Hi, My Name Is Clem And I Did Not Like "The Last Jedi"
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
So I wrote a good portion of this blog last Friday a few hours after I saw The Last Jedi in theaters but never ended up publishing it for a few reasons. One, I had a pretty busy day with the kid, doing radio, and other stupid blogger stuff. Two, I was really bummed after watching “The Last Jedi” and didn’t really have the fire to write a blog about it. If you hate or love something, it’s easy to blog about it because you can tap into those two emotions. I wrote my Force Awakens blog the night I watched it because I was so hyped. But being meh about something makes it much tougher to write about.
Anyway, the most important reason I didn’t blog anything is because I knew myself, Robbie, “Riggs”, Trent, and Fran were going to do a podcast about The Last Jedi and figured all my thoughts would be on that podcast.
But then I realized not everyone has the time or will to listen to a two hour long podcast about the most divisive Star Wars movie of our lives. So here is the blog I wrote last week with some updates that happened since I last saved it. I’ll admit that my thoughts are a lot more put together on the podcast because the conversation and 1000 degree podcast room got my blood boiling a little. But some people that felt the same as I did wanted the blog I wrote, so here it is:
Look, I wanted to like The Last Jedi. I wanted to LOVE it. I think everything I’ve written about Star Wars while I was at Barstool had a ton of excitement behind it. I blogged like 5 Star Wars blogs this week just because I was so hyped. Barstool SPORTS became Barstool STAR WARS for a few days and I have no #ragrets about that. I avoided going on Twitter and interacting with the #twitterfam as much as possible to avoid any kind of spoilers, which was like quitting heroin cold turkey. Anything for, when push comes to shove, my favorite movie franchise ever.
But the fact of the matter is I didn’t really like the movie. I think it was like a 6 out of 10, which isn’t terrible but a failing grade if it was a test.
The Last Jedi DEFINITELY had some highlights. As much as I didn’t care for Poe in The Force Awakens, I actually enjoyed his banter with Hux followed by the opening battle scene. The Rey and Kylo back and forths were probably my favorite parts of the movie. The comedic relief by Luke’s neighbors that kinda resembled old Sicilian ladies was funny. BB-8 made me laugh a few times, R2’s old Leia hologram hit me right in the fanboy feels, and I liked the Benicio Del Toro character, lightsabers exploding, and weaponizing a jump to light speed.
But those highlights were surrounded by a whooooole lot of meh in my mind. The story didn’t flow well for me, the pacing was weird, jumping from different stories. It felt like I was watching a space movie instead of a Star Wars movie. The Force Awakens felt like a Star Wars movie. Rogue One felt like a Star Wars movie. The Last Jedi did not.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was not to like it. It’s also the last thing in the world I expected after hearing all the great reviews trickling in. I don’t think it had anything to do with expectations either. The movie theater obviously went crazy for the text crawl and then did not clap again the rest of the night. After The Force Awakens, that same theater was like a Rucker Park scene after a game-winning facial dunk.
So I tweeted this out after I left the theater.
I immediately got some push back from people that loved the movie, which I expected. I think Robbie lowkey hates me right now and I’ve already been in three debates with Riggs about this movie. I honestly don’t know how people liked that movie. It’s like we watched different films. Maybe I got the placebo film with the long-winded, drawn out story that had characters I really didn’t care about and a watered down group of villains that STINK while everyone else got the condensed good version with those highlights and a plot that succinctly took us from Point A to Point B all the way to Point Z and the ending.
The best way to describe it is that The Last Jedi was the movie version of Dr. Dre’s album Compton to me. I loved The Chronic and 2001 but didn’t care for Compton. Everyone told me how wrong I was at the time, but I notice nobody talks about Compton or any of its songs. I would also have said maybe I am too old or just not into Star Wars anymore like I don’t love today’s hip hop. But I liked The Force Awakens and Rogue One which just came out over the last two years. The best way I can explain The Last Jedi is that it was like the last season and especially the last episode of How I Met Your Mother. It had its moments but in the end, I think it kind of ruined everything before it to me.
