The Last Jedi review

I think Star Wars is played out. There is simply nothing else that you can do with this universe that hasn’t been done already, and zero effort is being put in to creating new and compelling stories. Or at least this is the feeling I got viewing The Last Jedi…. Episode VIII is a disappointment. It carries over all of the things that were a let-down about The Force Awakens, and adds little to the greater Star Wars mythos.

Spoilers ahead!

 

Main Premise is stupid

The main plot is a contrivance that makes absolutely no sense.

Ok, so the Rebel fleet is running out of fuel and can’t make a light speed jump because they can be tracked and would then be unable to escape when they reach their destination. They can accelerate outside of the range of the perusing First Order fleet, and can then stay out of range, using sub light engines because the Rebel ships are smaller, and can accelerate quicker. The clock is now ticking to find a way out of the situation before fuel runs out.

Star destroyer keeps up with Leia's Corellian Covette

I call bullshit. Even  ignoring the fact that star destroyers had no issue keeping up with a Corellian corvette at the beginning of A New Hope, or catching up with the Millennium Falcon in Empire, and so should have easily kept up with a lumbering Mon Calamari cruiser, the First Order had heaps of options to catch the fleet.

Launching a wave of TIE bombers? There would have been several squadrons available. Firing torpedoes?

Or how about just going faster? The resistance fleet is running out of fuel, but the First Order Fleet isn’t… How about making a light speed jump to simply catch up? Or hell, what not use some actual tactics and hyperjump a star destroyer on either side of the resistance fleet, one ahead of the fleet to slow it down, and Snoke’s ship directly behind, and then open fire with a massive concentrated volley on all sides?

Ok, they wanted a cat and mouse scenario. But there was no tension. The whole premise felt really forced, and really unbelievable. It was literally just waiting for the clock to run out.

And not to mention this is the Rebel fleet we are talking about! These same admirals, capital ships, and star fighters stood against a massive fleet of star destroyers and a death star at Endor, AND WON. They were feared by the Empire to the point that they scoured the galaxy to wipe them out, and stood up to everything the Empire threw at them. The same fleet that was so effective at guerrilla tactics and subterfuge that the Empire committed the last remaining Jedi to hunt them down as his primary mission.

This heroic fleet didn’t go down in a blaze of glory - capital ship versus capital ship, in a battle of tactics, standing until the last in a heroic showdown protecting what was left of freedom in the galaxy.

Nope… Instead the freaking Rebel fleet was defeated because it literally ran out of gas. 

And why would the entire fleet run out of fuel at the same time anyway? Do the resistance refuel all their ships at exactly the same time to share a discount coupon or something?

What we got was boring and a let-down.

The First Order Strikes Back…

The Empire Strikes Back is perhaps the best sequel ever made. Clearly Rian Johnson agrees, as The Last Jedi is once again a remake. It’s not a blatant retelling like The Force Awaken was of a New Hope, but it hits all the major points. Zero effort was put into tell a new story.

The education of Rey as a Jedi is the prime example.

Luke faces his dark side trial on Dagobah

• The protagonist has to enlist the help of a reclusive Jedi master who has put himself into exile in what is a difficult environment that hides their location.

• The purpose of this exile is partly as a penance for a wrong they feel they committed.

• The master is reluctant to take on the protagonist as a learner, feeling they are undisciplined and perhaps already influenced by the dark side.

• The protagonist enters a cave strong in the dark side of the force that tests their resolve. Both encounters end with the protagonist seeing a reflection of themselves in the dark side.

• After failing to control their emotions, and failing to prove their rejection of the dark side, the protagonist leaves the training without having completed it to help their friends. 

• After the protagonist leaves master is visited by the ghost of an old ally.

Meanwhile our hero’s, having become separated from the Rebel fleet, have decided to enlist
the help of a gambler and criminal who is a major player at an upmarket establishment. They end up being double crossed and captured.

And it goes on. Both films begin with the Rebels scrambling to evacuate their base while under fire from the Empire / first order. The Hoth AT-AT walker ground attack is reproduced, complete with frontal assault by atmosphere based fighters with defence handled by entrenched ground troops….

And, once again, this film is king of the call backs. Luke’s submerged X-wing. Yoda. “Rebel Scum”. Blue milk. Emperors guards. Jedi master sacrifices himself for the others to escape. Luke looks longingly at the twin suns. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Still nothing is explained

My biggest complaint about The Force Awakens was that it lacked a lot of exposition to bring the audience up to speed with the state of the Republic in this new trilogy and, as a result, felt confused and out of place with the established Star Wars universe. The Last Jedi doubles down on this, and makes no real attempts to explain anything of the premise.

A key example; assuming that the resistance is a direct continuation of the previous rebel forces – and it almost certainly is, being that they employ all the leadership of that organisation, many of the ships, and they outright drop the ‘resistance’ moniker by the end of the film in favour of rebellion – then  why is the fleet so small?

Assuming that the rebel fleet did not replace its losses at all after the Return of the Jedi (and we know they in fact did replace their losses being that Poe’s X-wing squadron is a new model and they have a new class of bomber) then the rebel fleet should still be comprised of several Mon Calamari cruisers and other frigates, escort vessels, and several squadrons of fighters and bombers at least. Yet all that is left at the beginning of The Last Jedi is a single Mon Calamari cruiser, a couple of Nebulon B and B2 frigates and a handful of other frigates. And by the end all is left is a couple of dozen people.

What happened to the Alliance fleet?  I guess that the First Oder could have whittled it down to this remaining force as it moved through Republic space taking planet after planet. But The Last Jedi takes place immediately after The Force Awakens – when did such a campaign take place?

Part of the Rebel Alliance fleet at the battle of Endor.

And while we are at it – why does the Republic not have its own military forces for defence?

It kind of makes sense the new Republic wouldn’t have a centralised military. It was the formation of the clone army under the direct control of the central government that led to the rise of the Galactic Empire, so I can see the member systems of the New Republic being very weary of giving that sort of power over to the central authority again. That’s probably why the Republic was financing the private military of the resistance in the first place.

But the prequels made it very clear that individual systems and organisation have their own militaries for defence. Even the peace loving Naboo had at least one squadron of star fighters. This is also implied in the makeup of the Rebel Alliance fleet in the original trilogy – with each of the rebelling systems adding parts of their own military forces to the cause, giving the Alliance fleet its eclectic collection of ships from various systems.

The Trade Federation private army attacks the Gungan military

In a New Republic that doesn’t have a standing army I could see this being even more the case. Especially after the years of turmoil that undoubtedly happened in the power vacuum after the Empire ended, and the paranoia of not being able to defend themselves should the central government try this again. I could see some of the individual systems that make up the New Republic being armed to the teeth, like, ahem, Corellia…. home of the Republics largest shipyards. The ones that built star destroyers...

Even without a central military, surely the First Order would have had a long slog to take over the New Republic system by system.  Even a token defence like that of Naboo would slow them down. But they appear to have just rocked up and taken it unopposed. Yes, destroying  Coruscant would have made the Republic’s defence much less organised, at least in the short term. But taking out Washington DC wouldn’t make an invasion of America easy by any means…

Why was the Republic such a cake walk? Was their entire defence strategy really in the Resistance fleet?   If so why was it so small and underfunded? Where is everyone else? What happened to the existing Rebel Alliance fleet? What was the state of the republic following the fall of the Empire?

And of course nothing gets answered from The Force Awakens. Who the hell was Snoke? Why didn’t the Republic deal with the First Order when it first became apparent that they were becoming a threat? Where are the Knights of Ren?

Rey the Wunderkind

This wasn’t something that bothered me all as much as some in The Force Awakens, but holy hell they’ve taken it up a notch this time. In the original trilogy the graduation of Luke from a force sensitive nobody to a Jedi knight was a slow process. Luke was only just coming to terms with his Jedi abilities by Empire Strikes back. During the Bespin light sabre duel Vader was only toying with Luke, who was barely able to keep up. But Rey has not only mastered moving things with her mind, but defeats Luke outright in combat! Then takes on a room full of Snoke’s guards.

