Smashing the Mask

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

2017

D: Rian Johnson

**********

Pros: One Good Arc, Acting, Cinematography

Cons: Derivative, Pretentious Subversions, Underwhelming Score

       This is obviously a contentious movie, and there has been much talk over it.  It has become one of those things that divides society.  Most of us recognized it as a heavily flawed movie while others dismiss this as fanboy whining.  In a strange twist this has mostly correlated to political alignment, with the more liberal groups' defending this film as a way to cover up for shoddy writing; it’s a microcosm of the SJW movement.  What’s baffling about this trend is that the Left would not be losing ground in the culture war if their escalation of it continued to focus on conservatives.  Instead they’ve gotten greedy and decided to encroach on the very Panem et Circenses that they’ve depended upon to maintain a mutually beneficial non-aggression pact with Centrists.  Oddly enough, aside from some mild but poorly-executed and inconsistent pacifist/feminists themes, the movie wasn’t terribly political.  I mostly shrugged it off until I experienced massive gaslighting campaign by the press to shame people into think the movie was great when it clearly wasn’t.  It’s an odd case in which the blinding arrogance of influencers transcends ideology.  Perhaps it's also not a good sign that the poster campaign was so good.

       I begins with The Resistance’s rushing to evacuate their base from the previous movie before the First Order arrives for payback for destroying Starkiller Base.  There's a good sense of urgency in this scene, particularly in the moment when the X-Wings hurriedly land in their cruiser's hangar so it can escape into hyperspace.  In defiance of General Leia Organa’s (Carrie Fisher) orders, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) leads a wing of bombers to destroy a First Order Dreadnought.  While the bombing is successful, all said bombers are lost.  The absurd fragility of these craft (which is an insult to the famously durable planes they’re named after; they're more like G4M Bettys) has provoked much criticism, but it does make some sense.  After all, Y-wings are about 50 years old by now and have all probably broken down.  B-Wings probably have too because of their impractically complex design.  Bad designs also happen, and it’s not unreasonable that the New Republic would just dump one of theirs onto a group of ragamuffins who couldn’t afford better.  Unfortunately, JJ had to ruin this explanation by putting Y-Wings and B-Wings in The Rise of Skywalker.  The scene is actually pretty tense, as Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) sister (Veronica Ngo) sacrifices herself on one of these ships.

       It’s a primary theme of this movie that Poe made a massive mistake due to his masculinity and needs to be taught humility by women.  However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Poe took the type of risk one needs to in war, and his line that the Dreadnoughts are “fleet killers” implies that the Resistance ships could not have survived the resultant plot had that thing not been taken out.  After Leia is incapacitated, Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) is put in charge and immediately embarks on a brilliant plan in which she attempts to save the Resistance fleet while acting catty towards Poe every time he voices his concerns over her vagueness.  This provokes the fighter ace to lead a mutiny which is soon quelled.  Holdo rams the Mega Star Destroyer Supremacy at light speed (begging the question of why no one else ever does this), but the validity of her sacrifice is directly contradicted by Rose’s sabotaging Finn’s (John Boyega) similar action at the end of the movie.

        The sheer strategic buffoonery required for this plot to exist is staggering.  The First Order’s Star Destroyers apparently cannot shoot at a slow fleeing cruiser, and the have to call back the fighters because they can’t cover them at that distance (what the hell do they think fighters are for?  It's like when your wing mates in Starfox 64 beg for coverage from you when you're in a tank). It’s only a matter of time before the good guys run out of fuel but they can’t escape into hyperspace because the Mega Star Destroyer can track their lightspeed signature (an ability already implied to a limited extent in ANH) and apparently splitting up to different locations wasn’t an option.  The cloaked ships could have been detected if the First Order had been sensible enough to scan for them, but they only thought to do so because of an indirect result of Poe’s actions.  I don’t want to spend too much time making cliched logistical criticisms of this movie, but it had to be done.  Then again, these contrivances mainly serve the artificial “subversive” theme that the dumb male hero needs to be put in his place.  Oddly enough, it turns somewhat misogynistic when Leia and Holdo finally confide to each other like a couple of schoolgirls that they think Poe is cute.  This suggests that Holdo's tension was some kind of insecure overcompensation or twisted flirtation ritual that poor Poe wasn't in on.

         Desperate to solve the problem of the lightspeed tracking, Poe sends Finn and Rose Tico on a mission to Canto Bight to find an expert codebreaker (Justin Theroux) so he can short out this ship’s trump card.  This entire subplot not only spoils the movie’s plot structure, but also derails the tone with its over-the-top cartoonish humor and preachy messages.  It’s too bad you couldn’t address complex themes of class struggle in a single line that doesn’t derail the plot while turning anyone into a caricature. 

There’s a massive “eat the rich” overtone, and a sappy moment in which Rose and Finn free a bunch of mistreated animals that will surely not be rounded up later anyway.  Those creatures do look sympathetic, but the Rancor was actually a far more tragic and subtle depiction of animal cruelty.  It doesn’t help that the modern casino setting clashes with the franchise aesthetic even more than Dexter’s Diner from Episode II.  Rose and Finn get sidetracked by a parking violation and end up recruiting DJ (Benicio del Toro) instead.  While he helps them hack the device when they infiltrate the Supremacy, they are found out and he saves himself by leaking information about the Resistance’s plans, necessitating a desperate siege on the planet Hoth Crait.  What strikes me as so hypocritical about the racebaiting from Johnson and TLJ fans is that this is a movie in which about a confused Guatemalan’s sending an Asian woman and a black man on a pointless snipe hunt of a sidequest while white people solve all the problems.

        While I’ve spent much time making derivative criticisms, I’m also one of the people who believes that Luke’s arc is a redeeming feature of the movie.  A lot of people say that it’s a character derailment for someone as hopeful and determined as Luke was to give up so easily and become so cynical, but different things can break different people.  Luke may have overcome insane odds to triumph at the end of the trilogy, but there might have been an assumption that that victory meant something.  It would make perfect sense that seeing the very evil he fought against revive itself within a generation would break him.  He would conclude that this was nothing more than a cycle when he thought there was a happy ending.  Yes, I know Mark Hamill was not a fan of this arc.  I also know enough about Mark Hamill as a person to not care what he thinks.  The closest thing he can experience to getting blackpilled is getting lionized for performative outrage in overreaction to conservative rearguard actions.  Old Man Luke also provides a good foil for Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) hopefulness.  It’s a bit like Yoda on Dagobah all over again, but it’s well-acted and it’s the most compelling part of the movie.  It's also a far better Dude homage than Fat Thor from Endgame because it realized that the Dude was funny for his sardonic wit, not because he was a stoner bum.

        Also engaging is the arc occurring between and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey even if it is unearned in the context of the former's murdering the closest thing the latter had to a father in the last film.  Facilitated by a contrived new Force power courtesy of Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), they visually communicate with each other across the galaxy, their romantic tension building until Rey finds out how Luke’s mistake drove Ben to the Dark Side and leaves Planet Skellig Michael to seek him out.  I like that touch with rainwater's manifesting on Kylo's face to symbolize their growing bond, but that apparently inspired a logistical copout from JJ.  It’s too bad this saga doesn’t have character who directly empathizes with Ben Solo who can just appear out of thin air.  That could provide our protagonists with some helpful insight.  Rey travels to the Supremacy and confronts Snoke in his throne room.  In a satisfying moment Kylo finally stands up to Snoke by killing him (albeit with a stupidly obvious misdirection) and fighting off his royal guard with Rey.  This would have been a great cathartic climax if not for the plot's going nowhere after that.  I’m not the first person who thought it would have been better if the movie had cut to credits or just never showed these two characters after the moment Kylo offered Rey his hand.  Johnson had multiple good options at the end of this scene: Rey and Kylo join forces and attempt to run the First Order in a better direction, Rey and Kylo join forces and join the Resistance, Rey and Kylo join forces and become a third party diumvirate.  Heck, even Rey's joining the Dark Side would be different as well as logical after Luke's rejection.  All of these would have taken the trilogy in a new and interesting direction.  Instead, they separate and continue their present courses, a massive anticlimax.       

