Alright. It's been two weeks now since the film's release. I think it's safe to discuss the plot. As I'm sure you've noticed, this is going to be one hell of a long-ass rant, so stay, or TLDR outta here. I honestly don't care if anyone reads this, or if it ends up being just me screaming into the unfeeling abyss. Buuut it's slightly better if I end up helping someone here with similar opinions feel vindicated.
Oh, incidentally, this review is heavily inspired by MauLer's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi: An Unbridled Rage," The Dishonoured Wolf's "The Last Jedi: The Worst Star Wars Movie Ever Made," and Sargon of Akkad's "Gender Wars: The Last Snowflake." Misery loves company.
So I watched "The Last Jedi," and cinematically speaking, it's very well-done. The visual effects are realistic, the sounds are spot-on for a movie about space battles, and I thought the acting performance was good all-around. As a moderate fan of Star Wars who's seen all the movies, but never bothered with the Extended Universe or the books or anything, my unthinking inner child was very pleased with what I saw.
The problem was, I started thinking the movie over afterward. And the longer I thought about it, the more the special effects faded from my mind, and the actual plot stupidity and social justice virtue signaling came forth. I am not one of those people who are super-nitpicky about Star Wars films; indeed, I was pretty much cool with the prequel trilogy, which most other fans either loved or hated. So though I admit I'm biased, I'm not normally given to ranting. "The Last Jedi" really went the extra mile to piss me off.
Alright, now that we're on the fifth paragraph, let's get started, shall we? The plot picks up from where it left off in the last movie, in which a bunch of Space Nazis rose to power again, just thirty years after Luke and Friends blew up their two Death Stars and killed their evil bosses. Rey and Friends have just finished blowing up the third Death Star, and now the Space Nazis are coming to blow up their base. The Rebels struggle to evacuate before the Nazi ships laser them from orbit, so Rebel Commander Poe Dameron buys them time by insulting the Nazi admiral's mother. It's funny, but it also kinda ruins the tension of the scene.
If you're wondering, by the way, why I'm calling the First Order "Space Nazis," it's because I call things as I see them- or at least, how J.J. Abrams does. The bad guys are all men (and like, two women) without a single black, Latino, Asian, or Middle-Easterner among them, by show of faces. Incidentally, in calling them Nazis, I'm trying to be optimistic, because the alternative suggestion is that privileged white men in general are the villains. Considering that the heroic Rebel crew is more diverse than the Alola Region, I can't help but notice an implication.
Anyway, Poe activates an "invincible" cheat, and buys time destroying the Star Destroyer's gun turrets. Princess-General Leia completes the evacuation, just as the Space Nazis light up the now-empty base. I just love how no other ship in the whole Nazi fleet simultaneously targeted the Rebel escape vessel. A Dreadnaught-class Destroyer suddenly warps into the system, and Poe sees it as an existential threat, so he orders the Rebel bombers to target it. Leia says "no," but Poe ignores her orders- and apparently, so do all the bombers. At first, I thought it was because bomber ships are extremely hazardous, and as such, are remotely controlled by leaders like Poe. But no- the Rebels simply aren't disciplined in war tactics or respect for chain of command. Well, what was I expecting from a bunch of ragtag misfits? A lot, actually- they destroyed Death Star 3.0, damn it.
The bombers get destroyed in a chain reaction since, despite having capable pilots, they neglected formation training. An Asian chick in the last one manages at last to artificial-gravity the bombs into the Dreadnaught's weak spot. It kills her, but it also eliminates about a hundred Nazis for every one Rebel death. I probably would have been more touched about the nobility of her sacrifice if I had any idea what the Rebel cause was. I don't think the movie established it, and motives matter. If the Rebel code was "treat thy neighbor as thou wouldst be treated," very good. If it was "fight the infidels until they testify that there is no Princess but Leia, and Luke is her Prophet," then never mind.
The Rebels do a lightspeed-jump out of the star system, and the scene shifts to Mary-Sue . . . I mean, Rey, standing before Luke and offering him his lightsaber (as it was when the last movie closed out). To put this into perspective for you Pokemon fans, this very special moment was akin to the end scene of Crystal, when Gold confronted Red at the peak of a high mountain. However, the stakes were much higher than a pokemon battle in this case: the universe hung in the balance. So, what does Luke do? He takes the lightsaber, then discards it over his shoulder like a banana peel.
Look. I don't mind that they made Luke an antihero who cut himself off from the Force. I admire when movies attempt to make characters complex. What I do mind is how it was presented in this case. This was supposed to be a dignified scene, in which the proper approach might be to have Luke accept his sword with both hands, stare intently down at it, and have a look of pained resolve wash over his face. The lightsaber would then drop from his hands in slow motion, strike the ground once, and settle at his feet. He would give Rey a look of sadness, as though he knew the day would come when someone would look vainly to him to save the universe again . . . yet now that it's here, it is no easier to disappoint his visitors. With a last shameful glance at Chewbacca, he would turn and walk away, and the camera would slowly pan back down to the fallen saber on the steps.
Tone matters. If you were to splice the last two minutes of "The Force Awakens" with this scene, you'd immediately see how jarring and unfitting it is.
So instead, after seeing the symbol of Star Wars tossed aside (a perfect metaphor for what this movie does to the franchise), Mary-Sue tells Luke how she found him, and what happened. Luke shrugs it off and says "not his problem anymore," he's just waiting for the Space Reaper to get him at this point. Mary-Sue follows him around the island for a while, and we get to see all the cute and/or gross native aliens who will soon be on the shelves of your local Wal*Mart.
By the way, if you're wondering why I'm calling Rey "Mary-Sue," you shouldn't be. We've had two films now to establish who she is, and she's a nobody from nowhere. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that, except she suddenly came out of nowhere wielding amazing Force powers, despite never knowing she had them until a week ago. In fact, within hours of first witnessing the Force, she's able to stand against lifelong Force Warrior and Sith apprentice Kylo Ren. You know, that guy whose grandfather was virgin-born of pure midichlorians, who stopped a laser blast mid-flight, Mr. "Jedi Killer" who overwhelmed Master Luke while still half-asleep? Yeah, that guy- and also, she bested him in sword combat on the first try, with no prior training. I don't care that he was injured. That's like saying an injured pokemon with Flail or Reversal is less threatening.
Luke earned my respect as a Jedi Knight. Through three movies (years within the universe), I watched him struggle to sense stuff with his feelings, telekinetically move things, and eventually, become an expert saber-wielder. I could empathize with his physical and emotional turmoil because I was with him through it all. As for Rey, I could believe that she was a good mechanic due to her salvaging practices revealed in the exposition of "Force Awakens." That's it. When she suddenly became a Force genius in a couple of days, my suspension of disbelief shattered. Kylo said she needed training, but I disagree, on the grounds that she's already stronger than him. She did not earn it. Even if the third movie somehow establishes a believable explanation about how Rey is such a gifted Force user, they've lost me at this point because they waited too long. She is a textbook Mary-Sue.