And based on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, I am clearly not alone.
Now it has since come out that a big part of the reason for that score is people weaponzing the Rotten Tomatoes score. That makes some sense. But the fact that this movie got people to become THAT angry about a movie says something. Then again, this is the internet in 2017 and we got the most downvoted Reddit post by a billion percent was about loot crates in Star Wars: Battlefront II. But I digress.
Even as someone that disliked the prequels to the point I thought Disney should scrap them and remake the entire story, this is kinda ridiculous.
The Star Wars movies are what they are. I loved the original trilogy, didn’t like the prequels outside of Sith, and enjoyed the last two before this movie.
Some other quick hitter points:
– I love fan service as much as, if not more than the next person. But milking a sea calf’s tit to show some colored milk was weird as fuuuuuuuuuck.
– I hated how Han’s dice were a big thing despite never being a real part of the movie beforehand. They never were a big thing right? I was with 6 people that have collectively watched the original trilogy roughly 80,000 times and nobody remembered those dice. Someone tweeted me that those dice will likely be focused on in the Han Solo movie which makes perfect sense. But I thought they were trash in this movie.
– Speaking of dice, everything about that casino planet outside of Benicio Del Toro sucked. The horse alien thingies, the prequely CGI characters, the forced kids in hardship with the horse thingies angle. All stunk.
– Snoke ended up being the most useless villain in a movie since Count Dooku. A little bit of Force lightning and some Force pushes before not seeing his apprentice slicing him in half. I’ll admit that the hype about Snoke’s past had me expecting some sort of answers in this movie. Same for Rey’s parents (which I think could still be different than what Kylo told her). But the hype really didn’t effect much else for how I felt about a movie that was about how much fuel a ship had left and the tracking of ships in hyperspace. All that technical talk caused my eyes to gloss over.
– This movie had me downgrade Hux too. Seeing him constantly just get owned by Kylo hurt his character in my eyes. Him going for his blaster when he thought Kylo could be down for the count was great. But not much else.
– Back to Kylo, him going apeshit after Snoke roasted the fuck out of his helmet was awesome. That was the kind of Kylo I thought we would get during this entire movie, instead of the back and forth between light and dark. After all him and Rey went through to get to that throne room and to have it all mean nothing was frustrating to me.
– I was out on Finn in The Force Awakens and he really didn’t do much to endear me in this movie either. His entire character is just so wishy washy and not in the Han Solo type of way.
– Lets talk about Finn’s pal Rose.
Top 3 worst character in the Star Wars universe and definitely the worst outside of the prequels. Thought she may have some fun dynamic with Finn, but every scene she was in stunk, including the dumb blocking of Finn on Crait before her stupid dumb death flop that unfortunately wasn’t an actual death flop.
– In the end, Porgs were just there. They didn’t serve a purpose other than to probably sell some merch to kids. I don’t really care about them. I’m very whatever on Porgs.
– The Leia scene. What’s been said about the Leia scene that hasn’t been said about cat AIDS. I thought it was wild, thought it may get better, and what we got was PRINCESS LEIA FLYING THROUGH SPACE AFTER GETTING BLOWN OUT OF A SPACESHIP!!!
– Actually you know what? Maybe that scene wasn’t so bad after all (make sure sound is on).
I neeeeed some more parodies of that nonsense.
– Captain Phasma STINKS. She is rarely on screen and when she is, she is getting her ass beat. She is 0 for 2 in my mind, striking out on 3 pitches each time. The scene where she’s about to execute Finn and Rose followed by that explosion where everyone died EXCEPT Finn and Rose followed by Phasma AGAIN coming in with a full batch of troops was so bad and disjointed. Fuck Captain Phasma. She should have been such a cooler character. Brianne of Tarth is being wasted on a trash character that catches more Ls than Tex.
