Star Wars: The Last Jedi – attempting a measured view

Between the backlash among diehard Star Wars aficionados and the praise of professional reviewers, is it possible to appreciate the movie on its own merits?

A note to the Steemit community:
This is my first post, and I hope to share many more in the future. I love the concept behind this jambalaya of topics and opinions, the creativity and the mundane nothing-creativity and all that lies in between. I hope you reply to and share my words just as I do with others.

I went ahead and watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi the weekend it was released, like so many of us. I had the pleasure of a showing on Asia’s widest movie screen, the Vivocity IMAX theater in Singapore. Projection, sound, even seating, all is of the highest quality, as should be expected in a city such as this. After the movie, my girlfriend and I discussed the film based on our impressions, and without yet having had more than a glance at critics’ reactions. We agreed that the movie sure was entertaining, and had some real highlights, but were also slightly puzzled at the very high Metacritic rating – and, as those of you who follow films for real must know, Metacritic might only be one tool among many in deciding which films to watch, but its system is of course far superior to RottenTomatoes.

I have since read many an article on both the critical reaction and the widely negative fan reaction to The Last Jedi, and while it is amusing and almost as entertaining (as the movie was) to follow all of this, I would like to share my opinion here based not on the following:

• I love how we have more female action heroes, and complex female characters, and female directors such as Bigelow and Gerwig and others, and how Hollywood finally, increasingly, casts Asian and African-American (etc) actors; but it is not essential to the value of this or any particular movie; quality is
• I appreciate how fans always want a Star Wars movie to be a Star Wars movie, and that critics always seek the new and audacious; both are essential to the individual reaction of watching a movie, perhaps, but not to this particular movie imho; quality is
• I can gather from a post such as one I found on this site (please bear with me, I don’t yet know how to easily cite a fellow Steem writer) that ordinary film lovers across the planet anticipate the new Avengers movie more than a Wes Anderson dogs-travaganza, and how reviewers scream “au contraire” until their dying breath; not important to assess the latest Star Wars movie; quality is

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a successful Star Wars film. The problem with that statement is that there never were any Star Wars movies that were entirely successful as films in their own right – to a degree, yet, but not truly, on an artistic level, 100% satisfying. Between mediocre casting choices and simplistic storytelling of the original trilogy, between goofy humor and even more simplistic storytelling of the prequels, one can lay a claim that Star Wars is a great film based on personal preference, but surely not based on its originality, its ingenuous directing or script-writing choices, or any of that.

The new Star Wars film, let’s just abbreviate it to TLJ for good measure, seems a creative gamble, and one that pays off in quite a few ways. The multiple storylines add a touch of flair and a sense that Robert Altman might have been scriptwriter no 25. The glorious highlight – tearing that giant spaceship apart with a smaller, still enormous one – might have been obvious to some, but it was still a brilliant moment, staged and executed flawlessly to an absence of sound sorely missing from 99% of blockbuster movies. The return of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker provided for the best performance of a mediocre actor in a long time, and recalls the few triumphs of the likes of Stallone, or Pitt, or my favorite turn of a so-so actor of all time, Tom Cruise’s work of art in Magnolia.

HOWEVER.

It is long. Please. It is far too long. The ‘shadow duel’ of Skywalker and Kylo Ren is another stunning scene towards the very end, but it is almost drowned out among the plethora of near-escapes, near-deaths, and ultimate-escapes of the movie. Part of the film feels as if director-writer Johnson does not merely want to tread new paths – which he does quite successfully – but force about seven LOTR books into a movie that sometimes feels four hours long. It isn’t. But it sure feels that way.

Consider: Luke Skywalker has gone to 50 shades of desperation side of things. Rey manages to somehow, after many (many!) failed attempts, win him over and make him teach her in the ways of the Jedi, even though these ways are increasingly esoteric. Kylo Ren and Rey are drawn to each other in ways not seen since, but straight out of Harry Potter. A number of cute beings provide humor on a barren island. The terrible truth behind Kylo Ren’s ascent and Skywalker’s downfall is uncovered. A torn Rey may or may not resist the evil forces that arguably must have some sway over her now. As she leaves the island, the fate of the universe rests in the hands of a nobody who may just turn out to be a villain like no other, and, finally, an uber-villain that is an attractive, innocent-looking young woman.
Of course, there are hardly any spoilers in this paragraph, as it merely depicts perhaps a fourth of the entire movie.

That is insane.

Action films today suffer from so many things. They might be worth our while – TLJ, despite its flaws, is – but they counter the thrills of ten episodes ready to binge-watch on Netflix or HBO or some such channel, episodes rife with characterization that can take its time and, nowadays, visuals that easily rival film. So in their rush to counter the uber-success of the Golden Age of Television, movie directors such as Johnson throw bathtub and whatnot into their screenplays. Tired of near-deaths on Avenger movies? Try the escape sequences on TLJ, and compare with the thrills of season 1 of Mad Men, where NOTHING ever happens. This might all still be rooted in the one movie that, for film historians, ended the four-plus-second take on action films for all time, Michael Bay’s The Rock (which, I’m afraid, I enjoyed), but if Johnson is smitten with the idea of taken Star Wars to places new in the universe of filmmaking, why not slow it down a notch?

Alas.

In my view, The Last Jedi is a good film. Over-long, well-acted especially by Mark Hamill, still not acted well enough (especially by Mark Hamill, no matter how hard he tries here), with some stunning, central action pieces, and some boring parts in between. The humor is sometimes surprisingly good, sometimes mediocre. The dialog is suitably sub-par, but the plotting can be brisk – there is simply, only, too much of it.

This concludes my take on the film, and it might be a boring conclusion. A good film, somewhat flawed – that does not mirror some of the raves of reviewers (whatever they were smoking), nor the hatred the movie is getting from many fans and casual theater-goers. It is, though, how I see it, and I convinced that in time, we’ll look back at this as a relatively fine addition to the canon. Just not a great one.

Image from images8.alphacoders.com (accessed January 2, 2018)