Of the Last Jedi

Star Wars Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, has been now in the theaters for almost a month, I watched it, and I want to discuss it.

I’ll try not to spoil anything, if possible.

The main plot

The Resistance fleet is on the run from the First Order, Rey has found Luke Skywalker, and Finn is recovering from his injuries.

The plot develops in a series of parallel lines, as usual, following Rey’s attempts at having Luke teach her, and Leia’s efforts in keeping the Resistance safe.

The story is well written, though I found the events on Canto Bight to drag a bit too long, and to be a bit forced. While I understand the need to introduce ‘DJ’ as a character, having two characters arrested for “parking in the wrong spot” seems excessive even for a luxury resort planet.

Generally speaking, I’ve been satisfied with the results, in the end, I appreciated it more than most SW movies.

The bad guys

The First Order is back in its full glory, chasing the Resistance across the galaxy, relentlessly hunting them down.

As with the Empire before them, the FO keeps making strong strategical and tactical mistakes, like playing like the cat with the mouse, without realizing that their prey is a porcupine, or not upgrading their ship design approach to consider the risk small craft put to their battleships.

When your brain is obsessed with feelings of superiority, you don’t consider anything to be dangerous for you.

Kylo Ren, Hux, Phasma and Snoke return in this episode, with the last two getting more screen space. Phasma still looks a bit underdeveloped to me, and Snoke’s origin is still undisclosed.

The good guys

We see a return of Finn, Poe, and Rey, along with a couple new characters

• Rose Tico is a maintenance technician in the Resistance flagship, with her sister Paige being a gunner on a Resistance bomber. She will be instrumental to a couple plot devices.
• Vice Admiral Holdo is a Resistance officer, who takes command of the fleet at one point.

Unaligned characters

The Last Jedi introduces a new character, which possibly will be present in the next movie, or in some spin-off, whose name is not mentioned, and is just referred to as ‘DJ’, for “don’t join”.

DJ works as a sort of “eye-opener” for the characters, showing them how everything is not simply black and white.

Alien creatures

On Luke’s secluded island on Ach-To, we make our acquaintance with a few new alien creatures. They are all wonderfully realized.

The Porg are an avian species, mainly used as a comic relief in a couple scenes. Cuddly and cute, they make for the perfect merchandising.

The Lanai are humanoid amphibians whose females act as caretakers, while the males go at sea to procure food.

The Thala-siren are large acquatic mammals, spending most of their time laying back on the rocks, enjoying the place.

On the Luxury resorts of Canto Bight, on planet Cantonica, we see different alien species in the Casino, and we get to know the Fathiers, horse-like animals bred for racing

Last, but not least, on the planet of Crait we make our acquaintance with the crystalline Vulptex

Technical aspects

The Last Jedi has been, so far, the most visually stunning episode in the saga, and the CG department proved themselves great again, even better than in TFA.

The starship battles excel in visual quality, and the planetside scenes are also pretty good.

Kudos to the flagship sequence near the end of the movie!

Looking forward to the new chapter!

The Force has awakened

So, finally the new Star Wars movie is out, and the Internet war has already started. Some are with it, some are against it.

Here are my personal reflections…

I’ll try not to spoil anything, for those who’ve not yet watched it (is there still anyone?)

 

The main plot

This is by far the thing people are mostly fighting over.

Some say it’s just a re-editing of the original Star Wars movie (A new hope). My take is that, while it is of course much similar, it just follows the mental approach of the Empire, now passed on to its heir the First Order.

In the original trilogy, the Empire built the Death Star, and it got blown by the Rebellion; later on, what did they do? They built a second Death Star, which also got blown by the Rebellion.

Now, if we pick up the old Expanded Universe, we find out that, later, the Empire reborn (with Palpatine’s clones) uses the Galaxy Gun to blow up Pinnacle Base with a projectile that travels through space.

Later on, in the Maw base, the Empire remnants under Admiral Daala, besides having a prototype of the Death Star (just a frame, but with an operational superlaser), have built the Sun Crusher, a ship capable of turning stars into novas.

Even non-Empire factions are prone to use super weapons, anyway, as shown in the Corellian trilogy with Centerpoint Station being activated to blow stars, and further on the Yuuzhan Vong bring down a moon to destroy Sernpidal, starting a war that will tear apart the galaxy.

So, as we can see, the First Order building another superweapon only makes sense, they keep following the doctrine of fear established by Palpatine.

