Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Well, it was good, but probably not essential. Rian Johnson goes in a slightly different direction than Episode VII and so far I like it. It's darker, more personal, and it's not nearly as easy to determine who's good and who's bad. It's a shame though that only a few characters get this interesting treatment, because then it's all the more obvious that there are a lot of other kinda extra characters. Their charisma and even their own little backstories aren't very interesting or important, and even this time around I didn't feel the same way about Star Wars that I did with the original trilogy. On the other hand, the effort to go a different route and the courage to be grittier and meaner towards the heroes pays off, because it shows that Star Wars could offer more than just spectacular and perfectly done blockbuster entertainment in the future. But it's probably still going to be a while. (07/27/2018)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is good or even excellent in its constituent elements, very progressive in its concepts and ambitions in the context of the saga, but unbalanced, rushed and half-baked as a whole. If episode five illustrated how jumping between plans should look while building a single overarching atmosphere, it is in this respect that episode eight, which vehemently plunders the fifth instalment in terms of style and motifs, fails the most. And that’s a shame, because its storylines demystifying heroism and the canon of the series itself, with Jedi knights at the fore, have tremendous power. But the film never lets them fully develop, as it has to abruptly return to some other storyline or recall that, as Disney’s cash cow, it has to quickly lighten the atmosphere with a wisecrack. Added to that, there are paradoxically a number of needless underdeveloped elements that detract from the viewer’s immersion in the film and encourage doubt and ridicule, so rather than a coherent work, they make a great breeding ground for parodies and fanfiction (though that can be a means of working with the audience and the brand). While the preceding The Force Awakens was a well-oiled rollercoaster, The Last Jedi is a larger colossus, but it wobbles and rattles that much more and the wheels come off. Paradoxically, the new characters had much more space and more effectively got under the viewers’ skin in the preceding episode, whereas the eighth film, though in many ways fleshing out those characters and letting them go in their own, new direction, ends up putting them in an even greater shadow of the iconic characters of the series. Despite all of the positives and new things found in the eighth episode, nothing remains other than to keep an eye out for the ninth one, where, for example, the series could finally go in an utterly new direction, as the eighth film has already cleared out the motifs and iconic sets of the fifth and sixth episodes combined. (12/14/2017)

I tried it again and the Star Wars curse was not broken and once again I experienced 150 minutes of martyrdom. Jedi, First Order, The Force, Skywalker, Resistance, Obi-Wan, it takes a special dictionary to know and navigate all the terms. I didn't find it funny at all, the action is minimal and very uninteresting, the effects feel like something out of the 90's, the story is uninteresting and the pacing is plodding. Anyway, I suffered through this and I probably won't give the next part a chance. Star Wars is the only major film franchise that has completely passed me by and I still don't understand its interest. 20% (03/15/2018)

Star Wars by Charles Dickens. It is a pity that every breathtaking oil painting scene (and there are quite a few of them) and every sequence aspiring for the very best of the whole universe (emotions, fate, choreography and ideas) has a story line that leads nowhere and just accumulates padding on the pile of other padding. A characters that is completely pointless or moments that serves purely as a merchandising insertion "go and buy". Plus, it doesn't work as part of the saga. It does not answer any (really none) of the questions from the previous part, it even ignores most of them. But purely as alone standing movie, the eight film is more than a solid popcorn blockbuster; but whether that is enough in the case of Star Wars is a completely different question. (12/15/2017)

Rogue One thrilled me because it took a bold detour, ditched the Force and showed war as something that hurts like hell. The Last Jedi, on the other hand, brings Star Wars back to its roots, to the legacy of the fifth episode. Whether it's the locations (the white planet), the Force is palpable here (unlike the Abrams film), the layout of the Force of Good and the Force of Evil overlap (the main characters doubt themselves and the meaning of the Force) and in general it's an massive improvement over the seventh episode. Whether it's the treatment of the characters (Kylo Ren is finally a charismatic badass and not a teenage brat from Hogwarts who looked like he just had his magic wand stolen as in Abrams’s film), the script, which is convoluted and interesting enough to make you look forward to every scene (I consider Rey's training and her search for herself on the desert island with Luke to be the best thing this franchise has ever offered), and finally, the humor that so graced the old trilogy. That’s how it should be! So to conclude: for me, after The Empire Strikes Back, this is clearly the best entry into the Star Wars universe. (12/20/2017)