Just in case someone who made it this far down the page thinks I'm simply a misogynist who can't stand the thought of powerful women in movies . . . let's say you're right. I'm a huge fan of Arturia (Fate/Stay Night), Lady Galadriel (LOTR), Genkai (Yu*Yu* Hakusho), Rebecca Harris (Limitless) and a few others, but I generally think that men are supposed to protect women. I'm traditional like that. Even so, does this bias in any way lessen the validity of my criticism?
Back with the Rebels, Leia chews Poe out for not following orders and getting three-quarters of the fleet killed, demoting him to Captain status. This is her last official act, as immediately afterward, the Space Nazis catch up to the Rebels, having found them with tracking software. And it's not like the Rebels can lightspeed-jump again, because the Nazis will just track them again, so they're kinda screwed. Kylo Ren leads an assault on the Rebel cruiser and blows up the rest of their meager fleet, while his cronies destroy the bridge (taking out multiple Rebel leaders including Admiral Ackbar, NOOOO!). Don't ask me why the Rebel ship's shield couldn't stop this. The TIE fighters are then called back, because they're in danger if they stick around. You see . . . the Star Destroyer fleet, by an astonishing coincidence, is neither faster nor slower than the Rebel ships, so their plan is to simply chase them for ten hours until they run out of gas. Just to provide a countdown timer of imminent doom to raise movie tension. Is it just me, or does this plot sound like it's being made up as it goes along? Seriously, if I wrote this as fanfiction around this time last year, would anyone tell me it was good enough for ff.net, let alone the big screen?
If you re-watch the scene of the starship bridge being destroyed, it will become immediately apparent to you from the imagery that nobody could have survived that, space wizard or no. If you didn't immediately die of whiplash, the heat of the laser fire would get you. If you didn't immediately die of extreme heat, you would immediately die of extreme cold, getting sucked into the vacuum of space. Leia was on the bridge. Leia survived. Apparently, Poe shared his "invincible" cheat code with her, and she Jedi-floats back into her ship. It is appropriate to laugh at this. It is appropriate to tear your hair out in frustration at what a laughingstock Star Wars continues to be in the science fiction genre. It is not appropriate to cheer, even if you like Leia- ESPECIALLY if you like Leia. Her otherwise-believable character is officially a mockery of what it once was.
So, with Leia down, and Ackbar dead, command falls to Vice Admiral Holdo, aka Vice Admiral Purple Hair, aka Vice Admiral Gender Studies, aka Vice Admiral Feminist Bitch. Yes, I hated this character, for multiple reasons. One: I was supposed to hate her at the beginning, because one of her first acts is to severely emasculate Poe. This is significant, because Poe is an audience-sympathetic character from the previous movie, and audiences tend to side with protagonists they've gotten to know over antagonists who've just been introduced- even if the antagonist is right. And from the audience's position (Poe's), it honestly looks like Purple Hair has no plan. The movie attempts a "plot twist" later by revealing that Gender Studies had a plan all along, and was a brave and selfless hero after all. Let's continue, so I can explain why this doesn't work for me. Reason two: Feminist Bitch is, well, an archetype of feminist bitches. The entire time she's telling Poe off for being a hothead, she has this shit-eating smile plastered over her face, and you know she's loving every minute of putting him down. This is the perverse joy of all Feminazis, and I hate having a reminder of that slapped right in the middle of a franchise I enjoy. It's made all the worse by the movie portraying her as a character I ought to admire. No, I don't. Reason three: Purple Hair is a complete moron. She rebukes Poe for taking things into his own hands, then leaves him out of her plans on how to proceed, as if not expecting him to take things into his own hands. This is not practical thinking. Reason four: Gender Studies found it necessary to dye her hair purple in the middle of a war. That's something people only do when they're seeking attention, or feeling especially insecure. Yeah, I said it. Come at me. Someone so unprofessional has no business being portrayed as a respectable commanding officer.
For the record, if Feminist Bitch had been a man, I would have hated him too, and for the same exact reasons: targeting Poe, the smiling emasculation, the stupid decision-making, and the purple hair. And don't tell me it's a natural color because Purple Hair is actually a humanoid faerie alien. I have no reason to believe that.
While we're on the subject of new characters I despise, let's talk about Rose, the sister of the Asian chick who died bombing the Dreadnaught. Unlike Vice Admiral Gender Studies, I didn't start out despising Rose. She was introduced sitting and crying in the escape pod dock, and I felt sorry for her because the movie established that she's mourning her sister. But this was quickly ruined when Finn tried to board an escape pod, and Rose immediately started fangirling over him. I went from sympathetic to neutral.
Rose tases (tazes?) Finn when she discovers he's trying to abandon ship, and . . . well, crap, I'm having trouble remembering this part. Rose's character is probably the most bland in the cast, which is probably the reason I forgot. The next thing I remember is that Finn brings up a tracking device the Nazis are using to follow them, and Poe overhears, and decides to try shutting it down. He sends Finn and Rose on a mission to Space Vegas to find a master hacker who can penetrate the Nazi ship shields.
Let's talk about Space Vegas. It's a cesspool of evil capitalists living it up as the 1%, having gotten their ill gains by selling weapons to the Space Nazis. Meanwhile, they whip and race space horses for their amusement, and keep child slaves for inexpensive labor (assuming they feed them and stuff). Tom Walker would have been proud. Rose, who grew up here in the place's black underbelly, just wants to make them hurt.
Look, I get it. Selling weapons to warlords is bad. Child labor is bad. Animal abuse is bad. But can we maybe get a little diversity in our villains here, instead of overtly singling out Westerners? How about a few space Jihadists funding suicide ships? How about a few space Somalians trading little black children for drugs? How about a few space Asians caging space dogs for consumption on third-world planets? But no, that wouldn't be politically correct.
Finn and Rose get caught and locked up when the guards identify them at the people who improperly parked their ship on some aristocrat's private beach. Miraculously, the hacker they've been searching for just happens to be in their exact same cell. Without negotiating a price, he busts them out, then rescues them on a stolen ship. In the time period between these events, Finn and Rose escape Space Vegas by freeing a pack of space horses and riding them through the gamblers, smashing stuff up. They're nearly caught, but Finn says it was worth it just to tear up the town. "Make them hurt," he says. Well, if by 'them,' he means the rich peoples' slave laborers, he's probably right. I have no doubt the town's denizens were insured for all that damage, but the slave children are going to be working overtime for months, no doubt. This is the same dumb-ass mindset looters and rioters have when they wreck their own cities in attempts to get back at whoever they think is oppressing them. The Space Nazis are starting to actually look appealing by comparison.
Anyway, aboard the stolen ship, they make their way back to the ever-dwindling Rebel "fleet."
Meanwhile, back on Luke's island, Luke has decided to train Mary-Sue in the Force a little bit, just to show her how wrong the Jedi Order was to use it, or something. In the midst of this training, Mary-Sue starts to randomly connect with Kylo Ren on Force Skype. This is, admittedly, pretty cool, and the best part about the movie in my opinion. Kylo does not attempt to excuse or justify the evils he has committed, but admits to being a monster. As Mary-Sue continues to converse with him, she learns that Luke attempted to kill him as a child after seeing a future in which he turned evil.