         There’s also stylistic reason that this scene lacks the impact it could have.  Most people criticize this fight for its dodgy choreography.  With its convenient tricks and timing, it is more of a dance than a fight, but that actually fits the context in the movie.  Action can be a tense (Die Hard), but it can also be a release (Equilbrium), and this fight is definitely the latter.  Kylo and Rey have overcome an obstacle and the cathartic action scene is mere lagniappe to underscore the triumph of that moment.  They fight together as a representation of their new bond.  But the problem (in addition to the narrative anticlimax immediately afterward) is that this fight doesn’t have the awesome music to go with it.  In fact, it’s like watching a music video without music.  A frustrating and not-often criticized problem in modern movies is that filmmakers have forgotten how to score epic, cathartic action.  They think that all you need for such scenes is a motif for the buildup before you downplay the music when the action starts.  No, no, no.  You keep that shit going.  Watching heroes finally overcome evil after a grind is not satisfying without the sound.  One of the reasons I found the final battle in Endgame so soporific (besides its having the color palette of a 70’s car interior and being confused about which kind of action scene it was) is that it was relatively restrained in its musical accompaniment.  Contrast this with these final action sequences in Teen Titans and Speed Racer, which took good advantage of the original theme songs.  Up til now the Star Wars movies were a good example of how to do it right (with the possible exception Phantom Menace’s arguably lacking the dramatic justification for its own epic action theme).  The tense, standoffish battle between Luke and Vader in Empire Strikes Back appropriately had next to no music, and that remained the same in Return of the Jedi until Vader pushed Luke too far and this happened.  The hatred and anger between Obi-Wan and Anakin was also nicely conveyed through music.  It’s not like the film industry doesn’t know we enjoy this, because they use epic music in trailers to trick us into seeing lame movies all the time.            

         After The Supremacy is destroyed in a arc tie-in that’s very well-executed, the good guys and bad guys rendezvous for the final showdown on Planet Red Velvet Cake.  This world has an interesting design, with a white, salty surface and a red, crystalline interior.  It’s a creative setting and the caves would be great for a lightsaber fight, but it was unfortunately wasted on retro fanservice.  The surface battle is reminiscent of the Battle of Hoth, and the filmmakers' take-home on the crystalline caverns is that they look kinda like the interior of the second Death Star.  The result is a pointless fanservice tangent so time-consuming it actually ends up being more cringe than the Baba/Evazon cameo from Rogue One.  It’s during this scene that the single dumbest moment happens.  Finn, deciding to finally redeem his disappointing character arc with heroic self-sacrifice, attempts to ram a miniaturized superlaser, buying the Resistance life-saving time.  But Rose sabotages his attempt and then explains her action with an incredibly stupid line that’s actually a pretty good summary of the Seamless Garment Doctrine.  As if the repudiation Finn’s “rash” action isn’t contradictory enough in the light of the Holdo Maneuver, Luke manages to sacrifice himself in order to delay the First Order by Force-Projecting his image in order to bait Kylo Ren into a phantom lightsaber fight.  I guess only white people are allowed to fix things.  Speaking of white people, Rey spends most of this scene gleefully shooting at TIE fighters from the Millennium Falcon because her arc’s pretty much over.

        It’s a good ending for Luke, and it’s a satisfying end to his arc.  He finally rediscovers hope and sacrifices himself to save the heroes for the last time.  It would have been interesting for there to be a literal meaning behind his telling Kylo he’ll be “seeing him around,” like he’ll be literally haunting the villain in the next movie.  Then again there were many strong implications of TFA that were aborted in this movie.  Johnson did not appreciate that Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) just lost his best friend and the last movie, and that this loss was exacerbated by the fact that Ben Solo wasn’t exactly a stranger, either.  Instead he simply had Chewie bond with cute little “porgs” in a decidedly cloying scene before allowing them to nest in the Falcon’s circuitry.  I’ve never liked this low-key denial of the aliens’ personhood that sometimes comes up in this franchise.  Not to mention the compelling theory that Kylo Ren's "pull of the light" is actually Anakin's desperately trying to reach him.  The Knights of Ren were another thing that didn't get their due development, hence their anemic presence in TROS (not that "not having enough to work with" was an excuse for how terrible that movie was).  I’m also frustrated that a critically-acclaimed director with the benefit of millions of dollars had less narrative wherewithal than deviantArt/Tumblr randos.   

         This movie has an odd mix of fanservice and its opposite.  Perhaps one of the most obvious moments is when Kylo Ren destroys his mask after Snoke tells him it looks ridiculous.  I think “Smashing the Mask” could be a good term to describe conscientious fan disservice to pretentiously show that you’re “above” the feelings of silly “fanboys.”  TROS mended the mask to show us we could have nice things again but didn't take full advantage of it.  Another such moment was the anticlimactic background death of Admiral Ackbar, and Timothy D. Rose was actually quite upset by the moment's being reduced to a bad on-set joke.  Conversely, the movie is also a collection of plot points from Empire and Jedi which were “subverted” by taking them in the opposite direction.  Like forced contrivance, this is well established as not much more than a uncreative person’s mockery of creativity.  

