The Last Jedi

I’d forgotten just how many gorgeous moments The Last Jedi has. The one that stood out the most was the destruction of Snoke’s command ship, which worked so well as a piece of cinematography that I’m almost willing to forgive the tactical headache it causes. I don’t have a problem with the direction TLJ took the Star Wars story line, and it’s a far better film than any of the prequels. Unlike The Force Awakens, which felt derivative, this film had plenty of moments that called back to the original trilogy (especially in terms of music and imagery) which felt like they were honouring rather than duplicating.

Luke hiding himself away – that’s what Yoda and Kenobi did, so it fits with what has gone before. Both Kylo Ren and Rey really seemed to grow in this film, and I thought they interacted well. The lightsaber battle in Snoke’s throne room is probably one of my favourite scenes in the entire series, both in terms of how it took the story, and how it looked.

Physics was yet again not a strong point of the film, especially the start with the bombers ‘dropping bombs’. Poe was once again the overblown hero, and I was sort of glad to see him taken down a notch. However, his actions at the start did remind me of playing the old X-Wing games from the 1990s, when taking out all the cannons on a Star Destroyer with a single X-Wing was perfectly possible (if not rather silly).

The middle felt a bit weak, especially the Canto Bight plot line, though I see the main point of that as giving Finn a chance to grow a bit as a character, something he really needed to do. The rest of it I found highly enjoyable though, and I thought it made a good addition to the saga.