Kylo Ren is easily the best character in the new trilogy. I like how he has a justifiable reason for turning permanently to the dark side. I like how he wears a mask to hide his insecurity. I like how he's constantly shown to be in conflict with the light, shown struggling to live up to his grandfather Darth Vader, shown barely able to kill Han, and unable to pull the trigger on his mother, shown pounding his wounds, shown breaking his mask, just . . . despite being a Sith, despite being emo, I can't help feeling sorry for him. Congratulations, Star Wars. I officially care more about the bad guys than the good guys.
When Mary-Sue hears the truth about Luke's assassination attempt on Kylo Ren, she confronts Luke about it. Luke's caught on to her Force-Skyping with Kylo, but he's not ready to deal with it, but . . . let's just say that Mary's Sue Powers go into overdrive at this point. She attacks him, makes him defend himself, and defeats him in combat. Again, let's use the perspective of pokemon: this is like a level 5 Squirtle defeating a level 75 Blastoise. Okay, so Luke's been out of practice for decades at this point, and has cut off his force sensitivity. Counter-point: at the movie's end (maybe 24 hours after this), Luke matches Kylo Ren skill-to-skill in a lightsaber duel while maintaining an astral projection. Out of practice? Maybe. Out of instinct? Absolutely not. Meanwhile, Mary-Sue's had no evident prior training, save a couple of days' practice. Jedi Master Luke certainly didn't assist with anything martial. Maybe it would be different if Mary-Sue was given a training montage that was shown to last months, or years, but at this point, I'm beating a dead horse. Rey won because she is a tried-and-true Mary-Sue. That's all the more there is to it.
By the way, every now and then, we get short scenes back to Chewbacca interacting with island life forms, namely the little otter-penguin things. This contributes nothing to the movie, but trust me, porgs are going to be the biggest thing since minions after this.
Mary-Sue finally leaves to try and save Kylo Ren from himself, and Luke stays behind, sulking. He decides "f#&k it," and goes to burn down the Jedi Tree on the island and its ancient textbooks. The Ghost of Yoda's Puppet then shows up, and Force-thunderbolts the forgotten Jedi lore for him. When Luke gawks at him in astonishment, the Ghost of Yoda's Puppet cackles and says that everything in those texts was stuff that Mary-Sue basically knew anyway. As always, Mary-Sue apparently knows best, and even Yoda's vouching for her now.
Back with the Rebels, the Space Nazis have blown up all but their main ship at this point, and Poe's had it with Purple Hair doing nothing. He enacts a mutiny, which apparently didn't take long to organize, considering that Purple Hair hardly inspires confidence. He calls Finn and Rose for an update, and they tell him they're almost done, having breached the main Star Destroyer's shield. At the same time, Rey surrenders herself up to said Star Destroyer, and Kylo Ren escorts her into Darth Snoke's Emperor Chamber.
Back with the Rebels again, Purple Hair escapes . . . confinement? Did Poe bother to confine her in the brig? I guess not. Anyway, it's much more likely that Princess-General Leia ordered her release, having now woken from her space coma. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but bottom line: Poe gets stun-gunned, and Purple Hair's people drag him aboard the last escape shuttle to a secret rebel base. Purple Hair then volunteers herself to stay behind on the ship, while the others flee to not-Hoth. You see, the escape pods are cloaked from detection, but if nobody operates the Rebel cruiser, the Space Nazis will start to get suspicious or something. If only there were robots or other sci-fi tech marvels that could A.I.-navigate these ships, huh?
A bunch of things start collectively happening all together, now. Finn, Rose, and the hacker manage to get all the way to the Star Destroyer's tracker room, only to be suddenly captured by Captain Phasma, that really cool-looking stormtrooper in the chrome armor. She was prominently displayed in the trailer, so what the hell took her so long to show in this movie? It's like, 2/3 done at this point. The hacker then switches sides, giving the Space Nazis the information apparently needed to locate the cloaked escape pods. As Finn and Rose are prepped for execution, the Star Destroyer begins firing on the helpless Rebel pods.
Meanwhile, in Darth Snoke's Emperor Chamber, the big bad himself is sitting on his high throne in a golden bathrobe, eager to force Luke's location out of Mary-Sue's mind. It's very much a recall of "Return of the Jedi"'s climactic scene, with the Sith Lord gloating down at his prize prisoner, while the Sith Apprentice stands by with a conflicted heart. The Rebels are being destroyed in the background once more, and this time, even the Red Honor Guards are staying to watch. This scene held me rapt with attention. Finally, I was about to find out who Snoke actually was, what his ultimate objectives were, how he had come to be, or anything beyond my knowledge that he was this movie's Big Baddie. Anything could happen.
Here's what happens: Snoke apparently has to concentrate too hard to contain Rey's godly Mary-Sue powers, and so his otherwise omniscient Force sensitivity fails to detect a disturbance six inches away from his right elbow. That's where he's kept Luke's lightsaber, and Kylo Ren activates it through his ribcage. Hence, Snoke dies without me ever finding anything about him. What a waste of a potential Great Villain. Well, if nothing else, this continues the time-honored tradition of the Sith Apprentice murdering his Master to take his place.
Then the Red Honor Guards attack, and anyone who's done any kind of research on those dudes know that they are the cream of the fighting crop. Unfortunately for them, there's a Mary-Sue in the room, so their fates were basically sealed the moment this whole scene began. Now, I grudgingly admit that it was a cool-ass fight scene, and I liked how well Kylo Ren and Mary-Sue worked together to clear the guards. It was about as tense as a scene could be, albeit given the certainty that Ren and Sue had Plot Armor and would emerge unscathed. I just wish that Mary-Sue hadn't been so clearly portrayed as the better fighter, but at this point, it's just another notch on her Sue belt.
Their cooperation doesn't last long. Kylo Ren offers Mary-Sue a place at his side, as his apprentice, where she probably would've had the best chance of influencing his mind toward the Light side (given her perpetual close proximity to his Force Wifi). Up until he died, it turns out Snoke had been the one who'd connected their minds. They could have kept that going. Instead, Mary-Sue turns Kylo Ren down.
God, that pissed me off. Ever since Kylo Ren embraced the Dark Side, he'd been pretty much isolating himself from all kindness and warmth, in pursuit of power. To me, this seemed like the first time since then that he willingly opened himself up to the possibility of hope and healing. And as far as Sith lords go, he was probably the most moderate and least evil of any of them. He was ready to end the Rebels AND the Space Nazis, let old things pass, and try a new way. Yes, he had a temper, but so did Prince Adam from Beauty and the Beast. He could have been a great dynamic character who, unlike his grandfather, slowly changed over time rather than all at once at the end. But Mary-Sue, who supposedly wanted to redeem him, would rather do things her way. Thus, she refuses him, and he plunges deeper into darkness than ever before.
. . . In retrospect, I should be glad that Mary-Sue didn't end up becoming Kylo Ren's handler. Any part of a plot involving a Mary-Sue is doomed to corrosion.
But what a missed opportunity.
