And for now they make still take in big bucks although a new STAR WARS movie is no longer such a big event.  And as well-crafted as these new chapters may be, to me they still feel a little, well... forced. 

from By Ken Levine