Star Wars: The Last Jedi

[Evoquative]

I'll start by saying I'm not a major SW fan. I still remember my older sister coming back from town having queued for hours to see New Hope and then telling me the full story in excruciating detail. I was much happier to spend my money on a new album or concert ticket so gave it a miss. I have since been won over - to a limited extent - and now seeing my kids enjoy them puts them in a new perspective...until now...

My 16 year old daughter wanted to see this asap and is certainly a major fan of all the movies (with the obvious reservations about I-III) so we went last night. Her first comment as the titles went up at the end summed up the experience for me too: "That wasn't a Star Wars movie". We happened to sit beside a couple who had 6-9 year old boys with them and they loved it which is probably precisely what Disney hoped.

For me there were far too many moments that were jaw-dropping for all the wrong reasons, from the obscure cut scenes such as Luke harvesting milk from a multi-breasted creature on his island hideaway to the ill-judged appearance of Yoda, I constantly felt that the writer/director was sitting with a tick box which represented all the things that he expected the audience would drool over. Trivialised R2D2 appearance tick, new tranche of weird (and not so wonderful) characters in the Casino scenes tick, Millennium Falcon performing the exact same moves it always does tick, and so it dragged on and on.

The final hour was more pitiful than bad as the budget was clearly running out and the corners cut on the SFX became more and more obvious. Having one man write and direct means there are not enough challenges to either the writing or the directing and again this was glaringly obvious.

We weren't alone in our opinion. The cinema was hushed, flat and bemused as the titles went up at the end: no buzz, no sense of having witnessed a bit of event cinema, just disappointed confusion. Missed opportunity when the opportunity was too big to be missed and a sorry way for Carrie Fisher to bow out and Mark Hamill to return.

[raj101]

finally saw this through to the end (i walked out last time because I had this horrendous feeling that they were going to contrive Ren killing Luke in single combat - ha! - which would have been dumbazz). Whilst being the difficult 2nd film (of 3rd trilogy) I am happy enough with the movie being different this time. I felt better interpreting endings alternatively - like I dont believe Luke's fate is over.

One thing I will say is that the movie does make an effort to include "Expanded Universe" material with the Jedi Academy and Leia, which is all good for those of us who tried out some of those books and games over the fallow years of no movies.

Anyway, only a few months to another SW film, not such a wait now.

[tonethestone]

Fantastic and better on 2nd viewing. Will grow more so on multiple viewings. Those few who aren’t keen seem to not like because they can’t move on and are stuck in the past.
Kylo Ren such a great villain, so well done, Adam Driver excellent. Bring on Ep9...!!!

5/5