Star Wars: The Last Jedi

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI EXIST HEREIN.

Let’s just get this out of the way from the jump: I am not the biggest Star Wars fan. Which is NOT to say that I dislike it – I don’t! It was a part of my childhood the way it was for most older millennials and younger Gen Xers. My brother loved it. I’ve seen the original, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi more times than I can count. All I’m saying is, I’m not a diehard. I don’t know the names of tertiary or even secondary characters. I never played with the Legos or wrote fanfic about Han and Leia or dressed up to camp out overnight for a premiere. Fan service moments in later movies sometimes go over my head. And I have never even seen two of the three prequels so don’t @ me about whatever key I’m missing that can be found there.

My husband is deeply into a lot of things that I am not, and Star Wars is on that list (along with anime, Pearl Jam, and spicy food). So there we were at 9:30 on Thursday night, trying to be among the first to see The Last Jedi. What follows are the non-chronological meandering thoughts of a rather lukewarm (HA!) fan, who admittedly does not always see or understand the larger Star Wars universe.

• I really, really liked The Force Awakens; it’s probably my favorite of the whole collection. It was funny, it was refreshing, it was very very human in a way that the sterile prequels were not. I was hoping that TLJ would be similar and for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed, though I think it’s fair to say that TLJ is a lot more somber than TFA. I love John Boyega as Finn and Daisy Ridley as Rey and I wish they’d had more screen time together this time around.
• Like almost everyone, I was super amused by the pseudo-nun-caretaker creatures on Luke’s hideaway island. (Vulture did a delightful piece on these characters that echoes pretty much all my sentiments about them.) The Caretakers are totes adorbs and I love that they DGAF about Luke and Rey’s drama or really anything at all outside of the island they are charged with protecting. (Charged by WHOM? And since WHEN? Are they celibate? Is there another sacred island with male Caretakers and they sometimes get together and have coed dances and games like summer camp or the single-sex private schools of yore? If not, why not? I NEED TO KNOW) 
• Luke doesn’t really seem that happy to see Chewbacca when the latter barges into his man-cave dwelling. I thought it would be a nice reunion but he was just all “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” and then realized something must be amiss because he was without Han. There was no warm nostalgia and that kinda bugged me.
• I was very entertained by Finn and Rose’s sojourn to Canto Bright, the playground of the galaxy’s rich and sexy, because it was such a nice change of scenery from…space…more space…and Luke’s island (which admittedly is also gorgeous). I always get a kick out of SW scenes set in more interesting locales, like the cantina, or Maz’s bar/Jedi storage facility/whatever the hell it is in TFA. I read that the Canto Bright scenes were filmed in Dubrovnik, which has been on our travel list for a couple of years, so now I only want to go more.
• While I like Rey as a character, her persistence in believing that Kylo Ren could be “turned” annoyed me. Like, girl, YOU CAN’T FIX HIM. I guess she didn’t have a mom or girlfriends or Oprah to teach her that that’s the worst possible thing to try and do with a man, so honest mistake on her part, but it just felt so absurdly naive. Rey has been on her own for her whole life and she still believes that hard in bad boys changing for the good? Damn.
• And while we’re talking about Rey, let’s talk about Daisy Ridley’s skin and how much I love it. I want to know her routine. I want to know what that brand and shade of barely-there lip gloss is. Glossier? MAC? Just flawless beauty in so many close-ups.
• Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Holdo is queenly and elegant AF. That olive, high-neck jersey gown that she so gracefully adjusts after running to the driver’s seat of their ship to distract the First Order from blowing up all the escape shuttles? The (Nagappala) Oscar for Best Costumes has been decided basically entirely on the merits of that dress (and the Caretakers’ nun habits).
• Yes, the porgs are adorable as all get out, there is no point in pretending otherwise.

On a more thematic note: my husband pointed out to me that TLJ is about failure in a lot of ways. There’s Luke’s failure to keep Ben/Kylo Ren on the Jedi side, Finn and Rose’s shit luck in Canto Bright getting caught up with Benicio del Toro’s con artist weirdo, Poe’s cowboy guns-blazing philosophy costing the Resistance a hell of a lot of lives, Rey’s inability to convert Kylo Ren away from the Dark Side. It was an interesting exploration. SW movies, and a lot of action movies in general, seem to spend their third acts with the protagonists getting setback after setback almost ad nauseum, so much so that it’s almost unrealistic; that was definitely the case here. We’re running out of fuel and the First Order is gaining on us? Let’s jump to lightspeed. Oh, they can track us through lightspeed? Since fucking when?! OK, we’ll devise an elaborate plan to break into the First Order’s ship and mess up their electrical system (the details of that plot point kinda got away from me)? Well you need a codebreaker, not just any codebreaker but the MASTER codebreaker. You never quite get a chance to meet him because the Canto Bright law enforcement doesn’t have shit to do in this Hamptons-ass town and therefore wants to jail Rose and Finn over a parking violation? This knockoff master codebreaker will have to do. Oh, he betrays you to the First Order because he’s a nihilist and a “both sides!”er? Don’t you hate it when that happens?!

But I digress. Obviously a movie needs conflict to move the plot along, so it’s not like I can fault the writers for throwing all those obstacles in the characters’ way – it just got a little tiring 2.5 hours later. In general, I only support Bollywood movies going that long, and they have lots of song and dance to eat up time.

(that’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge to those of you who know even less than me…only one of the best Bollywood films ever)

So basically, I liked it. I didn’t love it. I think TFA is better, or if not necessarily better, just more fun to watch. And now I look forward to the SW stans telling me all the reasons I am wrong and/or ignorant. Happy Tuesday!

(Husband tried explaining to me that Luke didn’t die, he “became one with the force” which is not the same thing as dying…*shrug emoji*)