The two of them fight over Luke's lightsaber until it breaks, but before the fight can conclude, we shift perspective back to Vice Admiral Purple Hair. Until now, she's been standing around just watching as the Rebel escape pods get blown up one by one. Then, she does what apparently nobody in the history of Star Wars ever thought to do before, and lightspeeds the Rebel vessel straight through the Space Nazi fleet. You know, even I had this idea before this movie came out, but I figured that it wasn't a thing in this universe because Star Destroyer shields were presumably designed to withstand such things. Otherwise, I'm certain that outmatched Rebels would regularly kamikaze their ships through superior enemy forces, and there wouldn't be such a lopsided battle today. If this movie's lore is to be believed, the Rebel run on the Death Star in "A New Hope" was utterly unnecessary. We could've taken any asshole's X-wing (because they're capable of lightspeed jumps), and directed an R2 unit to blast it right down that critical ventilation shaft, if targeting the shaft was still even necessary. This is the chief danger in writing science fiction: the more rules you change, the more you are accountable for considering. Congratulations, writers for Purple Hair. You broke Star Wars in the mind of any thinking person ever.
All that said, I still admire the nobility of anyone who is willing to give his/her life for friends. I remain consistent on this principle even for characters I hate as much as Purple Hair. By no means does this redeem her in my mind, but I'll give credit where credit's due.
So the abrupt destruction of the Star Destroyer disrupts Captain Phasma's execution of Finn and Rose. *Sigh* They WOULD have been dead already at this point, if Phasma hadn't taken her sweet-ass time. When will movie villains learn to snuff out the hero first, and gloat afterward? Instead, the ship's hangar bay is rattled, and Finn manages to free himself and grab a weapon just as Phasma reappears through the smoke. As they fight, they exchange the cringiest dialogue in the movie, and that's f#$%ing SAYING something.
Finn: "Let's go, Chrome dome!"
Phasma: "You are scum."
Finn: "Rebel scum."
This is basically repeated in MauLer's rant of the movie, but I put it here because it's just that bad. Naturally, Finn wins the fight. I can't help but be appalled. If you're going to give Captain Phasma such a cool name, such cool armor, and have her appear in both movies, Disney, the least you could do is give her more than three minutes of screen time. Another potentially great character, utterly wasted.
The surviving rebels land on planet not-Hoth, where there still stands an old, unused Rebel base. Let's call it Helm's Deep. As they're setting up, the Space Nazis arrive, along with Finn and Rose in a stolen Imperial transport ship. Princess-General Leia assures them that no enemy has ever breached the Deeping Wall, and they will break upon this fortress like water on a rock. Unfortunately, there's a new space wizard leading the Nazis now. His name ain't Saruman, but he still has the one thing that can breach the impenetrable wall. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren places down a super laser to burn through the wall, and protects it with gorilla-style AT-ATs. Remember, guys, this totally isn't Hoth from "Empire Strikes Back." In a last-ditch effort, the remaining Rebels ride out to meet the threat in their not-A-wings. Most of them get mowed down, but Finn resigns himself to death, preparing to crash into the super laser, so as to disable it and save his friends. However, at the last second, Rose t-bones his vehicle, nearly killing them both. As they lie helpless on the field, directly in front of the giant, hostile AT-ATs, Rose tells Finn, "You don't want to win by fighting what you hate, but saving what you love."
This line, as it's presented, is meant to be the most profoundly wise quote in this movie. Let's pretend for a second that Rose was right about Finn's motives, and that he had just smashed into the super laser because he was fighting the hated Space Nazis to his last breath. The wall would still be up, and the rebels would have reason to hope. Instead, by attempting to save the Finn she loved, Rose almost killed him in a high-speed collision. They are now both out in the open, stranded without a vehicle, a few steps away from the enormous Nazi death machines. If they didn't have Plot Armor, they'd be dead twenty times over. Even as Rose spurts her verbal diarrhea, the unharmed super laser melts the Deeping Wall in the background. I've never seen supposed words of wisdom fall flat so quickly. Was the movie going for irony, here? I don't think it was, but this is shamefully ironic.
This scene is the reason I despise Rose as a character. You might have noticed that, before now, she's been next to useless for the plot, just drifting from here to there like Bianca in Pokemon Black/White. She's a diversity hire who had no business taking up screen time that could have gone to Captain Phasma. But now, she's actively gone and ruined the Rebels' chances, because she prioritized Finn's life above all of theirs. Worse, this was Finn's moment to really make a difference to the Rebel cause. Finn, who had spent most of his character arc running away from his problems, has finally found the will to face them head-on, and die in honorable redemption like Boromir did in Fellowship of the Ring. Rose's character took that away from him. Had I been her commanding officer, and known what she'd been about to do, I would have executed her on the spot. How the Rebels lasted this long with dumbasses like Rose on their team is beyond me. This shit is why the Space Nazis keep winning offscreen.
And ANOTHER thing- Rose suddenly out and kisses Finn. When did that become a thing? When was there any romantic chemistry between those two whatsoever? You know what- screw it, I don't have the energy to linger on this garbage character any longer.
Alright, so the Millennium Falcon appears and flies around distracting the TIE fighters for a while, with Chewie and a random porg doing comical roars. While that's happening, Luke suddenly appears in Helm's Deep before Leia, and apologizes for not being there. He goes out through the wall, and strides up toward the Nazi death machines. In a paranoid rage, Kilo Ren orders them to fire repeatedly upon Luke, but when the salt dust clears, the Jedi Master is unharmed. Kilo Ren comes down to face him in a duel to the death, but as it turns out, Luke was using Force Projection to make it only seem like he was there. I'd be more impressed by this twist if it hadn't failed to explain how Luke's lightsaber was making contact with Kilo's if it wasn't "there." The Rebels realize that Luke is buying them time to escape, and they find a back exit to Helm's Deep that's blocked by a pile of boulders. Things seem hopeless, until the great stones all suddenly float into the sky, revealing Mary-Sue and the Millennium Falcon behind her. Yep, about five days into her Jedi training, Mary-Sue can Force-lift tons of rocks. Dumb ol' Luke couldn't even lift an X-wing out of a swamp after years of practice, and personal training under Master Yoda himself. The remaining Rebels escape on the Falcon, living on to fight another day.
Having completed his purpose, Luke relaxes his astral projection and returns his mind to the island he never left. Boy, it was a good thing he didn't go out himself to fight for real, or he might have died.
And then he dies.
What a stupid movie.
I don't mind Luke dying; it was inevitable, given the trend of the last movie. All good heroes must come to an end. I mind that it was a pathetic death, rather than one befitting him like Obi-wan got, or Palpatine got. This movie was so backwards when it came to this. Luke got a pathetic death when he deserved a noble one; Purple Hair got a noble death when she deserved a pathetic one; Finn deserved a noble death, but was denied; Rose deserved a pathetic death, but . . . I guess the Space Reaper was too disgusted to touch her. Leia pretty much had a noble death, until she pulled a Space Jesus and Mary Poppinsed herself back into the ship; Snoke and Phasma deserved to die for being evil, but not until they'd had enough screen time to establish who they were in the first place.
There's more that I'm sure I wanted to say, but I have no energy to go on. Watching this movie is like eating something that's sweet, but leaves a disgusting aftertaste in your mouth for weeks to come. It's a well-presented cinematic story onscreen. Pity that story is bad fanfiction. I'm out.
Oh, incidentally, this review is heavily inspired by MauLer's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi: An Unbridled Rage," The Dishonoured Wolf's "The Last Jedi: The Worst Star Wars Movie Ever Made," and Sargon of Akkad's "Gender Wars: The Last Snowflake." Misery loves company.
So I watched "The Last Jedi," and cinematically speaking, it's very well-done. The visual effects are realistic, the sounds are spot-on for a movie about space battles, and I thought the acting performance was good all-around. As a moderate fan of Star Wars who's seen all the movies, but never bothered with the Extended Universe or the books or anything, my unthinking inner child was very pleased with what I saw.
The problem was, I started thinking the movie over afterward. And the longer I thought about it, the more the special effects faded from my mind, and the actual plot stupidity and social justice virtue signaling came forth. I am not one of those people who are super-nitpicky about Star Wars films; indeed, I was pretty much cool with the prequel trilogy, which most other fans either loved or hated. So though I admit I'm biased, I'm not normally given to ranting. "The Last Jedi" really went the extra mile to piss me off.
Alright, now that we're on the fifth paragraph, let's get started, shall we? The plot picks up from where it left off in the last movie, in which a bunch of Space Nazis rose to power again, just thirty years after Luke and Friends blew up their two Death Stars and killed their evil bosses. Rey and Friends have just finished blowing up the third Death Star, and now the Space Nazis are coming to blow up their base. The Rebels struggle to evacuate before the Nazi ships laser them from orbit, so Rebel Commander Poe Dameron buys them time by insulting the Nazi admiral's mother. It's funny, but it also kinda ruins the tension of the scene.
If you're wondering, by the way, why I'm calling the First Order "Space Nazis," it's because I call things as I see them- or at least, how J.J. Abrams does. The bad guys are all men (and like, two women) without a single black, Latino, Asian, or Middle-Easterner among them, by show of faces. Incidentally, in calling them Nazis, I'm trying to be optimistic, because the alternative suggestion is that privileged white men in general are the villains. Considering that the heroic Rebel crew is more diverse than the Alola Region, I can't help but notice an implication.
Anyway, Poe activates an "invincible" cheat, and buys time destroying the Star Destroyer's gun turrets. Princess-General Leia completes the evacuation, just as the Space Nazis light up the now-empty base. I just love how no other ship in the whole Nazi fleet simultaneously targeted the Rebel escape vessel. A Dreadnaught-class Destroyer suddenly warps into the system, and Poe sees it as an existential threat, so he orders the Rebel bombers to target it. Leia says "no," but Poe ignores her orders- and apparently, so do all the bombers. At first, I thought it was because bomber ships are extremely hazardous, and as such, are remotely controlled by leaders like Poe. But no- the Rebels simply aren't disciplined in war tactics or respect for chain of command. Well, what was I expecting from a bunch of ragtag misfits? A lot, actually- they destroyed Death Star 3.0, damn it.
The bombers get destroyed in a chain reaction since, despite having capable pilots, they neglected formation training. An Asian chick in the last one manages at last to artificial-gravity the bombs into the Dreadnaught's weak spot. It kills her, but it also eliminates about a hundred Nazis for every one Rebel death. I probably would have been more touched about the nobility of her sacrifice if I had any idea what the Rebel cause was. I don't think the movie established it, and motives matter. If the Rebel code was "treat thy neighbor as thou wouldst be treated," very good. If it was "fight the infidels until they testify that there is no Princess but Leia, and Luke is her Prophet," then never mind.
The Rebels do a lightspeed-jump out of the star system, and the scene shifts to Mary-Sue . . . I mean, Rey, standing before Luke and offering him his lightsaber (as it was when the last movie closed out). To put this into perspective for you Pokemon fans, this very special moment was akin to the end scene of Crystal, when Gold confronted Red at the peak of a high mountain. However, the stakes were much higher than a pokemon battle in this case: the universe hung in the balance. So, what does Luke do? He takes the lightsaber, then discards it over his shoulder like a banana peel.
Look. I don't mind that they made Luke an antihero who cut himself off from the Force. I admire when movies attempt to make characters complex. What I do mind is how it was presented in this case. This was supposed to be a dignified scene, in which the proper approach might be to have Luke accept his sword with both hands, stare intently down at it, and have a look of pained resolve wash over his face. The lightsaber would then drop from his hands in slow motion, strike the ground once, and settle at his feet. He would give Rey a look of sadness, as though he knew the day would come when someone would look vainly to him to save the universe again . . . yet now that it's here, it is no easier to disappoint his visitors. With a last shameful glance at Chewbacca, he would turn and walk away, and the camera would slowly pan back down to the fallen saber on the steps.
Tone matters. If you were to splice the last two minutes of "The Force Awakens" with this scene, you'd immediately see how jarring and unfitting it is.
So instead, after seeing the symbol of Star Wars tossed aside (a perfect metaphor for what this movie does to the franchise), Mary-Sue tells Luke how she found him, and what happened. Luke shrugs it off and says "not his problem anymore," he's just waiting for the Space Reaper to get him at this point. Mary-Sue follows him around the island for a while, and we get to see all the cute and/or gross native aliens who will soon be on the shelves of your local Wal*Mart.
By the way, if you're wondering why I'm calling Rey "Mary-Sue," you shouldn't be. We've had two films now to establish who she is, and she's a nobody from nowhere. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that, except she suddenly came out of nowhere wielding amazing Force powers, despite never knowing she had them until a week ago. In fact, within hours of first witnessing the Force, she's able to stand against lifelong Force Warrior and Sith apprentice Kylo Ren. You know, that guy whose grandfather was virgin-born of pure midichlorians, who stopped a laser blast mid-flight, Mr. "Jedi Killer" who overwhelmed Master Luke while still half-asleep? Yeah, that guy- and also, she bested him in sword combat on the first try, with no prior training. I don't care that he was injured. That's like saying an injured pokemon with Flail or Reversal is less threatening.
Luke earned my respect as a Jedi Knight. Through three movies (years within the universe), I watched him struggle to sense stuff with his feelings, telekinetically move things, and eventually, become an expert saber-wielder. I could empathize with his physical and emotional turmoil because I was with him through it all. As for Rey, I could believe that she was a good mechanic due to her salvaging practices revealed in the exposition of "Force Awakens." That's it. When she suddenly became a Force genius in a couple of days, my suspension of disbelief shattered. Kylo said she needed training, but I disagree, on the grounds that she's already stronger than him. She did not earn it. Even if the third movie somehow establishes a believable explanation about how Rey is such a gifted Force user, they've lost me at this point because they waited too long. She is a textbook Mary-Sue.
Just in case someone who made it this far down the page thinks I'm simply a misogynist who can't stand the thought of powerful women in movies . . . let's say you're right. I'm a huge fan of Arturia (Fate/Stay Night), Lady Galadriel (LOTR), Genkai (Yu*Yu* Hakusho), Rebecca Harris (Limitless) and a few others, but I generally think that men are supposed to protect women. I'm traditional like that. Even so, does this bias in any way lessen the validity of my criticism?
