While his scenes training Rey (Daisy Ridley) are beautifully done, they can't make up for the fact that the character performing the training feels less like Luke Skywalker than he does Johnson's own original creation with the Skywalker name slapped onto him. Because the explanation for Luke's loss of faith is critical to the film's plot, the perfunctory execution makes everything we're supposed to believe about his character's transformation feel unconvincing. As Mark Hamill himself pointed out, Luke Skywalker's (Hamill) abandonment of his belief in Jedi teachings directly contradicts his personality and actions from the original trilogy, and the backstory filled in here to explain his sudden turn is delivered in startlingly brief monologues instead of scenes that actually flesh out the character dilemmas they're meant to reveal. (Johnson deserves to be commended for his boldness, but audacity is not the same thing as quality.) The problem with "The Last Jedi" is that it doesn't logically connect everything we saw from the previous movies with what happens in this one.
That said, "Star Wars" is not "Breaking Bad," and the same narrative tricks that worked for the latter feel jarringly out of place in the former. Frankly, I'd be shocked if it wasn't instrumental in landing Johnson his "Star Wars" gig. It was a powerful piece of television filmmaking and - because it was suitably epic while remaining rooted in what viewers had come to know and love (or hate) about the characters - felt like an appropriate culmination of their various story arcs. Without spoiling the story, its purpose was to serve as the climax for all of the major characters viewers had gotten to know throughout the show - the moment when, for everyone from antiheroes Walter White and Jesse Pinkman to their adversary Hank Schrader, the proverbial chickens came home to roost. Appropriately enough, the easiest way to explain my point is to compare "The Last Jedi" to the "Breaking Bad" antepenultimate episode "Ozymandias," which, like "The Last Jedi," was directed by Rian Johnson.
#Was star wars the last jedi bad movie#
I also think the people who have been harassing Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega, Rian Johnson and other creative individuals who helped make "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" are racist, sexist and all-around deplorable human beings (and I use the term "deplorable" quite deliberately here).īefore I get into the problem of the toxic nerd culture that has caused the harassment of "The Last Jedi" alums like actress Tran, however, I'd like to explain precisely why I think the movie itself was an epic misfire. That is a personal opinion, one with which other men and women of good will should feel comfortable disagreeing. I think "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" was a bad movie.