Everything Wrong With STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

Star Wars: The Last Jedi isn’t a bad film – but it is a very flawed one. 2015’s The Force Awakens was a euphoric restart of the Star Wars franchise and I thought that film was an excellent instalment in the series moments. The Last Jedi is a decent follow-up, but there’s a lot of bad lurking beside all that good.

Here’s Movies In Focus‘ rundown on what is wrong with Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Beware! There be SPOILERS!

Maz Kanata’s has a neat little introduction in The Force Awakens but her shoe-horning into The Last Jedi is pointless. She’s in the middle of shoot-out with unseen assailants, spinning around and dodging laser blasts. Who exactly is filming her? She’s there to let our heroes know that there’s a hacker who can help them break into Snoke’s ship. A line of dialogue from Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron would have done the trick – and shaved a few hundred thousand off the film’s budget.

The whole Canto Bight section is a waste of time and Finn and Rose’s whole mission is a total failure. They manage to discover Benico Del Toro’s DJ, but he’s not even the hacker they’re looking for. He double crosses them and they fail to block the tracker which is locked onto the Resistance ships. The section involves cute kids and a strange Llama-like creature – all of which is very cloying. The chase sequence features bad CGI and ill-judged humour. It also soaks up about 30 minutes of The Last Jedi’s bloated 2 1/2 hour running time.

Poe Dameron bookends the movie like a true hero – sadly he’s given little to do in the middle of the film. He’s better than that – make his do something next time folks.

Nobody ever needs to see Luke Skywalker milking a four-breasted sea creature. Sure, Luke needs sustenance, but this is just too silly and distracting.

Snoke’s death. We earn nothing about Snoke in this film. Nothing. Everything we do know was brought to the table in The Force Awakens. I have no issue with him biting the big one at the hands of Kylo Ren, but all he did was sit on a chair and paraphrase the Emperor from The Return Of the Jedi.

We never see Rey’s escape from Snoke’s ship. She’s missing from a large portion of the film, only showing up for the film’s climax. Her escape is covered-up with a silly line like ‘She stole Snoke’s shuttle’’. It would have made more sense to have this in the movie instead of the Canto Bight plot thread.

Too many cute creatures. The Porgs were a nice little touch – but they were over used (they serve no purpose). I enjoyed the Chewie BBQ section – but they should have left it at that. Gratuitous Porgnography. The salty wolf-like Crait’s were an unnecessary addition and the Canto Bight Llamas are my personal low point of the entire movie.

When Carrie Fisher’s Leia is blasted from her ship and into space, she should have died. Instead she floats through space and then uses the force to pull herself to safety. This is a stupid as it sounds. She makes a full recovery and then she’s back on her feet within minutes. Judicious editing could have made this a powerful farewell to the late actress, bowing out in style.

The climatic Force projection battle between Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren is great. My only problem is that when Luke appears he has shorter hair and a darker, trimmed beard. I spent the entire duration of their battle thinking it was a serious continuity error or that he stopped-off on his way to the rebel base for a makeover. The reveal made it all make sense – but it ruined the moment. A bad creative decision.

The sweeping kid the end. I know they wanted to end the movie with a new hope – but this was a a very Disney moment. The film should have ended with the remaining members of the film hanging out onboard the Millennium Falcon.

Read the Movies In Focus review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi