May 1, 2019 – I had serious problems with The Last Jedi, as expressed in an older version of this article here. But more time has passed to bring some healing and less outrage. I also worked on my own “fan edit” of The Last Jedi, which gave me new appreciation for some aspects of the film, but which also brought flaws to light that I’d previously missed.
As I see it, here are some of the problems in the film, with notes about my fan edit solutions in italics…
Recall how SW7 ended. The pictures (above) tell the story. Both Luke and Rey are spewing out major pathos. Now take a look below at how SW8 reimagined things. Rather than pathos, Luke is angry and Rey is confused…
These new expressions for SW8 may have mimicked what the actors were actually feeling. The new direction of SW8 may have upset Hamill, and confused Ridley. Whatever the faults of SW7, most admit the ending was deeply moving and sentimental. Here, SW8 is obviously taking a different approach.
To add further disconnect from SW7, angry Luke then tosses his own lightsaber over his shoulder. As a friend astutely pointed out, Luke discarding the lightsaber is the equivalent of SW8’s writer/director discarding the storyline of SW7 in order to do things how he wanted to do them.
In my fan edit, I removed Luke tossing the lightsaber. I’m asking the viewer to imagine that Rey extends the saber, but he never takes it. They stare at each other for awhile (end of SW7), and then he just walks past her (SW8 edit). Having watched the film multiple times, imo Luke is not angry (toss the saber), but instead he feels hopeless (not take the saber and just walk past her).
Shortly after the saber is pitched, we get our first non-holographic look at Supreme Leader Snoke. In SW7, Snoke was large and looming. Here, not so much. His frail stature is not a deal breaker, but it is a letdown. In SW6 (ROTJ), the Emperor wasn’t large or looming. But he was heavily cloaked, and all we saw were his face and hands. This helped give a more ominous feeling than how Snoke is portrayed in SW8.
And then there’s the red room. The last time I saw this much red was never. And it’s practically an empty room. Maybe they ran out of ideas for set design, who knows. Plus, they only had a budget of $250 million. Again, this is not a deal breaker, but it is another “What were they thinking?” moment.
And if we never discover more about Snoke, and he really is dead, that’s another letdown. With the Emperor, we saw his beginnings as Senator Palpatine and learned of his relationship with Darth Plagueis. We got quite a bit. For Snoke we may get nothing.
In my fan edit, there wasn’t much I could do about Snoke and his red room.
Possibly the least silly movie of the SW franchise is SW5 The Empire Strikes Back. Probably uncoincidentally, it’s also considered by many to be the best one. When silliness was heavily introduced in SW6 Return of the Jedi (ewoks), people weren’t happy about it in the long run, even if they initially giggled in the theaters. And SW1, the worst of its trilogy, was also the silliest – young Anakin, Jar Jar, Gungans, the pod race crowd, Watto, etc., etc.
In SW8, the silliness abounds. Silly is okay if it’s actually funny. When it’s not, it’s just bad. When something is genuinely funny, it stays funny forever. But cheap gags lose more and more of their power over time – keeping people from re-watching a movie or liking a movie in the long term. Silly moments in SW8 that were unnecessary and not funny:
With the exception of Finn waking up from the coma, all of this silliness was removed in my fan edit as the first task. Immediately the film seemed better.
It’s not a requirement that Rey’s parents be anyone known or special. However, that is what we were strongly led to believe by SW7. Maz Kanata told Rey that the lightsaber was Anakin’s and Luke’s, and now calls out to her. No one’s waiting for her back on Jakku, because the belonging she seeks is with Luke. But SW8’s director decided to go in a different direction. In the words of Kylo Ren, Rey’s parents were no one special.
Kylo’s words are kept in my fan edit. Why? After rewatching the film, I now think Kylo intentionally lied to Rey, or unintentionally lied based on a false vision he received from Snoke. If Kylo was lying, I can forgive SW8’s director for so deviating from SW7 on this matter. What is consistent in both films, though: the topic of Rey’s parentage gets a noticeable amount of screen time.
CANTO BIGHT – Soon after Finn meets Rose, they both theorize there’s a way to temporarily stop the First Order’s lightspeed tracking of the Resistance fleet. For some reason, this requires them to find a “master codebreaker” on some planet, in some casino, who will be wearing a “red plum bloom” (consistently mispronounced in the movie). But instead, in prison they meet some other codebreaker, DJ (Benicio Del Toro), who has a stuttering problem. And they have to ride huge lamb-horses to escape. To me, it all seemed quite odd.
I’m not a big fan of this portion of the film. But I’ve read that its place in the movie is this… Finn is mainly out for himself and Rey, and no one else. That changes when he sees the greed and oppression in Canto Bight. His concerns grow wider, and he becomes a fully committed member of the Resistance.
In my edit, I made the Canto Bight portion smaller.
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HOLDO AT LIGHTSPEED – After her plan is discovered by the First Order and they begin destroying transport ships, Vice Admiral Holdo decides to do something that’s never been done before in any Star Wars movie: use a ship in hyperspeed to batter through the First Order’s ships. Ooy. Much has been said about this online. Why didn’t they take out the Death Star that way, if such a thing is possible? Imo, this is weak writing. Within the universe of SW, it’s illogical.
What would have made more sense, and been more “legal” within the SW universe: for Holdo to do a very short burst of lightspeed to get right up next to the First Order fleet, then come out of hyperspeed and ram them. It wouldn’t have been as cool, but at least it would have made sense.
For continuity, I kept this in my fan edit, along with a few other things I didn’t like (the gold dice, Rose crashing into Finn’s ski speeder, and more).
Maybe you got this right away; I didn’t: Rian Johnson’s script had a sadistic twist to it, involving friendly fire. First off, the Resistance loses much of their bombing fleet at the start of the film. Why? Because of Poe’s disobedience. That’s a lot of Resistance death to put on one of the Resistance’s own, who’s also a main protagonist in the film. So why have it?
A movie script is like a jigsaw puzzle. To writer Johnson, Poe’s disobedience is a necessary piece for what he wants to come next. When Admiral Holdo takes over, she refuses to tell Poe her plan for escape (contrived conflict). Why? Because of his disobedience earlier (his contrived disobedience). So Poe makes a plan of his own, involving Finn, Rose, and BB-8 going to Canto Bight to find “the master codebreaker” (which also gives time in the movie for Finn’s further character development). But they never meet the “the master codebreaker,” because of a parking violation. So they hire someone else to help them, the hacker DJ (Benicio Del Toro). But DJ double-crosses them, which results in the deaths of the people on the Resistance’s transport ships.
So all this Resistance death came about because Holdo wouldn’t tell Poe her plan. It seems sort of sadistic to me. It’s not only weak and overly contrived writing, it’s cruel writing. Poe is guilty of Resistance deaths at the start of the film. Then later Holdo, Poe, Finn, Rose, and BB-8 are to blame for Resistance transport ship deaths. Why have the protagonists responsible for so much death of their own? It seems sick and twisted.
In my edit, I removed the part where DJ overhears about the transport ships. The First Order finds out about the transports by running a de-cloaking scan on their own. In this way, there’s less of a self-inflicted death toll put on the protagonists of the film.
SUMMING UP: Yada, yada, I could say more about the film. Overall, it was disappointing. But I’m enjoying it much more in the fan-edit version. Something you may not know: The Last Jedi has the longest running time of any SW film. Yet another reason for a fan edit. To see my fan edit, go here.
And here are some great videos regarding The Last Jedi: