The Last Jedi, Or was it?

Eight days till Christmas.

Thirteen till the year is out.

I haven’t seen a movie, which inspired me to write all year long until last night.

Thank god I didn’t pay the extra money to see it in 3D.

Without further adieu, my take on “The Last Jedi”

I am just going to bullet point my commentary on it.

And if spoilers are your thing, please read on. If not please stop reading here.

1) Opening bomber scene. As countless people have reported on already, there is no gravity in space so things the bombs falling on the dreadnought shouldn’t have happened. However, what a lot of people missed is those weren’t gravity bombs, they were actually magnetic bombs. Which is why the arming procedure was so drawn out and inefficient in the movie. They had to magnetically charge the bombs to target the dreadnought. (Fixed it for you Disney, I’ll take payment on Venmo when you are ready to talk)

2) The Rebel Leadership team has a funny way of assigning a value to live’s of rebellion. “NO PO! DON’T USE BATTLEFIELD MOMENTUM and score a tactical strike on the FIRST ORDER IT’S TOO RISKY! INSTEAD, LET’S PRETEND WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM AND RUN AWAY, SLOWLY BEING PICKED OFF. IT’S BETTER TRUST ME!”

3) Rey and Lucas Skywalker. We were teased at the end of The Force Awakens with Rey meeting Luke and she handing him his lightsaber. (But wait wasn’t his last lightsaber green?) As an audience member, I was pumped up to see an epic training montage of seeing the true capabilities of the force being awakened. Instead, we got roughly thirty minutes of grumpy old man subsisting all the while muttering “You are wasting your time.” When the training does begin, it is just a meditation session, with a comedic intro. I would have liked to see Rey become empowered with her understanding of the force.

4) Unnecessary cuteness. Throughout the galaxy, countless lives were lost on both sides. I mean for Pete’s sake Finn joined the resistance because he saw his best stormtrooper buddy die in the TFA. Worlds were destroyed, entire eco-systems ravage by the ugly truth of war. War is destructive, desolate, demoralizing, and harsh. So why the fuck did they think this was necessary? THE POORG? “THE HORSE CAMEL KANGAROO THING”- BEN SHAPIRO, The CRYSTAL CRITTERS. Then it dawned on me when the collective audience remarked an adorable “AWW” At the scene of a Wookie about to enjoy his dinner when he is guilted by the bug-eyed adorable things. All the unnecessary cuteness was just another way for Disney to reach into the American consumer’s wallets with merchandise.

5) All the problems with the “Monte Carlo” casino planet.

a) “Rich people suck and they acquired their money through the blood of others.” Social commentary has always been a subtext of Star Wars. I mean for Heaven’s sake ANAKIN WAS A WHITE SLAVE. I appreciate how they can say that wealth is bad, when the movie had an opening weekend of 220 million dollars stateside, with a total of 450 million worldwide.

b) The parking situation on the planet. We get introduced to the Monte Carlo of the Star Wars universe with an alien complaining about illegal parking. Which the parking enforcement bureau responds with immediate jail time. Maybe what the scene was trying to do was show the futility of the most useless characters in the movie Finn and Rose. They literally can’t even park right.

c) The uber hacker. The man with the red pin on his lapel seemed like an interesting character. Had James Bond swagger, and the courageous knowledge to bet at the high roller table. Alright maybe we can get a new interesting character I get to root for. NOPE. We Get Benicio Del Torro, sans “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” without Johnny Depp and all the drugs.

D) The Race Track scene. One of my most precious memories of the star wars universe is the got damn pod racing scene in “A Phantom Menace.” It was so good that Lucas Arts even licensed an N64 game, which I spent hours playing and enjoying. So when they panned to the race track I got excited. I was like yes! They are bringing them back. What I got instead was the horse camel kangaroo things, and was an immediate disappointment. A plot device to overtly explain that animal abuse is bad. If you don’t know that by now, a star wars movie isn’t going to help that.

I think the Monte Carlo scene was useless and not necessary to the point. Because the last Rebel Ship had only 18 hours left of fuel. The processing of the parking infraction would have at least consumed 4 hours of that. It was dumb. Because the Rebellion had a secret weapon all along.

6) The poor leadership of the rebellion. Let’s keep running until we are out of gas. Oh, wait why don’t we just ram the hell out of them with a jump to light speed? We had to wait till all the support vehicles, medical ships, and destroyers were destroyed first to realize that? They could have economically kept the fight going if they would have done that in the first place. Saving the lives of the majority of the rebellion, but instead, they waited until the “Spark” was a Mandalorian Freighter able to do the Kessel run in 12 parsecs filled to capacity.

7) Luke’s final battle. We got some instances of the power of the force, Leia’s spacewalk, and Rey’s stone moving ability. Why couldn’t we get a real demonstration of how the one who was supposed to bring balance to the force full capabilities? True luke did withstand an enormous barrage of AT-AT’s, because he wasn’t even there in the flesh. Did anyone watch the clone wars tv show? That shit was dope, freaking Yoda and Mace Windu were handing out cans of whoop azz in surplus. I would have liked to see Luke do a bunch of flips with a lightsaber in hand, and rip those AT-AT’s in half. What I saw instead was a couple ducks and dives by Luke under Kylo’s dope ass red lightsaber. Until it was revealed that Luke wasn’t even there. LAME.

8) Like this rant/review, I felt the movie dragged on. I am used to Breaking Bad, and Son’s of Anarchy, with those, got damn cliffhanger endings. There were so many places they could have tastefully ended the movie leaving the audience wanting more. What we got was Starwars universe with a blank checkbook to whoever wants to control it. All the old characters, so the powers that be can literally suck the charm out of it, and bend it to their will. Doesn’t matter now, people will continue to shell out their cash, because heck it is Star Wars. As long as that name stays the same it will be a fiscal powerhouse for as long as I live.

9) Taste.

For fuck’s sake, Carrie Fischer passed away this year. You think that the first thing in the credits would have been “Forever in our hearts, Our princess Carrie Fischer.” Nope.

Not even close.

It was about 90 seconds in before Carrie got the memorial, by then the audience I was in was had about all left.

That’s disrespectful to say the least.