Skiffy (Page 2)

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 So here we are, at long last: the last installment of my longform review of The Last Jedi! Huzzah!! We have now reached the “Random Observations and Thoughts” part of the review, so here’s a bunch of stuff in no particular order or with any particular logical through-line. Here we go: ::  The Last Jedi may well be the most beautiful Star Wars film ever made. This is a series that has always amazed on the visual level, but this movie goes above andDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 Ye Gods, there’s a lot of failure in this movie, on all sides. Nearly everybody fails in this movie at least once. I don’t recall a story so completely full of capital-F FAIL in quite some time. Let’s take a photographic tour of all the FAIL in The Last Jedi!!! Seriously, that is a lot of screwing up, across the board. What gives? For me, all the failure in TLJ is one of the most interesting things about its story. Over the course of the movieDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 Hey! Hey guys! If Kylo gets together with a bunch of his buddies, is that a Ren-fest? OK, fine. But let’s talk about Kylo Ren anyway. I keep getting this feeling in these two movies that Kylo Ren should be a really interesting character. Adam Driver gives it his all, and he almost single-handedly elevates the character, but the problem with Kylo Ren that TFA had is the same one that TLJ continues. The basics just aren’t there, and TLJ doesn’t really do much to correct the issue likeDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 If the main heroes were underdrawn in TFA, the villains were doubly so. The First Order’s origins were completely unexplained, as was its power differential: was it the Empire reborn, or was it some insurgent effort? How did it have the means to build a superweapon over twice as large and powerful as either Death Star, which the Galactic Empire could only manage to build twice? How was the First Order managing to stockpile its armies with troopers kidnapped apparently as kids, and yet managing to do thisDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 I was never bothered by Rey’s abilities in TFA, the way some fans were. What bothered me was that there was no acknowledgment that she was aware of her nature, nor was there any hint of what she wanted. In TFA Rey had just one stated motivation: to get back to Jakku so that she could maintain her apparently lifelong vigil for the return of her parents. That was it. Even at the film’s end, when Starkiller Base was destroyed and Han was dead and she had fought off KyloDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 FINN: Look, this whole place is beautiful. I mean, come on–why do you hate it so much? ROSE: Look closer. My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system. The First Order stripped our ore to finance their military…then shelled us to test their weapons. They took everything we had. And who do you think these people are? There’s only one business in the galaxy that’ll get you this rich. FINN: War. This was originally going to be the part about Rey, but I decided to add this one insteadDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 part 3 Original TFA screenwriter Michael Arndt has said in interviews that a big problem he faced in drafting that movie was that no matter how hard he worked on making the new characters compelling, as soon as Luke Skywalker showed up he pretty much took over the movie. That’s why the structural solution to that problem was to postpone Luke’s appearance to the very end of that film, which always struck me as one of the things that TFA genuinely got one hundred percent right. TLJ gives us Luke…and he nearly does take over theDown the rabbit hole….

part 1 part 2 Star Wars has always had a different thing going on with the mothers, hasn’t it? Anakin’s mother, Shmi, is killed by the Sandpeople in the event that catalyzes Anakin’s descent toward the Dark Side of the Force. Luke Skywalker never knows his mother, and only has a mother figure in Aunt Beru. Leia herself claims to know nothing of her own birth mother beyond vague images and feelings. In this new trilogy, Leia herself is a mother, and her son Ben is now Kylo Ren, the major villain of this saga. He fell to the DarkDown the rabbit hole….

Part 1 Ever since Luke disappeared, people have been looking for him…he was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him. Destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible. He just walked away from everything…people that knew him best think he went looking for the first Jedi temple. –Han Solo, The Force Awakens The Force Awakens ended with Rey flying the Falcon, with Chewbacca and R2-D2, to a distant and lost planet where apparently the Jedi Order first began, on a rocky island in a wide ocean. Here she finds Luke Skywalker, who has disappeared. Rey approachesDown the rabbit hole….