I've kinda had to come up with a new
title for this one, and I've got what amounts to several good reasons
for that, which we'll get to below the jump.
So, as was my intent with the Force
Awakens, the previous movie in the series, I'd intended to get to
this one well before I did, but, as has been kind of an unfortunate
trend in my life the last few years, that didn't quite happen. Worse
yet, I wound up almost botching this one worse than I did the last
few movies I've done reviews of. Ya see, this past Thursday, March
15, was one of those days when I'd finally decided to get on with a
few things I'd been meaning to get on with for awhile. That meant
taking a shower and leaving the house after work and checking in with
a few Internet buddies.
While the plan I had for the evening
did kinda-sorta involve going to see this movie if I could, I sorta
figured I'd have a few more decent chances to do that than I actually
would have had I completely failed this. Turns out, though, that the
show I actually went to see was quite literally the very last “late”
show the theater I use for these things was going to do for Last
Jedi, if I read the schedule correctly. They're still going to be
showing it for another week, if I read their show schedule correctly,
but only in a 4 PM slot. In order for me to catch that one, I'd
either have to get off earlier than I have been on one of the six
days I've been working at my day job or, perhaps more practically,
arrange my time on my one day off so that I'd have a rougly three and
a half hour block to both see the movie, which clocks in at just over
two and a half hours, and then write the review, which takes another
hour, more or less. And even having something like a plan to do all
of this, I still missed the opening scroll to this one.
I suppose I could look it up on YouTube
if I really wanted, but I do my best to make these about my
experiences actually in the theater, so I'm just going to run with
what I've got in that regard. I'd say “spoilers ahead”, but
unless you're the sort of person who tends to watch movies the way my
folks do and wait until something's out on DVD or streaming or
whatever to watch, it's still technically true, but it's probably a
little late for that.
Where I came into this, the Rebellion
was in the final stages of evacuating its last proper base because
the First Order has found it and is on the way to blow it up. Just
as the last ship is about to take off, the First Order shows up with
an armada of Star Destroyers, including a Dreadnaught class ship that
I don't think we got to see in the original trilogy or the preqils.
The escape ships make it to the small fleet the Rebels have put
together in order to run as the Dreadnaught does a decent All
Your Base routine on the ground base and the ships covering the
escape.
At the same time, the Rebels have this
plan to do something similar to the Dreadnaught, simply because
taking the damned thing out would at least take some pressure off the
Rebellion. Maybe not by slowing down the First Order by much or
anything, but their having one less super ship to work with would
make things a tiny bit easier for the Rebellion. The opening
bombing run is lead by Po, of course, since he's pretty much the
field commander for the Rebellion in these movies. Thanks to Po's
crazy bravery and leadership, they do manage to pull it off, but only
just barely, and wind up losing all their bombers and like three
quarters of their attack ships in the process. Since this leaves the
remainder of the fleet, now made up of one cruiser, one hospital
ship, and one other large ship escorted by what was left of the
fighers, pretty much screwed, Leia slaps Po and drops him in rank.
As this is going on, the Rebels find
they have pretty much no chance to escape, their plan is to stay just
far enough ahead of the First Order ships to keep their weapons from
doing much serious damage before they can get to the safety of an
abandoned Rebel base on a mining planet that's just barely in range
at sublight speed.
The Rebels, it seem, had tried to
escape with hyperdrive, or whatever the faster-than-light engines are
called in Star Wars, but it turns out the First Order has a way of
tracking ships at lightspeed now, which the Rebels found out about
when the Order armada showed up and blasted the hell out of them when
they thought they were safely away and had a chance to make a plan.
Leia's critically wounded in the attack, so command passes to a
purple-haired lady who's name I swear I tried to pay attention to but
still somehow missed. That's really unfortunate, and bad on me,
because this woman's at least as good a leader as Leia was.
Turns out, there is a flaw in the
Order's tracking system, though, in that it can only be used on
whichever ship is the lead ship at any given moment. At first, Po
just wants to take out the lead ship in hopes of taking the system
with it, but since all the Order's big ships have it as an A system,
whichever other ship becomes the lead ship will still be able to find
them, and since lightspeed will leave the fleet with no fuel to
escape anyway, it's a bad plan. Good news is, though, that Finn and
Rose, a tech he met while trying to chicken out, come up with a plan
to disable the tracker for just long enough for the fleet to get away
at lightspeed. Po tells them to go ahead with it while he deals with
the new commander and pretty much leads a mutny to get it done.
While all this is going on, Rey is
trying to get Luke to teach her how to be a Jedi. At first, it's
nothing but rejection because Luke has come to the conclusion that
the only way to beat the Sith is for there to be no more Jedi. He's
got reasons for thinking like that, of course. Between New Hope and
Force Awakens, he'd tried to keep the Jedi Order going, but when he
came to realize just how strong the Dark Side was in Ben Solo, who
was one of his students and went on to become Kylo Ren, he decided to
just scrap the whole thing and stop being a Jedi. I guess his
reasoning was that if there was no light for the darkness to fight,
the darkness would go away too. It's a nice idea, of course, but in
this movie, as in real life, things are not that simple or black and
white, so Luke eventually gives in and tries to teach Rey a few
things about the Force and being a Jedi. It kind of works, but
because Snoke, by way of Kylo Ren, is messing with Rey somehow, she
gets pulled towards the Dark Side instead.
