The Last Jedi is dumb, but so is Star Wars, and it’s fine
I’m going to preface this the same way just about every reviewer, blogger, video essayist and screaming fanboy does. I’m a huge fan of Star Wars. I really am. Have been for just about my whole life. I’ve seen the original trilogy many, many times, I saw every one of the prequels during their opening weekends and all of the new movies on opening day. I think about Star Wars a lot and I talk about Star Wars a lot.
That being said, Star Wars is kind of dumb.The original trilogy is about space wizards with magic glow sticks, very tall dog men and a fish Admiral blowing up giant balls that shoot laser beams. The prequels are even sillier, badly directed movies about a whiny little boy becoming a whiny little adult becoming a much taller robot space wizard. A cunning politician is a secret evil space wizard who becomes magic space Hitler and eventually gets thrown down a reactor chute or whatever that’s inexplicably in his throne room. That’s after he shoots lightning out of his fingers and cackles like a cartoon witch. The galaxy has mastered A.I., but uses it to create anxious translators and plucky trash cans. It’s all very silly, pretty dumb and really great.
Starting from Return of the Jedi, all of the movies are over plotted, include annoying alien creatures clearly made for toy sales and overly long unnecessary action scenes that leave the viewers exhausted and disengaged from the story. I haven’t seen Clone Wars, I hear some of it is great, but Rebels is dumb and annoying and I couldn’t care less about any of the characters in it. Not going into any of the Legends extended universe stuff, most of what makes up the canon Star Wars universe is silly. But it’s also a lot of fun. The silly character names, the lightsabers, the space battles and cool alien worlds. It’s all a lot of fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. And that brings us to The Last Jedi. Spoilers ahead, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you probably won’t be reading this either.
The Last Jedi is just fine. It’s got some dumb stuff in it, it has too much plot and too little story, the whole casino planet space horse race scene with BB-8 shooting coins at guards and little kids going “woohoo” like Anakin in The Phantom Menace is kind of terrible. It’s littered with misplaced jokes. But it’s fine. Luke’s arc is great, Rey is great, that scene with Holdo doing a hyper space kamikaze attack on the First Order is great and, this might be controversial, but Leia’s space Superman thing is great. Killing Snoke and revealing that Rey is a nobody is great. Those little speeders kicking up red dust is super cool and Luke’s astral projection brushing dirt off his shoulder like he’s feeling like a pimp is great too. The porgs are dumb and so are the caretakers or whatever on Luke’s island, but no dumber than that alien with a literal ass face in A New Hope or the fucking Ewoks.
It’s okay if you dislike the movie, it’s far from perfect. But if you hate it, you’re probably taking it a little too seriously. I had fun watching it and I’m curious to see what Abrams does with episode 9, but it’s fine if you didn’t and aren’t. It’s fine. The world is on fire, maybe don’t get outraged by how the guy who made a movie about a time traveling Bruce Willis ruined your childhood by making a Star Wars movie you didn’t like. You already blamed George Lucas for that, anyway.