– I remember when R2D2 fixing the hyperdrive and unlocking the door was cool because it was a robot lending a hand. Now we have BB-8 hijacking AT-STs and tying up prison guards. I like BB-8 but that was all a bit much.
– Oh look it’s Maz! She’s in a wild, craaaaaazy situation. Typical Maz. Fuck that. I kinda liked her in Force Awakens because she seems like she would be would be fun to hang out with during a boozy vacation but I groaned when I saw her on screen in Last Jedi. Give me a reason to care about Maz or I’m not going to care about Maz.
– Crait had some very cool visuals but the fight was very meh to me. The First Order is the worst evil villains ever. The Resistance was like a ship with a dozen people and The First Order couldn’t finish the job in the last 45 minutes because Kylo really hates the Millennium Falcon and his uncle?
– I guess The Resistance lives on behind Rey since she moved some rocks with her mind. Having the woman that survived being blasted into space and becoming a popsicle could help light The Resistance’s fire too, right?
– I didn’t give a shit about Laura Dern. She participated in two of the lamest mutinies ever shown on the silver screen. I tried to imagine she was her Jurassic Park character so I would care about her death. The actress who played Mon Mothma is still alive. They should have had Mon replace Leia. Or my dude Admiral Akbar (RIP in peace). Instead we got a character that felt as half baked as Forrest Whitaker’s in Rogue One.
– I also don’t get why they never thought of weaponizing light speed through the Death Star.
– Kylo Ren didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger at Leia, then turned on his master, but now is the big villain. That’s the guy I’m supposed to root against in the last movie that will wrap up the Skywalker Saga? Get the fuck out of my face. Kylo had so much potential after TFA and it all evaporated over 2.5 hours.
– Some of the comedy did seemed forced, while some of it was okay. I felt like Star Wars always had natural, great comedic moments. That clearly wasn’t the case in this movie and part of the reason it didn’t “feel” like a Star Wars movie. Even Rogue One had some great moments with K-2SO and the blindo.
– Basically everyone I care about in the Resistance is dead outside of Rey and Leia. Fuck the Resistance.
– I loved seeing Yoda back and interacting with Luke like they were old friends.
– The He Said She Said between Luke and Kylo was basically a remix of this Simpsons scene.
Did Luke try to kill Kylo? Was Kylo innocent but was just a puppet of Snoke? How did Snoke turn a talented young Jedi against his uncle who was one of the greatest heroes in movie history in Return of the Jedi? Hopefully we have another 10 scenes to explain why in Episode IX! The flashback of the fall of the Jedi Temple was so cool in The Force Awakens but I felt like they completely bungled it in this movie.
– I have to rewatch the Luke vs. Kylo fight at the end, but I did like the misdirection with Kylo never touching Luke. HOWEVER all that good will disappeared when I saw those stupid fucking dice, which also disappeared.
– The whole broom kid sequence felt very Disneyish. If you wish upon a star, you can also become a Jedi.
And that’s about it. Sorry for this going up so late, but that movie really bummed me out and I’ve been kinda dragging all day. I will watch the movie again to see if that changes anything, but I honestly don’t expect it to very much. I’m not really looking forward to Episode IX other than to see how JJ Abrams takes the scraps from this movie and puts a bow on this rollercoaster trilogy of trilogies.
In the end, you should still watch the movie if you are a Star Wars fan. I personally didn’t care for it, but a lot of people like it or loved it. A lot of people didn’t like it or flat out hated it. And just like political opinions on Facebook, don’t bother trying to change someone else’s mind by badgering them with insults about why the movie was good or bad. Some people are going to like this movie, some people aren’t. And that’s fine. I thought it was a bunch of meh with some highlights mixed in. Like a player going 5-18 from the field but 4 of those 5 shots were 360 dunks.
TL;DR- That shit was meh