Grumpy Bulldog vs The Last Jedi (SPOILERS!!!)

By now probably anyone who'd read this has either seen the movie or doesn't care, so fuck spoilers.

I heard a lot of people say The Last Jedi was the best Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back.  So I thought it’d be a really good epic sci-fi movie.  Instead it was a messy plot with few of the epic moments that made Empire so good for generations of fans.

Oh, and after killing Han Solo in the first movie of this new trilogy, they of course had to kill off Luke Skywalker in this movie.  Not cool.  And with Carrie Fisher dead IRL, we have none of the main human characters left.  All we have left now are Chewbacca, C3PO, and R2D2.  Oh and Lando if they ever bothered using him or even mentioning him.  (On a side rant, after Lando’s best buddy Han died, you’d think maybe he’d go see how Leia’s doing, maybe comfort her a little.  Or, you know, join the cause maybe.)

And actually the whole day before seeing the movie I was dreading how they’d kill Luke off.  I guess I have the Force too because I knew it was coming.  And then it finally happens in about the most underwhelming way since his mom died in childbirth for…reasons.  Oh no, I used too much Force or something, so now I’m going to like die!.  Ugh, really?  That’s how he goes out?  Weak.

Look, I get the reason they did it.  It’s the same reason they got rid of Han:  Harrison Ford is too old to go running around the galaxy shooting Stormtroopers and shit.  By the same token, Mark Hamill is too old to do any epic lightsaber duels.  And to be honest he wasn’t that great of an actor even back in the original trilogy.  Still, you couldn’t let him have a little better sendoff?

It occurred to me that instead of killing my whole childhood, it would have been better if they’d done a Star Trek The Next Generation thing and just set this like 100 years in the future.  You could still have Chewie and the droids, right?  But I guess you needed to sell it with the old characters.  Still, it just sucks.

It would be more acceptable if the movie were actually good, but it isn’t.  So much of it just feels…dumb.  I mean I know it’s Star Wars not hard sci-fi like 2001 or something but even for a Star Wars movie it was dumb.  Since when do capital ships run out of “fuel?”  What “fuel” are they even using?  It’s not like they run on fucking diesel and have to stop at the space gas station to tank up.  I mean most of the US Navy’s big ships these days use nuclear power, so why wouldn’t these starships be using some kind of fusion?  OK, sure the smaller ships might use some kind of “fuel,” but why the hell is the Millennium Falcon all fueled and ready to go despite sitting around Jakku for like 4 years?  Maybe the Simon Pegg guy keeps it fueled so he can go off on a jaunt every now and then, right?

And instead of trailing behind the Rebel ships taking potshots, why doesn’t the First Order just bring in more ships?  Or dispatch some of its ships at lightspeed ahead of the Rebels to trap them?  And you have like 100 squadrons of TIE fighters and bombers and crap you’re just not using for…reasons.  It makes no goddamned sense.

And if the Rebel cruiser could go to lightspeed and ram the First Order flagship and destroy most of their fleet, why not do that a lot earlier?  Oh, right, they had to “fuel” the transports.  Why not have one of the other ships do it instead of letting them get blown up?  At least they’d have been doing something.

And what idiots are these Rebels that they designed their base with only one entrance or exit?  So, yeah, when the Imperials (or Imperials Lite) find your base you’re trapped like fucking rats.  Brilliant strategy!

Michael Offutt described Luke as a whiny bitch and I have to agree.  He is a whiny bitch most of the movie.  And because of this, there’s never really a chance for him to build a relationship with Rey.  So it’s never like Luke-Obi Wan or Luke-Yoda or even Anakin-Obi Wan or Qui-Gon-Obi Wan.  Several times I sat there thinking, Dude, your fucking sister is going to be killed.  Do something!  What kind of selfish twat are you?  And when he finally does he somehow projects himself parsecs across the galaxy, a power that we’ve never seen any Jedi use before in 7 movies; it’s like one of those lame “Expanded Universe” books where some crummy author would have Luke able to fly or turn water into wine or some shit like that.  At first I thought he was really there somehow but then I thought maybe R2 or BB8 was projecting a hologram or something, but then comes this sorta deus ex machina device.  I guess the excuse for this was Snoke was able to “bridge” Rey and Ben’s minds over light years.

But just who the hell was Snoke?  Who the fuck knows?  He had all the power of the Emperor and maybe even more so and yet it’s hard to believe Palpatine would have been so stupid as to leave a rival like this running around.  Oh, hey, maybe he just had a midlife crisis and developed Sith powers instead of buying a convertible.  But now he’s dead, so who gives a shit?  What was the point of him anyway?  I guess we needed someone to teach Ben Solo and start a cut-rate Galactic Empire.  I suppose at some point there’ll be a book or comic book to explain his rise to power.  Or there already is.  Like I care since he’s apparently just a throwaway character.