Back with the Rebels, Leia chews Poe out for not following orders and getting three-quarters of the fleet killed, demoting him to Captain status. This is her last official act, as immediately afterward, the Space Nazis catch up to the Rebels, having found them with tracking software. And it's not like the Rebels can lightspeed-jump again, because the Nazis will just track them again, so they're kinda screwed. Kylo Ren leads an assault on the Rebel cruiser and blows up the rest of their meager fleet, while his cronies destroy the bridge (taking out multiple Rebel leaders including Admiral Ackbar, NOOOO!). Don't ask me why the Rebel ship's shield couldn't stop this. The TIE fighters are then called back, because they're in danger if they stick around. You see . . . the Star Destroyer fleet, by an astonishing coincidence, is neither faster nor slower than the Rebel ships, so their plan is to simply chase them for ten hours until they run out of gas. Just to provide a countdown timer of imminent doom to raise movie tension. Is it just me, or does this plot sound like it's being made up as it goes along? Seriously, if I wrote this as fanfiction around this time last year, would anyone tell me it was good enough for ff.net, let alone the big screen?
If you re-watch the scene of the starship bridge being destroyed, it will become immediately apparent to you from the imagery that nobody could have survived that, space wizard or no. If you didn't immediately die of whiplash, the heat of the laser fire would get you. If you didn't immediately die of extreme heat, you would immediately die of extreme cold, getting sucked into the vacuum of space. Leia was on the bridge. Leia survived. Apparently, Poe shared his "invincible" cheat code with her, and she Jedi-floats back into her ship. It is appropriate to laugh at this. It is appropriate to tear your hair out in frustration at what a laughingstock Star Wars continues to be in the science fiction genre. It is not appropriate to cheer, even if you like Leia- ESPECIALLY if you like Leia. Her otherwise-believable character is officially a mockery of what it once was.
So, with Leia down, and Ackbar dead, command falls to Vice Admiral Holdo, aka Vice Admiral Purple Hair, aka Vice Admiral Gender Studies, aka Vice Admiral Feminist Bitch. Yes, I hated this character, for multiple reasons. One: I was supposed to hate her at the beginning, because one of her first acts is to severely emasculate Poe. This is significant, because Poe is an audience-sympathetic character from the previous movie, and audiences tend to side with protagonists they've gotten to know over antagonists who've just been introduced- even if the antagonist is right. And from the audience's position (Poe's), it honestly looks like Purple Hair has no plan. The movie attempts a "plot twist" later by revealing that Gender Studies had a plan all along, and was a brave and selfless hero after all. Let's continue, so I can explain why this doesn't work for me. Reason two: Feminist Bitch is, well, an archetype of feminist bitches. The entire time she's telling Poe off for being a hothead, she has this shit-eating smile plastered over her face, and you know she's loving every minute of putting him down. This is the perverse joy of all Feminazis, and I hate having a reminder of that slapped right in the middle of a franchise I enjoy. It's made all the worse by the movie portraying her as a character I ought to admire. No, I don't. Reason three: Purple Hair is a complete moron. She rebukes Poe for taking things into his own hands, then leaves him out of her plans on how to proceed, as if not expecting him to take things into his own hands. This is not practical thinking. Reason four: Gender Studies found it necessary to dye her hair purple in the middle of a war. That's something people only do when they're seeking attention, or feeling especially insecure. Yeah, I said it. Come at me. Someone so unprofessional has no business being portrayed as a respectable commanding officer.
For the record, if Feminist Bitch had been a man, I would have hated him too, and for the same exact reasons: targeting Poe, the smiling emasculation, the stupid decision-making, and the purple hair. And don't tell me it's a natural color because Purple Hair is actually a humanoid faerie alien. I have no reason to believe that.
While we're on the subject of new characters I despise, let's talk about Rose, the sister of the Asian chick who died bombing the Dreadnaught. Unlike Vice Admiral Gender Studies, I didn't start out despising Rose. She was introduced sitting and crying in the escape pod dock, and I felt sorry for her because the movie established that she's mourning her sister. But this was quickly ruined when Finn tried to board an escape pod, and Rose immediately started fangirling over him. I went from sympathetic to neutral.
Rose tases (tazes?) Finn when she discovers he's trying to abandon ship, and . . . well, crap, I'm having trouble remembering this part. Rose's character is probably the most bland in the cast, which is probably the reason I forgot. The next thing I remember is that Finn brings up a tracking device the Nazis are using to follow them, and Poe overhears, and decides to try shutting it down. He sends Finn and Rose on a mission to Space Vegas to find a master hacker who can penetrate the Nazi ship shields.
Let's talk about Space Vegas. It's a cesspool of evil capitalists living it up as the 1%, having gotten their ill gains by selling weapons to the Space Nazis. Meanwhile, they whip and race space horses for their amusement, and keep child slaves for inexpensive labor (assuming they feed them and stuff). Tom Walker would have been proud. Rose, who grew up here in the place's black underbelly, just wants to make them hurt.
Look, I get it. Selling weapons to warlords is bad. Child labor is bad. Animal abuse is bad. But can we maybe get a little diversity in our villains here, instead of overtly singling out Westerners? How about a few space Jihadists funding suicide ships? How about a few space Somalians trading little black children for drugs? How about a few space Asians caging space dogs for consumption on third-world planets? But no, that wouldn't be politically correct.
Finn and Rose get caught and locked up when the guards identify them at the people who improperly parked their ship on some aristocrat's private beach. Miraculously, the hacker they've been searching for just happens to be in their exact same cell. Without negotiating a price, he busts them out, then rescues them on a stolen ship. In the time period between these events, Finn and Rose escape Space Vegas by freeing a pack of space horses and riding them through the gamblers, smashing stuff up. They're nearly caught, but Finn says it was worth it just to tear up the town. "Make them hurt," he says. Well, if by 'them,' he means the rich peoples' slave laborers, he's probably right. I have no doubt the town's denizens were insured for all that damage, but the slave children are going to be working overtime for months, no doubt. This is the same dumb-ass mindset looters and rioters have when they wreck their own cities in attempts to get back at whoever they think is oppressing them. The Space Nazis are starting to actually look appealing by comparison.
Anyway, aboard the stolen ship, they make their way back to the ever-dwindling Rebel "fleet."
Meanwhile, back on Luke's island, Luke has decided to train Mary-Sue in the Force a little bit, just to show her how wrong the Jedi Order was to use it, or something. In the midst of this training, Mary-Sue starts to randomly connect with Kylo Ren on Force Skype. This is, admittedly, pretty cool, and the best part about the movie in my opinion. Kylo does not attempt to excuse or justify the evils he has committed, but admits to being a monster. As Mary-Sue continues to converse with him, she learns that Luke attempted to kill him as a child after seeing a future in which he turned evil.
Kylo Ren is easily the best character in the new trilogy. I like how he has a justifiable reason for turning permanently to the dark side. I like how he wears a mask to hide his insecurity. I like how he's constantly shown to be in conflict with the light, shown struggling to live up to his grandfather Darth Vader, shown barely able to kill Han, and unable to pull the trigger on his mother, shown pounding his wounds, shown breaking his mask, just . . . despite being a Sith, despite being emo, I can't help feeling sorry for him. Congratulations, Star Wars. I officially care more about the bad guys than the good guys.
When Mary-Sue hears the truth about Luke's assassination attempt on Kylo Ren, she confronts Luke about it. Luke's caught on to her Force-Skyping with Kylo, but he's not ready to deal with it, but . . . let's just say that Mary's Sue Powers go into overdrive at this point. She attacks him, makes him defend himself, and defeats him in combat. Again, let's use the perspective of pokemon: this is like a level 5 Squirtle defeating a level 75 Blastoise. Okay, so Luke's been out of practice for decades at this point, and has cut off his force sensitivity. Counter-point: at the movie's end (maybe 24 hours after this), Luke matches Kylo Ren skill-to-skill in a lightsaber duel while maintaining an astral projection. Out of practice? Maybe. Out of instinct? Absolutely not. Meanwhile, Mary-Sue's had no evident prior training, save a couple of days' practice. Jedi Master Luke certainly didn't assist with anything martial. Maybe it would be different if Mary-Sue was given a training montage that was shown to last months, or years, but at this point, I'm beating a dead horse. Rey won because she is a tried-and-true Mary-Sue. That's all the more there is to it.
By the way, every now and then, we get short scenes back to Chewbacca interacting with island life forms, namely the little otter-penguin things. This contributes nothing to the movie, but trust me, porgs are going to be the biggest thing since minions after this.
Mary-Sue finally leaves to try and save Kylo Ren from himself, and Luke stays behind, sulking. He decides "f#&k it," and goes to burn down the Jedi Tree on the island and its ancient textbooks. The Ghost of Yoda's Puppet then shows up, and Force-thunderbolts the forgotten Jedi lore for him. When Luke gawks at him in astonishment, the Ghost of Yoda's Puppet cackles and says that everything in those texts was stuff that Mary-Sue basically knew anyway. As always, Mary-Sue apparently knows best, and even Yoda's vouching for her now.
Back with the Rebels, the Space Nazis have blown up all but their main ship at this point, and Poe's had it with Purple Hair doing nothing. He enacts a mutiny, which apparently didn't take long to organize, considering that Purple Hair hardly inspires confidence. He calls Finn and Rose for an update, and they tell him they're almost done, having breached the main Star Destroyer's shield. At the same time, Rey surrenders herself up to said Star Destroyer, and Kylo Ren escorts her into Darth Snoke's Emperor Chamber.
Back with the Rebels again, Purple Hair escapes . . . confinement? Did Poe bother to confine her in the brig? I guess not. Anyway, it's much more likely that Princess-General Leia ordered her release, having now woken from her space coma. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but bottom line: Poe gets stun-gunned, and Purple Hair's people drag him aboard the last escape shuttle to a secret rebel base. Purple Hair then volunteers herself to stay behind on the ship, while the others flee to not-Hoth. You see, the escape pods are cloaked from detection, but if nobody operates the Rebel cruiser, the Space Nazis will start to get suspicious or something. If only there were robots or other sci-fi tech marvels that could A.I.-navigate these ships, huh?
A bunch of things start collectively happening all together, now. Finn, Rose, and the hacker manage to get all the way to the Star Destroyer's tracker room, only to be suddenly captured by Captain Phasma, that really cool-looking stormtrooper in the chrome armor. She was prominently displayed in the trailer, so what the hell took her so long to show in this movie? It's like, 2/3 done at this point. The hacker then switches sides, giving the Space Nazis the information apparently needed to locate the cloaked escape pods. As Finn and Rose are prepped for execution, the Star Destroyer begins firing on the helpless Rebel pods.
Meanwhile, in Darth Snoke's Emperor Chamber, the big bad himself is sitting on his high throne in a golden bathrobe, eager to force Luke's location out of Mary-Sue's mind. It's very much a recall of "Return of the Jedi"'s climactic scene, with the Sith Lord gloating down at his prize prisoner, while the Sith Apprentice stands by with a conflicted heart. The Rebels are being destroyed in the background once more, and this time, even the Red Honor Guards are staying to watch. This scene held me rapt with attention. Finally, I was about to find out who Snoke actually was, what his ultimate objectives were, how he had come to be, or anything beyond my knowledge that he was this movie's Big Baddie. Anything could happen.
Here's what happens: Snoke apparently has to concentrate too hard to contain Rey's godly Mary-Sue powers, and so his otherwise omniscient Force sensitivity fails to detect a disturbance six inches away from his right elbow. That's where he's kept Luke's lightsaber, and Kylo Ren activates it through his ribcage. Hence, Snoke dies without me ever finding anything about him. What a waste of a potential Great Villain. Well, if nothing else, this continues the time-honored tradition of the Sith Apprentice murdering his Master to take his place.
Then the Red Honor Guards attack, and anyone who's done any kind of research on those dudes know that they are the cream of the fighting crop. Unfortunately for them, there's a Mary-Sue in the room, so their fates were basically sealed the moment this whole scene began. Now, I grudgingly admit that it was a cool-ass fight scene, and I liked how well Kylo Ren and Mary-Sue worked together to clear the guards. It was about as tense as a scene could be, albeit given the certainty that Ren and Sue had Plot Armor and would emerge unscathed. I just wish that Mary-Sue hadn't been so clearly portrayed as the better fighter, but at this point, it's just another notch on her Sue belt.
Their cooperation doesn't last long. Kylo Ren offers Mary-Sue a place at his side, as his apprentice, where she probably would've had the best chance of influencing his mind toward the Light side (given her perpetual close proximity to his Force Wifi). Up until he died, it turns out Snoke had been the one who'd connected their minds. They could have kept that going. Instead, Mary-Sue turns Kylo Ren down.
God, that pissed me off. Ever since Kylo Ren embraced the Dark Side, he'd been pretty much isolating himself from all kindness and warmth, in pursuit of power. To me, this seemed like the first time since then that he willingly opened himself up to the possibility of hope and healing. And as far as Sith lords go, he was probably the most moderate and least evil of any of them. He was ready to end the Rebels AND the Space Nazis, let old things pass, and try a new way. Yes, he had a temper, but so did Prince Adam from Beauty and the Beast. He could have been a great dynamic character who, unlike his grandfather, slowly changed over time rather than all at once at the end. But Mary-Sue, who supposedly wanted to redeem him, would rather do things her way. Thus, she refuses him, and he plunges deeper into darkness than ever before.
. . . In retrospect, I should be glad that Mary-Sue didn't end up becoming Kylo Ren's handler. Any part of a plot involving a Mary-Sue is doomed to corrosion.
But what a missed opportunity.
