Media Consumption Blog: Star Wars Edition!

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Since we know some of you may be waiting to see the latest Star Wars film, we have decided to split up this post. Up top, Grace has written some spoiler-free musings on The Last Jedi, and below Derek has a more (serious) spoiler-ific review. We’ll give you a second warning at the point Derek’s review starts!

Grace

Happy Porgidays! Wow, it’s that time of year again, where we all gather round the silver screen with great merry and cheer, to celebrate the gift that gives all year.

I am talking of course about the Porg.

We are Porg. Resistance is futile.

And there’s so much to be grateful for this year! Porgo Ren and Rey Porgs-her-name get up to all kinds of hijinks in The Last Jedi. Those knuckleheads, will they ever get along??

Even Porgs have daddy issues.

The Resistance were in trouble at the end of The Force Awakens, suffering a crushing morale blow at the hands of the evil Empire, but we’ve got a new generation of heroes rising up to the challenge. Porg Damerporg has to figure out a way to foil the latest Imperial plot, and he’s got a lot of confidence in his judgment and abilities. 

May we all one day attain the confidence of a Porg Damerporg 

We’ll also meet new friends along the way! Like Rose Porgo, a spunky mechanic of some kind with a lot of heart. 

Never forget - Porg heart is Porg power!

So, with all that said, let’s close out by thanking Porg for all they’ve done for us this year with a traditional Porgiday hymn.

Dashing overhead, 

At Millenium falcon speed

O’er baddies we go

Landing with a screech

Chewbacca’s hair on point,

Porgs all set to stun

We out here ready to annoint

The king of Porgle fun

Porgle toes, Porgle toes 

They have birdie feet

Porgle toes, Porgle toes...

...I wasn’t expecting that.

Hey!

And with that, I’ll toss this over to Derek for his thoughts on the Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi. 

Derek

The Force Awakens was not a good movie, but that’s not what it needed to be. It needed only to prove that, after the prequel movies, Star Wars was, this time, in good hands. The bar was incredibly low for Awakens and it cleared it - just establish a new cast of characters and tie it in as closely as possible to the original trilogy, otherwise take as few risks as possible. It was essentially a flashy, uber-budget remake of the original film. It was not a good movie, but it was a good Star Wars movie.

The Last Jedi is an incredible Star Wars movie, however its greatest achievement is that it is also a good movie. JJ Abrams was a great fit for the previous film, the company man to prop this monstrous franchise on a sturdy foundation, but Rian Johnson (also responsible for stone-cold modern classic Looper) brings the storytelling chops the franchise desperately needed. Goddamn, when was the last time a Star Wars film had a damn story as opposed to a thin plot connecting flashy set-pieces? The Last Jedi’s token lightsaber fight between Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) actually had weight, meaning, stakes, and when it was over you weren’t sure where the two Jedi stood on the evil-to-good spectrum. For once, these weren’t action figures, they were people!

For the last 20 years or so, it’s been a given that Star Wars is one of cinema’s all-time great franchises. Water is wet, the sun rises in the morning, and Star Wars is great, these are the things we as a people have agreed are true. I’ve personally been waiting for Star Wars to prove its relevance, not with box office numbers, but with raw filmmaking. The Last Jedi is the best the series has done to proving just that. It’s not without its faults, and I’m not about to start screaming from the roof tops that this series is once again mankind’s greatest achievement, but it feels good to say I genuinely enjoyed a Star Wars movie.

So that’s the short version, without getting into specifics.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

At its core, The Last Jedi’s story is a charming bottle episode. The film begins with Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his First Order attacking the last remaining Rebel base. The Rebels not only narrowly manage to evacuate, but also take down an enemy battleship. Now, low on fuel and with a severely diminished fleet, the Rebels spend the bulk of the film unable to shake the First Order, their only recourse to stay just outside of the First Order’s reach. That the immediate plot of The Last Jedi is “oh jeez, we gotta get away from the bad guys!!” is incredibly refreshing. It bucks typical blockbuster faire. The stakes are high as the fleet is the last of the rebellion, but for once there’s no doomsday device, just the rather mundane threat of simply being snuffed out by torpedo blasts. It isn’t a substantially less contrived framing, but it is daring for a film of this magnitude, plus it has the added benefit of keeping all our heroes and villains in the general vicinity.

Well, not all of them. Picking up where Awakens left off, Rey is on a distant planet hanging out with Mark Hamill acting his damn ass off as Luke Skywalker. As Rey hones her Jedi powers, we learn what Luke’s been up to since Return of the Jedi, filling in the fallout between him and Kylo Ren (aka Ben Solo) quite nicely. We also meet the Porg who are adorable, hilarious, and don’t overstay their welcome, unlike most cutie Star Wars characters.

While Luke and Rey are hatching things out, we have two other stories that are the weakest parts of the film. Finn (John Boyega) teams up with Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), whose sister perished in the battle earlier in the film, to embark on a wild goose chase to a faraway planet to enlist the help of a “code cracker” who can infiltrate the enemy spacecraft and disable their tracker. The entire plotline is almost uniformly unnecessary. It undermines the urgency of the First Order’s pursuit of the Rebels because there’s suddenly all the time in the world to go on a field trip. It involves an extremely contrived prison break sequence, complete with stampeding CG animals. At the end of the day, it's just an extremely roundabout way to get Finn onto the Empire’s ship. It does sprinkle in universe-building nuggets like war-profiteering and child slavery, as if director Johnson was ordered to throw in an unnecessary computer-created chase scene, but used the opportunity to at least fill out the franchise a little more.

The biggest problem with The Last Jedi is that Poe Dameron is a fucking asshole. After the failed escape from the Empire, during which Poe caused many deaths by not following orders, Princess Leia falls into a coma. Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (played limply by Laura Dern), takes her place in the chain of command. Immediately, Poe is defiant and questions her competence. When he is demoted and ordered off the bridge, he organizes the mission with Finn and Rose and stages a mutiny. He’s a cocky jerk and assumes he’s privy to a seat at the table, even though his antics routinely result in needless death. This could have been an interesting dynamic, except that Poe is portrayed as the hero, totally in the right, and Holdo is played as a weak, feckless commander instead of a strong Rebellion leader who shouldn’t have to put up with such brazen insubordination. In the end, Poe ends up sabotaging Holdo’s plan to save the remaining fleet, again causing needless death, all in the name of thick-headed entitlement. I already felt that Poe was a bit of a nothing-character, since he’s in Awakens for all of 5 minutes, but his dickishness isn’t earned in this film. In a film where most other major plot points are built on logical character development, this stands out as an incredible sore spot.

It says a lot that while huge sections of this film felt off to me, I still enjoyed it. That is because everything wraps up incredibly well. Holdo proves her worth in memorable (and visually striking) moment of sacrifice. Finn’s encounter with his old Empire boss was a standout scene. Kylo’s encounter with Luke, and ultimately Luke’s death, is clever and fantastic. The film is quite long though never boring, Johnson does an incredible job of keeping all plates spinning. Most of problems stem from fact that this is not a stand alone film, but a piece to a larger puzzle. It is a dish best served with its ilk, not on its own. But as a Star Wars film, that’s more than clearing the bar, it's finally raising it.