star wars: The last jedi review
I walked out of the opening night showing of The Last Jedi feeling letdown and conflicted due to an extremely noticeable lack of lightsaber combat and slap in the face non-payoffs to next-big-things (as setup in The Force Awakens) Rey and Supreme Leader Snoke. Upon re-watching the film for this review, only one of the three still bothered me. The lack of lightsaber combat is truly disappointing. If I told you there would be a Star Wars movie in the numbered episodic series that throughout its 150-minute runtime didn’t have a single instance (save for a momentary flashback) of a lightsaber clashing with another you’d be surprised and confused right? I was surprised and confused as well. Lightsaber combat and how the films find new and interesting ways of presenting the beautiful dance of laser swords is a sizable part of why I and I presume many others love Star Wars. The Last Jedi is undeniably lacking in this arena. Moving on, everything between Finn and Rose is a chore to watch and an entire section of the film within an intergalactic casino brothel feels like a deleted scene that got slipped into the final cut. And I still want to know how Supreme Leader Snoke got those magnificent scars. Despite the bad there is lots of good to be found in the film and almost all of it is specifically Jedi-related. Kylo Ren and Rey are exciting and compelling to watch and the two have fantastic chemistry. The character revelations specific to this film concerning the two don’t make complete narrative sense when you consider what we eventually learn in the finale to the Skywalker saga (how could Rey be more naturally powerful in the force than Ren if she truly came from nothing?) but taken as a stand-alone film the ReyLo arc is satisfying.
The Last Jedi receives a score of 7.5 for being a good Star Wars film that is overall the weakest of the sequel trilogy with too little laser sword action.