The two of them fight over Luke's lightsaber until it breaks, but before the fight can conclude, we shift perspective back to Vice Admiral Purple Hair. Until now, she's been standing around just watching as the Rebel escape pods get blown up one by one. Then, she does what apparently nobody in the history of Star Wars ever thought to do before, and lightspeeds the Rebel vessel straight through the Space Nazi fleet. You know, even I had this idea before this movie came out, but I figured that it wasn't a thing in this universe because Star Destroyer shields were presumably designed to withstand such things. Otherwise, I'm certain that outmatched Rebels would regularly kamikaze their ships through superior enemy forces, and there wouldn't be such a lopsided battle today. If this movie's lore is to be believed, the Rebel run on the Death Star in "A New Hope" was utterly unnecessary. We could've taken any asshole's X-wing (because they're capable of lightspeed jumps), and directed an R2 unit to blast it right down that critical ventilation shaft, if targeting the shaft was still even necessary. This is the chief danger in writing science fiction: the more rules you change, the more you are accountable for considering. Congratulations, writers for Purple Hair. You broke Star Wars in the mind of any thinking person ever.
All that said, I still admire the nobility of anyone who is willing to give his/her life for friends. I remain consistent on this principle even for characters I hate as much as Purple Hair. By no means does this redeem her in my mind, but I'll give credit where credit's due.
So the abrupt destruction of the Star Destroyer disrupts Captain Phasma's execution of Finn and Rose. *Sigh* They WOULD have been dead already at this point, if Phasma hadn't taken her sweet-ass time. When will movie villains learn to snuff out the hero first, and gloat afterward? Instead, the ship's hangar bay is rattled, and Finn manages to free himself and grab a weapon just as Phasma reappears through the smoke. As they fight, they exchange the cringiest dialogue in the movie, and that's f#$%ing SAYING something.
Finn: "Let's go, Chrome dome!"
Phasma: "You are scum."
Finn: "Rebel scum."
This is basically repeated in MauLer's rant of the movie, but I put it here because it's just that bad. Naturally, Finn wins the fight. I can't help but be appalled. If you're going to give Captain Phasma such a cool name, such cool armor, and have her appear in both movies, Disney, the least you could do is give her more than three minutes of screen time. Another potentially great character, utterly wasted.
The surviving rebels land on planet not-Hoth, where there still stands an old, unused Rebel base. Let's call it Helm's Deep. As they're setting up, the Space Nazis arrive, along with Finn and Rose in a stolen Imperial transport ship. Princess-General Leia assures them that no enemy has ever breached the Deeping Wall, and they will break upon this fortress like water on a rock. Unfortunately, there's a new space wizard leading the Nazis now. His name ain't Saruman, but he still has the one thing that can breach the impenetrable wall. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren places down a super laser to burn through the wall, and protects it with gorilla-style AT-ATs. Remember, guys, this totally isn't Hoth from "Empire Strikes Back." In a last-ditch effort, the remaining Rebels ride out to meet the threat in their not-A-wings. Most of them get mowed down, but Finn resigns himself to death, preparing to crash into the super laser, so as to disable it and save his friends. However, at the last second, Rose t-bones his vehicle, nearly killing them both. As they lie helpless on the field, directly in front of the giant, hostile AT-ATs, Rose tells Finn, "You don't want to win by fighting what you hate, but saving what you love."
This line, as it's presented, is meant to be the most profoundly wise quote in this movie. Let's pretend for a second that Rose was right about Finn's motives, and that he had just smashed into the super laser because he was fighting the hated Space Nazis to his last breath. The wall would still be up, and the rebels would have reason to hope. Instead, by attempting to save the Finn she loved, Rose almost killed him in a high-speed collision. They are now both out in the open, stranded without a vehicle, a few steps away from the enormous Nazi death machines. If they didn't have Plot Armor, they'd be dead twenty times over. Even as Rose spurts her verbal diarrhea, the unharmed super laser melts the Deeping Wall in the background. I've never seen supposed words of wisdom fall flat so quickly. Was the movie going for irony, here? I don't think it was, but this is shamefully ironic.
This scene is the reason I despise Rose as a character. You might have noticed that, before now, she's been next to useless for the plot, just drifting from here to there like Bianca in Pokemon Black/White. She's a diversity hire who had no business taking up screen time that could have gone to Captain Phasma. But now, she's actively gone and ruined the Rebels' chances, because she prioritized Finn's life above all of theirs. Worse, this was Finn's moment to really make a difference to the Rebel cause. Finn, who had spent most of his character arc running away from his problems, has finally found the will to face them head-on, and die in honorable redemption like Boromir did in Fellowship of the Ring. Rose's character took that away from him. Had I been her commanding officer, and known what she'd been about to do, I would have executed her on the spot. How the Rebels lasted this long with dumbasses like Rose on their team is beyond me. This shit is why the Space Nazis keep winning offscreen.
And ANOTHER thing- Rose suddenly out and kisses Finn. When did that become a thing? When was there any romantic chemistry between those two whatsoever? You know what- screw it, I don't have the energy to linger on this garbage character any longer.
Alright, so the Millennium Falcon appears and flies around distracting the TIE fighters for a while, with Chewie and a random porg doing comical roars. While that's happening, Luke suddenly appears in Helm's Deep before Leia, and apologizes for not being there. He goes out through the wall, and strides up toward the Nazi death machines. In a paranoid rage, Kilo Ren orders them to fire repeatedly upon Luke, but when the salt dust clears, the Jedi Master is unharmed. Kilo Ren comes down to face him in a duel to the death, but as it turns out, Luke was using Force Projection to make it only seem like he was there. I'd be more impressed by this twist if it hadn't failed to explain how Luke's lightsaber was making contact with Kilo's if it wasn't "there." The Rebels realize that Luke is buying them time to escape, and they find a back exit to Helm's Deep that's blocked by a pile of boulders. Things seem hopeless, until the great stones all suddenly float into the sky, revealing Mary-Sue and the Millennium Falcon behind her. Yep, about five days into her Jedi training, Mary-Sue can Force-lift tons of rocks. Dumb ol' Luke couldn't even lift an X-wing out of a swamp after years of practice, and personal training under Master Yoda himself. The remaining Rebels escape on the Falcon, living on to fight another day.
Having completed his purpose, Luke relaxes his astral projection and returns his mind to the island he never left. Boy, it was a good thing he didn't go out himself to fight for real, or he might have died.
And then he dies.
What a stupid movie.
I don't mind Luke dying; it was inevitable, given the trend of the last movie. All good heroes must come to an end. I mind that it was a pathetic death, rather than one befitting him like Obi-wan got, or Palpatine got. This movie was so backwards when it came to this. Luke got a pathetic death when he deserved a noble one; Purple Hair got a noble death when she deserved a pathetic one; Finn deserved a noble death, but was denied; Rose deserved a pathetic death, but . . . I guess the Space Reaper was too disgusted to touch her. Leia pretty much had a noble death, until she pulled a Space Jesus and Mary Poppinsed herself back into the ship; Snoke and Phasma deserved to die for being evil, but not until they'd had enough screen time to establish who they were in the first place.
There's more that I'm sure I wanted to say, but I have no energy to go on. Watching this movie is like eating something that's sweet, but leaves a disgusting aftertaste in your mouth for weeks to come. It's a well-presented cinematic story onscreen. Pity that story is bad fanfiction. I'm out.