Gotta say, I kind of like Luke in the
more Yoda-like role he's got in this movie. He's a much fuller
character now that he's got motivations beyond just the whole “Ima
beat evil and avenge my daddy” thing he was doing in the original
trilogy. I really do like him better now that he's more grown up.
Of course, Luke still needs Yoda to
some extent, too, and Yoda does get some screen time at the start of
the third act. There's a point when Rey, much like Luke before her,
realizes that the best thing for her might be to go to her evil
counterpart directly, and Luke decides that his best move would be to
get rid of what's left of the ancient Jedi texts. Yoda's Force
spirit shows up to tell him that he's on the right track by intending
to take a Molotov coctail to the texts and the shrine they're in.
When Luke hesitates, Yoda uses his power to set the place alight and
then explains to Luke that it's not so much that a lack of Jedi will
lead to the end of the Sith as well as much as it is that things are
different now and it's time to move on from the old ways.
Rey hooks up with Kylo Ren, and each
tries to turn the other with no success. Kylo uses the opportunity
to kill Snoke, but that was bound to happen anyway, since the Sith
tend to kill one another anyway if there's a threat of there being
more than two named Force users in the bunch. There's also a nice
fight with Snoke's personal guard. I quite liked seeing all the
things they're doing with the lazer weaponry.
Back with the Rebel escape fleet, they
finally get to the mining world they were headed for. If they ever
said what it's name was, I missed that, too. Sadly, that's kind of
the problem with the way I find myself doing these things. Makes it
harder to catch all the details I need to do a decent job of this.
I'd have been tempted to say this was Hoth, but Hoth was too cold for
folks to be running around without protection against it like they
were here. I did like the red salts with the layer of white topsoil
on the place, though.
Things get worse for the Rebels here,
as they're down to their last big ship, and the Order is taking out
the landing craft before they can land. The commander sacrifices the
ship she's on by turning it on the Order's biggest ship and ramming
it at lightspeed. There are arguments and explanations as to why
this is likely to be the only time we'll see this in Star Wars
because it's stupid and wasteful for either side to do it, and while
I agree with some of them to some extent, I gotta say, this was
probably the best effect in the whole movie, if not the entire
franchise. It was a lucky shot that so many of the other Order ships
got taken out in the process, and I gotta say, the decision to have
absolutely no audio while it was going on was a stroke of brilliance
on the part of whoever came up with the idea.
The remainder of the movie takes place
on the planet, with the Rebels doing everything they can to protect
their one last base and maybe see if there's anybody out there
willing to help them. Unfortunately, it's kind of an Alamo
thing, because the signal they sent out was received in multiple
locations but no replies came back. As Leia and the others discuss
this, Luke shows up and convinces the others to try to hold against
the fortress buster cannon the Order has put down even though it's a
losing battle. Naturally, it fails, and in order to buy them the
last little bit of time they need to escape, Luke says he's going to
go one-on-one against the armor units that Kylo and the Order intend
to use to blow up the base once they get through the blast door on
the mine.
When Luke seems to survive, Kylo
demands to be put down for some real one-on-one combat with him.
This is what gives the Rebels their way out thanks to following some
foxlike creatures with crystal fur that jingles when they move. The
deul's a stalemate because Luke used up the last of his Force energy
or mana or whatever to astral project to the mining planet, and when
the version of him there poofs out, the real Luke does the same on
the planet he was actualy on, and as our now greatly reduced band of
heroes escape thanks to Rey's Force-lifting a giant pile of rocks out
of the way of the back entrance to the mine, we also see some of the
younglings that Finn and Rose interacted with on their mission being
recruited into the Rebellion.
And since I've gone on for the better
part of three pages here, it's time to wrap this thing up. I know
I've left a few things out and glossed over a few others, but like I
mentioned at the top of the review, it's a two and a half hour movie,
and I've been trying to sumarize. Best way to make up for that would
be to see the movie for yourself. One thing I liked, aside from the
effects, is that all the characters seemed well-rounded and real.
They did that well in Force Awakens, too, but I think they did better
here.
Something I'm kind of wondering about,
though, is how they'll handle Leia in the next movie, since Carrie
Fisher died after filming was complete for this movie. I'm glad they
went ahead with the story as planned anyway, because I think that's
what Ms. Fisher would have wanted. At the same time, though, of
Luke, Leia and Han, Leia was the only one left alive at the end of
this movie, and now the person who really made her work is no longer
with us, so it'll be interesting to see how they handle it in the
next movie.
All in all, though, I'd say this is
worth checking out in whatever means you prefer. It's proof of why
Star Wars is held in such high regard even 40 years later.
No comments:
Post a Comment