       Another problem is the inconsistent tone provided by the deconstructions and the forced gag humor.  Whenever I see Finn’s being too comical (like the watersuit scene), a loud voice in my head reminds me that this character was supposedly trained from early childhood to be a professional soldier.  I would interpret this movie as a better Star Wars spoof than Spaceballs, but there is one moment in which it sinks to Spaceballs-tier humor when an beehived-haired alien with a vagina on her forehead and a mass of boobs for a body screams in an operatic voice at one moment.  Another source of forced humor is General Hux; any pretense that this is a serious character has been thrown away.  This is a shame because I really like Domnhall Gleeson as an actor.  To make things worse, TROS actually came close to justifying his buffoonery in this movie be revealing that he was a resistance mole, only to ruin it by revealing he only did this for cynical reasons before unceremoniously killing him off in the next scene.  This could have been a great twist and Hux’s impression of twisted awe at the destruction of the Hosnian system could be interpreted as suppressed horror in the same way Obi-Wan’s impression could be retconned before he lied to Luke in ANH.  Also, I’m pretty sure this is the first Star War in which someone says “ass," which is an important moment in Star Wars history.

      The movie’s design is a mixed bag.  Like most of the sequel trilogy, it’s largely derivative of OT designs.  The Supremacy takes the “bigger is better” approach.  While far more gargantuan than the Executor, it lacks its creative design and simply looks like a generic flying wing.  Snoke’s throne room is clearly modeled after the black lodge from Twin Peaks with more people beating the shit out of each other.  The Dreadnought is effectively simple, but looks less like a Star Wars ship and more like a Starfox 64 homage to a Star Wars ship, complete with a blatantly ethnic captain (Mark Lewis Jones).

There are better designs, like the bombers, the fathiers, the Libertine, and background speeders on Canto Bight.  The TIE Silencer is also a cool, innovative design, so of course JJ had to replace it with a donked-out TIE Interceptor.  The Canto Bight scene also outdoes Jex's Diner in being far to recognizably Terran in appearance to fit in this universe.  I can't help but point out that Solo did a far better job visualizing high society in a galaxy far, far away.

      There is some good direction in the movie.  Steve Yedlin’s cinematography should have gotten nominated for an Oscar despite one atmospheric shot of Leia’s gazing out onto plains of Crait that makes no sense in context.  John Williams’ score is mostly rehashes from the franchise with one good fight buildup.  Acting is mostly solid, but Rose is a joyless one-note character that doesn’t give Kelly Marie Tran enough to work with.  Other cast members include Billie Lourd, Tom Kane, Adrian Edmondson, Bill Hader, Mike Quinn, Frank Oz, Lupita Nyong’o, Jimmy Vee, Veronica Ngo, Lily Cole, Amanda Lawrence, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gareth Edwards, Gary Barlow, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Hermione Corfield, and Princes William and Harry.  Peter Mayhew was a Chewbacca consultant.

         The Last Jedi caused far more division than it should have.  It’s definitely okay to like this movie as long as you acknowledge the flaws.  You’re allowed to have guilty pleasures.  This conflict was probably because there were a few waves of reaction to this movie.  The first was a reaction of extreme dislike, with a small vocal minority of sexist and racist complaints.  Unfortunately the small minority of right-wing extremists defined the debate, as the stans disingenuously used them as a generalization to silence even the most valid criticisms of this movie.  I found myself in the second wave of hatedom: initially apathetic, then angry at people’s efforts to gaslight over the film’s obvious shortcomings.  Still, I can’t exactly stay mad at TLJ after having been broken by The Rise of Skywalker.  That movie was so bad it reduced me to a raving madman who can’t help but appreciate the aesthetic strengths of Star Wars: Episode VIII.
    Still, despite the comparisons to fanboys as the "dark side," they were the ones with the true love of the franchise, the ones who care about it.  The Dark Side is hypocritical, pretentious posturing.  Johnson has his skills but, like Shane Black, his off-beat deconstructive style works best with original works (or at least obscure adaptations).  When he makes an entry in a pre-sold franchise, it runs the risk of seeming like a contemptuous parody.