STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017; director Rian Johnson)
Here’s the kind of Star Wars fan I am: A few short months ago, I was talking with a co-worker about our mutual enjoyment of the series, up to and including the latest movies, and then this person asks me “So, what do you think is really going on with Snoke?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
Snoke? “Is that Trump’s new Secretary of Agriculture?”
A quick consultation with my sources at Google answered the question. Snoke is the Lord of the Rings-looking big meanie overlord who’s in The Force Awakens for maybe two scenes. I remembered. Snoke. Got it.
I still didn’t understand though why I’m supposed to be speculating about him. He’s just the bad guy, right? What’s the mystery? Meanwhile, there are people walking among us for the past two years who are thinking a lot about Snoke. They have Snoke theories. Snoke analysis. Snoke predictions. Snoke presentations. They go on Reddit and talk about Snoke. They go on Twitter and talk about Snoke. They go to work and confuse their handsome and delightful colleague Jason with questions about Snoke.
And people are INTERESTED. Got a Youtube channel that no one’s watching? Make a video of yourself talking about Snoke. You’ll have 50,000 views by next Wednesday.
Did I miss something? I don’t get it. I always thought that I liked Star Wars as much as anybody, but I guess not.
I DO like this new movie, The Last Jedi, though. All I want from these things is plenty of whiz-bang, lots of lasers, planet-hopping action, a little space opera drama and to be deaf for about five minutes at the beginning due to the loud opening theme music. This movie brings all of that. It’s big, sweeping and lays on the emotional crescendos with the subtlety of a Ford F-150 crashing through a donut shop window. It’s got that Star Wars feeling, except with a mountain man recluse Luke Skywalker who spends most of the movie acting like a big jerk and a main villain who’s pretty much an annoying rich kid who has no plan or vision or any idea what he’s doing. We’re not watching him be bad. We’re waiting for him to inevitably turn good. You know it’s coming. This new trilogy copies enough from the original that they may as well copy that, too. Eh, works for me.
The big difference between this new series and the original one I’d say is that under George Lucas, months, if not years, seem to have elapsed in the storyline between movies. Luke Skywalker from 1977 to 1983 is a changed person from film to film. He’s done a lot of growing and Jedi training and gone on unseen adventures between chapters in the original trilogy, it’s implied.
By contrast, this new movie picks up two seconds after The Force Awakens ended, so the characters are pretty much the same. No one surprises you (though Oscar Isaac gets lots more screen time and uses it well as a loose cannon fighter pilot hotshot). The effect is that this feels like a TV series with really long episodes and that’s still just getting started.
It’s a fun movie. I didn’t hate it.
I still don’t care about Snoke, though, or any other character who was on screen here for two minutes that some of you dorks will be referencing for the next fifty years.