Why I Didn't Like Star Wars: The Last Jedi
- Why I didn't like Star Wars: The Last Jedi
- The movie was a chase, like Empire Strikes Back... but unlike Empire, this was a boring chase
- It was literally two ships following each other for the length of the movie
- Empire, on the other hand, was a chase - Darth Vader and the bounty hunters were chasing Han Solo and Leia across Hoth, asteroid belts, and other locales
- Empire was much more tense - the plot was much more tightly wound than this
- Everything in Empire was there because it was necessary - every twist, every turn lays a building block for the final showdown between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader
- Whereas here, the movie was much more disconnected - the entire subplot with Finn and Rose going off to the casino could have been deleted, with little loss to the overall plot
- I was never bored during Empire Strikes Back, I was bored at multiple points during The Last Jedi
- Why does the Empire continually leave its most powerful superweapons completely unguarded against small fightercraft?
- In the original movie, they make this mistake, but the mistake is explained
- In A New Hope, it's explained that the Empire doesn't take small fightercraft seriously, and is only concerned with capital ships attacking the Death Star
- And then Rogue One elaborates a bit, saying that the Death's Star's weak point was placed there intentionally by the designer
- In Return of the Jedi, the vulnerability is shown as intentional - it's a trap to catch the Rebel fleet, and a large portion of the Imperial fleet is waiting behind Endor
- But here? The loss of that Dreadnought at the beginning is totally pointless - why couldn't they have launched the fighters before the Rebels counterattacked? It's not like they haven't lost two superweapons to small fighters before
- The most charitable interpretation is that the Empire doesn't care - their logistical advantage is such that even the loss of a Dreadnought is manageable
- And then at the end, when Kylo Ren says to press on even though small fightercraft are attacking... c'mon man, you were there when the Dreadnought got blown up
- It might seem like a quibble, but it highlights a larger difference between these sequels and the original trilogy
- In the original trilogy, I have a sense that people are doing things for reasons
- The Empire is trying to conquer the galaxy, and crush the remaining rebel worlds
- The Rebellion is trying to overthrow the Empire and restore the Republic
- Whereas in these movies, I have no sense of what the goals of either side are, nor do I have any sense of the stakes involved
- What is the First Order trying to do?
- Why are the new Rebels trying to fight them?
- What is the relation between the First Order and the old Empire?
- Why does the galaxy look so empty?
- The vast majority of the action of the past two movies has taken place on worlds that were completely depopulated
- These worlds make Tattooine look like Coruscant
- One of the few things I'll give the prequels credit for is that they made the galaxy seem alive and full of civilization in a way that the sequels have not
- Is this intentional? Are the sequels trying to portray a civilization in decline, under the toll of decades of constant war?