 

The bad guys

Again, people are fought about the bad guys. Some say that the casting was not good, some others that the characters are not well written. My take is this:

• General Hux is a character I like. Totally devoted to the First Order’s “mission”, he’s not afraid to stand up to Kylo Ren, even though he’s aware of the latter’s powers. Though he puts the mission above the life of his subjects, he’s not as stubborn as Tarkin was.
• Kylo Ren is well written, has a logic behind his actions, is full of rage and shows it. I appreciated the actor cast for the role, and how his parts play out. I still don’t like the crossguard lightsaber, though.
• Captain Phasma is somehow an ambiguous character. She doesn’t have much “active space” in this movie, but the few lines she says makes me think there might be some character evolution in the next movies, but this is just my speculation…
• Supreme Leader Snoke is not yet defined, as he only appears shortly. We know he’s somehow a Dark Sider, and we know he keeps his calm also when things are not going well (he planned it?). Also, we know he’s badly scarred on his head (looks like a lightsaber injury, but I can’t bet about it).

Behind the main evil guys, there’s of course the  First Order:

• The First Order is the direct heir to the Empire. After the fall of the Empire, some of its officers decided to keep up the mission to “restore order” to the galaxy.
• The Stormtroopers follow their predecessors from the Empire, with a new styling. While still brainwashed (oops, “conditioned”) to put the First Order before their own lives, they show a bit more independent thought than before.
• The Knights of Ren are mentioned by Snoke when talking to Kylo, and seen in a flashback, but nothing else is said about them. They are probably the antagonist order to the Jedi Order, but we should find out more in the future.

 

The good guys

Now, here’s something to discuss a bit, but just for the sake of it. We’ve got a New Republic, and we’ve got a Resistance. While the latter is reminiscent of the Rebellion from the original trilogy, the first is implied as supporting this Resistance in the fight against the First Order.

It can be argued that the Republic could, and should, have stopped the First Order from being born at all, but nothing is mentioned in this regard. Still, I wonder why isn’t the Republic itself fighting against it, and why they are just supporting the Resistance.

• Rey is the main character, the “Luke” of this new saga. We know little yet about her, just that she’s a scavenger on a desert planet (Jakku), and that she was apparently abandoned in very young age. At the moment she appears as a simple character, but surely there’s something that will be revealed in the future.
• Finn, or FN-2187, though being one of the main characters, didn’t convince me much. Maybe it’s the actor’s portrayal, but I didn’t grow affectionate to him. We’ll see how he develops. Not a bad one, but nothing special.
• Poe Dameron is a sort of Luke+Wedge, a brash starfighter pilot willing to also do ground missions. My guess is that originally they planned to bring back Wedge Antilles, but the original actor refused to portray him again. Nothing to say about him, we will see.

The heroes of old

As was announced, the trio of heroes from the original trilogy is back. Nothing to comment, the actors being the same, the characters are also the same. In this movie there’s very little from Luke, he only appears at the end, while Han Solo stars for good part of it.

Along with them, there are of course R2-D2, C-3PO, and we even see Admiral Ackbar again (it’s a trap!), and the unforgettable Chewbacca, again offering us some funny moments.

I was glad, honestly, to see that they are not the leading main characters in the story, leaving the pivotal roles to a new generation of actors/characters. As much as I love the original trilogy, 30 years have their weight, and it was time to “evolve” in a different direction.

Technical aspects

As with any Star Wars movie, the quality of work behind it is extremely high. This movie, though, manages to “fix” the sterile use (debatable personal opinion, of course) of CG from the prequel trilogy.

As a matter of fact, many times I found it difficult to understand if I was watching a rendered sequence, or physical models.

I like the design of the T-70 X-Wing, which draws more from the original matte paintings from Ralph McQuarrie, and also the new two-seater TIE/sf looks good. Seeing again the Millenium Falcon in action made my eyes wet, of course, and generally speaking starships, bases, equipment and armor are very well designed, and fall in with continuity from the original trilogy.

Technically speaking, this movie manages to put together real life filming with computer graphics with a great result, and I’ve really appreciated it.

The crew as a whole did a great job, and it’s seen in the final result.

Cameos

Besides the voices of Ewan McGregor, Alec Guinnes, and Frank Oz (the first two as Obi-Wan Kenobi, the last one as Yods), reprised from previous dialogues to fill a sequence, there are a couple interesting appearances in this movie.

The first is Simon Pegg, playing a character in the first part of the movie, and the second is Daniel Craig (yes, our loved James Bond), which we can see in the second half of the movie.

Will you spot them?

Final considerations

All taken into account, this fourth Star Wars movie left me really satisfied. I can finally forget the horror I felt with the (now in the process of being removed from my memory) prequel trilogy.

Haters gonna hate, of course, but I say that Star Wars is finally back, after 32 years!