It’s too much too fast, and completely blew away immersion.

Such a slow story

Ultimately it’s the pace and presentation of the story that really lets this film down.

There are never any real stakes. Finn and Rose heading off to find the thief? It was a non-issue all along. Luke’s fight with Kylo Ren? Luke was never in any danger.  Finn was never actually going to sacrifice himself. The Rebels are in danger of being wiped out? Luke Skywalker deus ex machina to the rescue.

In Empire there was a genuine risk of Luke turning to the dark side. He’d already failed his trial in the dark side cave, and he was letting his emotions push him towards the confrontation at Bespin. And Yoda even stated that he wasn’t the last possible saviour of the galaxy. “That boy is our last hope”. “No. There is another”. But Rey had already rejected the dark side during her trial in the cave, and was heavily invested in saving Kylo Ren. It never felt like there was ever any real threat that she could be turned.

The big climax of the movie of the vice-admiral sacrificing herself was poorly presented. A completely new character that for most of the movie has been portrayed as an incompetent bitch. And now we are supposed to be emotionally invested in her sacrifice?

The main characters have no soul. The actors themselves are great, but the characters are written so one dimensional. They lack that spark that existed between Luke, Leia, and Han. And Poe is presented as a cocksure idiot the whole movie.

And, with the exception of Leia, no respect is given to the characters from the original trilogy. Yoda lies to Luke to trick him into confronting Kylo Ren. Admiral Akbar is named dropped as he is sucked into the vacuum of space.

Luke Skywalker gets the worst treatment of all. After all his training in the original trilogy,  overcoming the temptation of the dark side, and becoming a fully fledged Jedi knight and saviour of the galaxy, Luke gives into his fear and emotions, succumbs to the darkside, and a attempted to cowardly murder Ben Solo in his sleep. REALLY?!? The same Luke Skywalker who risked his own life to redeem Darth Vader, a full fledged sith lord responsible for countless deaths and atrocities, because he could sense the good in him, went straight to murder when one of his own padawan learners had leanings towards the darkside? And not just any padawan - his own nephew, and the son of his best friend. REALLY?!? 

And Luke's fall to the dark side was addressed in a freaking flashback!

Then to end it all, Luke Skywalker, a decades old cultural icon, and a hero to generations of Star Wars fans, dies sitting on a rock on a distant planet out of harm’s way. What the hell killed him anyway?

The original characters are only in these films for the purpose of killing them off.

The verdict?

Star Wars is out of ideas. With the entire expanded universe to draw inspiration from the only thing they could come up with was to remake The Empire Strikes Back. Poorly.

Little effort is being put into making a coherent story that actually adds to established canon, or even fits into the narrative of the previous films. The tone of the original films is gone. Where The Empire Strikes Back had genuine tension and suspense, interesting locations, believable story lines, and ground breaking special effects, The Last Jedi has slapstick comedy , re-hashed stories, re-hashed visuals, and zero tension.  But hey, at least it has ‘splosions right?

The Last Jedi is long and tedious, and feels like the tail end of a far more interesting story.


But I’m sure that is by design. It’s obvious that Disney wants to milk that cash cow for all it’s worth. The core movies are giving us the absolute minimum story so that there is plenty of headroom for novels, comics, games, and standalone films to fill in the gaps, forcing you to spend big if you want the full picture.

The Disney team has very little respect for the source material, and that sucks.

Disney and the Star Wars Expanded Universe

(I started this post on May 4^th – so that’s something that can be said about having a baby, they suck down a lot of time…).

Disney's culling of the Start Wars extended universe (EU) came as a surprise to pretty much no one. No one except the guys of the recent Hate Bit Podcast, who were absolutely livid - particularly Razorfist.

Being a fan of Star Wars

I think many Star Wars fans can relate to my experience of Star Wars.

I lived and breathed Star Wars when I was a kid. I watched the film's at every opportunity. I used to get up at 6am to watch the Ewoks cartoon before school - and hunted out the Ewoks live action spin off films. Star Wars gear often made up a large part of my birthday and Christmas presents, and any money I had was often split between gaming and Star Wars stuff - when I was about 14 I worked out that my collection was worth over $1000. Games like X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces and 'Star Wars' for Sega Master System absolutely blew my mind and are still among my favourite games and most treasured nostalgic memories. Countless hours were spent drawing space combat scenes, making my own star wars Lego designs, reading Star Wars books, reading about Star Wars online (after the internet actually became available that is) and playing Star Wars with my friends. There are lots of things that I was 'really into' during my childhood - Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Jurassic Park - but it was Star Wars that was the thing that I consistently enjoyed through the years.

But I haven't actually sat down to enjoy the film's the way I did as a child in years. And I desperately want too. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch watching A New Hope with my dad - who was himself a big fan. And I really want to share Star Wars with my daughter, in the same way that I enjoyed it growing up. So we could experience that amazement together. But the whole franchise has just been watered down to the point that enjoying it to the level I did as a kid is just impossible. Now I would consider myself a dedicated but casual fan.

It started off with the release of the 1997 special editions. I was pumped about these coming out. New digital enhancements, and new scenes? Hell yes! Then I saw them.... I can still remember my 12 years old self yelling at the TV (didn't get to see them at the movies... parents) that there is no way that Han Solo would step on Jaba the Hutts tail. And the God damned dancing scene in Jaba's palace. The bastardising of the original trilogy is still ongoing, and too this day the only copy of the special editions I own is the 2008 DVD, and only because it came with the theatrical versions as a bonus disc - as craptastic non-anamorphic as they are.

Like everyone though, it was the prequel films were the final nail in the coffin. I remember seeing Episode 1 in theatres back in 99 (when I was 15). Again I was totally psyched. And again I was completely let down. Darth Vader built C3P0? Obi Wan Kenobi worked with R2D2 decades before A New Hope? Poor cinematography and dialogue? And Jar Jar Binks? Then through the 2000s Star Wars was whored out as much as it could with crappy games, crappy books, and crappy merchandise flooding the market. By the time I was sitting in a theatre with the entire audience laughing at Darth Vader's 'nooooo' at the end of Episode 3 my passion for Star Wars was over.

Star Wars Expanded Universe

Tie Fighter - Greatest Star Wars game ever made

But anyway, the expanded universe. My experience with the EU has been mostly with games - X-Wing and Tie Fighter series, Rebel Assault, the Dark Forces series, Rogue Squadron.... And I completely agree with the guys on the Hate Bit Podcast that officially classifying all of the expanded universe as non-canon and taking the stories of Episodes 7-9 in a completely unique direction ignoring any previous EU material will devalue some great Star Wars games and books.

But the problem with the expanded universe is that it's a gigantic cluster fuck. George Lucas and LucasArts had the right of veto on all Star Wars licenses. Every story and every setting in the expanded universe got the green light from Lucas - and so in some way every licensed Star Wars product can be considered canon. Keeping track of all the sorry lines, characters, and technical details present in all the books, games, board games, card games, spin off series, D20 RPGs and toys (many of which contradict each other), and making sure that the upcoming movies don't contradict any of them and that all major plot points are considered would be absolutely impossible. Just considering the games and books of the EU when writing the new movies would be a nightmare. At some point someone’s favorite part of the expanded universe would need to be cut just so the movies could be made. Someone was always going to be pissed off. And where do you draw the line?

But this gets a while lot more complicated when you consider that the expanded universe, especially the games, is incredibly self referential and it would be almost impossible to remove some parts of the EU without impacting the others. Consider this - recently I've been repaying Jedi Academy. In this game you fight against Imperial Remnant troops, which suggests that Jedi Academy, and by extension the entire Dark Forces series, is set in Kevin J. Anderson's Darksaber universe. You could not keep Jedi Academy as canon without also keeping the rest of the Dark Forces saga which preceded it, and all the the other EU materials that have gone into the formation of the Imperal Remnant which the game is referencing.

Kyle Katarn as he appeared in Dark Forces

But it goes so much deeper than that. Kyle Katarn (of the Dark Forces series) appears in the X-Wing Miniatures Game, so for that game the Dark Forces saga, the Imperial Remnant, the Darksaber universe, and associated materials are canon. But the miniatures game also features ships from the X-Wing game series, making that series also part of the miniatures game's canon. 1994s Tie Fighter for DOS (the sequel to X-wing) features Admiral Thrawn indicating that X-Wing/Tie Fighter is set in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy universe making that canon for the miniatures game as well. And the miniatures game also has ships from the Rebel Assault series.... Finally, just to top it off, the story of 1993s X-Wing contradicts the story of the original Dark Forces, and aspects of the Thrawn Trilogy and 1994s Tie Fighter have already been made non-canonical by the prequel films. And that's only scratching the surface...

Admiral Thrawn as he appeared in Tie Fighter

Keeping the Star Wars games canonical would require Disney to navigate a maze of poor storylines, one-off characters, contradictions, and referencing to source materials outside the games themselves. And would we have gotten a good movie trilogy out of it in the end? Doubtful. Leaving the games as canon was never going to happen. And given the complex and restrictive nature of the EU should never happen.

 

My Thoughts

George Lucas always maintained that he was not bound by the expanded universe. The EU was always licensed fan fiction that could be discarded at Lucas's whim. And at the end of the day I feel that Star Wars needs all the help it can get. We cannot have three more bad movies destroying the franchise. And if ignoring the expanded universe will allow the writers and Abrams to have full creative control for the production of the next film trilogy and we get a great core canon experience because of it then I'm all for it. Let them make the movies the way they need to be made, and we'll see what still fits from the expanded universe when they are done. Perhaps they'll even make an effort to preserve some of the better expanded universe materials.

And when it's all done I'm still going to enjoy playing X-Wing and Tie Fighter regardless of their canonical status.

Fuse-Bead Space Invaders

The funny thing about decorating a baby’s room is that it's really just an opportunity to decorate a bedroom with all the crazy stuff that you'd secretly really like to see in your own bedroom. It's also a chance to surround the baby with all the stuff that you enjoy to try and indoctrinate the kid into your way of thinking right from the get go. 

Hama bead Space Invader under construction.

So, having already bought a lightsaber night light and drawn up plans for a Lego Star Wars mobile, I decided it was time to think about gaming themed decorations. My Duke Nukem Forever poster and Aliens: Colonial Marines bandana are perhaps not baby appropriate (not to mention that the poster is already on my bedroom wall), and so I've taken to making my own decorations with bead art.

The first time I was introduced to bead art was through the youtube channel of internet commentator, and all round master shit stirrer, Asalieri.  Looking around the net people have been able to make some fairly cool stuff. Pretty much anything from the pixilated 8-bit era can be reproduced in beads. It looks easy, and fun, so why not try? Well it turns out that almost no where in New Zealand stocks fuse-beads. Certainly not the Perla brand which is popular in the United States. Online store mightyape.co.nz stocks some beads produced by Hama, but not all colours, and frustratingly (and somewhat confusingly) does not stock the peg boards necessary to make any artwork. So after ordering a bag of 6000 beads and 6 peg boards directly from Hama in the United Kingdom I was ready to go.

Hama bead Space Invader still under construction

My first attempt has been a collection of 3 small space invaders. To be honest I'm pretty happy with the results. After finishing a bead Very Hungry Caterpillar my fiancé has started work on a Hama bead Pac man and ghosts set. I'm thinking my next Hama bead project will be from one of my favourite games as a child; Luke Skywalker from the Sega master system version of Star Wars.

This kid will be a Star Wars, Lego, and video game fan in no time! Now if only we owned a house with a baby’s room that we could actually start decorating....

Three completed Hama bead Space Invaders.

EDIT: It turned out that my next Hama bead project was Duke Nukem from Duke Nukem 2. I'm very happy with it.

Hama bead Duke Nukem