Oh and Rey’s parents?  They’re just alcoholic junk dealers who sold her into slavery for drinking money…or something.  Despite that by the time she’s grown she’s not a slave.  So that Simon Pegg alien guy just let her go?  Or maybe she earned enough portions to free herself?  And yet somehow these junk dealers just happened to spawn someone with next-level Force abilities.  Sure.  Why not?  I guess that’s better than Immaculate Conception…but only just.  But she was called to find Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber that he got from his father and she’s just some junk dealer’s kid?  Really?  Gee, wouldn't Empire have been so much better if Vader had said, "Luke, your father...was an alcoholic junk dealer who sold you to Uncle Owen for beer money."  Epic!

The side plot with Finn and Rose would have been good if it had gone anywhere.  They hook up with Benicio del Toro, a shady thief who, surprise surprise lures them into a trap.  But why the hell did he go to all of the trouble to break them out of Cantu Bight and get them into the First Order flagship and then get in disguise and open the tracker device room?  Why not betray them on the planet?  Or when they arrived at the First Order Fleet?  Or once they got aboard the ship?  And then he just stays evil and maybe dies or something?  He doesn’t pull a Han Solo or Lando (remember him?) and decide to help the Rebels?  Weak.

And then Rose stops Finn from destroying the big gun that they all took those busted ass speeders out there to destroy, because she's so in love that she'd rather they both get captured/killed by the First Order than die a hero.  But really, couldn't he have just tied a rock to the accelerator?  Jumped at the last second?  Been "thrown clear of the blast?"

And after Kylo Ren and Rey’s somewhat epic battle in the woods in the last movie the rematch is…them killing a bunch of Snoke’s guards and then breaking Rey’s lightsaber like a fucking wishbone.  Oh, wow, that was cool.  Not.  Luke’s fight with Ben was even lamer.  A Star Wars movie without a decent lightsaber fight is pathetic.

And what was the deal with the funhouse mirrors in that dark side cave?  Was that supposed to be symbolic of something?  The dark side cave on Dagobah stopped the movie dead but at least it made more sense.  And ghost Yoda can call down lightning?  Since when?

The part with Leia freezing in space and using the Force to rocket back into the ship was pretty dumb, but I almost cried just thinking about Carrie Fisher dying IRL.  Kind of wonder why Leia doesn’t use the Force more often.  I mean not that she should have been going around with a lightsaber, but she couldn’t have moved some rocks for their escape from the old base?  Or what would have been good would have been to reshoot the ending and let her go out and finally use her Force power to destroy the First Order troops and stuff.  Then Luke could have shown up at the end for a funeral and gone on to help the Rebels.  She could have gone down in a blaze of glory!  Instead of having to be awkwardly written out of the next movie.

I guess you can see why Colin Trevorrow and Disney had problems.  Rian Johnson kind of left a mess for the next director to clean up.  He was supposed to be writing the second part of a trilogy, but he sucked all of the momentum out of the story to leave it coasting on fumes for Trevorrow Abrams.  I mean you have some twenty-something brat running the Empire Lite now?  And the Rebellion is down to like ten people and one ship?  And almost all of the old cast is dead?  Probably not what Trevorrow thought he was signing on for.  Like my sister said that's the problem when you have these different directors doing different parts.  In writer's groups sometimes people try to do a group story and sometimes you get that one annoying guy who tries to take it into a far-out direction or tries to be a jerk and end the thing prematurely and then the next guy up has to try to cover up.  Rian Johnson was the guy who messed up the chain and now the next guy up has to try to fix it.  Which is hard to do when you've killed off a bunch of characters, destroyed the Rebellion, and quashed the most interesting mysteries.

Really, didn't they sketch out the whole trilogy before they started?  And because they want a new Star Wars movie every year they have to rush to get these together  instead of taking time to make sure they're getting it right.

I’m running out of steam now.  This was made better than the prequels, but it’s easily as dumb as Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones.  So no, I don’t put it second after Empire.  I put it sixth.  A definite 2/5.

My rankings:

• Empire
• New Hope/ROTJ (it’s pretty much a toss-up)
• Force Awakens
• Revenge of the Sith
• Last Jedi
• Phantom Menace
• Attack of the Clones

And Rogue One would go above Force Awakens, though without that epic Vader scene at the end it'd probably be sixth.  That's what this movie was missing, some really badass Force action.