Why I am criticizing the Last Jedi
I am a fan of Star Wars. I have to lead with that because, well, sometimes when you criticize something you get labeled a hater. There are several things wrong with The Last Jedi. I am going to lead with the fact that I am extremely bias in this write up, mostly because it wasn’t just that The Last Jedi was bad, but that they borrowed from fan fiction. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can google it yourself and see. Fan fiction, “Star Wars: A Force to Contend With,” followed by its sequel, “Star Wars: A Dark Run” can be googled and downloaded for free. You might actually like them, as both books are full of sex. (Oh, wait, there is no one with a Star Wars fetish here, are there?) “A Force to Contend With” was published online prior to “A Force Awakens,” and “a Dark Run” was published before “The Last Jedi.” Both fan fictions introduce a Jedi capable of “bi-location;” this is a skill set many mystics of old were capable of, but never before seen in the Star Wars cannon. Luke Skywalker does this in the last Jedi. In the fan-fiction book, “a Dark Run,” a Jedi is exposed to the vacuum of space for in excess of five minutes until she uses the Force to land her onto the hangar bay of another ship. Princess Leia does this in 'the Last Jedi.' But the best evidence is in the author’s notes of “A Dark Run,” where the author laments the that the problem with “A Force Awakens” is that the movie was basically a recapitulation of the origin a “Star Wars: A New Hope,” and he would like something where “you can’t throw an Xwing at it to resolve the issue.” Princess Leia speaks these very words in ‘the Last Jedi.’
How is it that I am aware of this? Do I read a lot of fan fiction? No, I don’t read fan fiction. I write it. I wrote both the fan fiction written above. I am fairly pleased with the books, too. And no, I am not disgruntled that it appears that someone ‘borrowed’ from my work. It actually validates me as a writer. There is evidence that JJ Abrams also borrowed from my Star Trek fan fiction for the 2008 reboot, and even said he got the idea from reading fan fiction in a Forbes interview. Still, not disgruntled. Would I like a little more courteous fanfare, like honorable mentions? Sure. And I am not pressing the issue that it was borrowed, because I also know things can get parallel development. It’s called synchronicity. But if they borrowed from it, it would have been better had they more, because ‘the Last Jedi” was just awful, but when I read the article where Ryan Johnson (Last Jedi director) defends it, saying he is happy for the controversy and the ensuing dialogue, I was only further insulted. There is no controversy. The simple, unmitigated, bottom line is there was absolutely no quality control, and zero script, and one would imagine that as much money that went into buying Star Wars from Lucas that there would be someone who would want to create a product that would be watchable for years to come. This is not that. It saddens me so much that I fear what may become of the next one, and my present thought is it can’t get worse, but what gets turned out at the box office frequently amazes me in how bad it can get. Seriously, when you consider how many movies Hollywood is remaking, you have to wonder if they killed all the good writers. Maybe they should consider hiring authors of fan fiction, for less money by the way. If not for writing the script, hire us as continuity directors; we can tell you why you can’t or shouldn’t do stuff.
Think of it this way. Most Sci Fi fantasy folks, in terms of audience members, are smart folks. They know a thing or two about science, they definitely know cannon for their preferred line of fiction, and we have an expectation that something will be internally consistent. Okay, maybe we aren’t all at the level of Neil deGrasse Tyson in terms of our criticism, but you can bet your ass, we (nerds) know Tyson and we will have heard his opinion, and likely agreed with him. You could use him as a litmus test for how we think.
Geeks, and I am one, love women; we love strong women. There is no controversy about the women with leading roles in the Last Jedi. I do have some questions about Laura Dern’s character, though. She is supposed to be a Vice Admiral, which means she rose to the ranks not because of her looks, but because she has some merits as a leader, right? So, she knew she was going to die; why the hell did it take so long to decide to use her ship as a weapon? Seriously, when the enemy ship started taking out the Rebel Shuttles (Yes, I am not calling them the Resistance, they won the fucking war against the Emperor, they have earned the right to be the legitimate government, but they were, always will be, the Rebels.) picking them off one by one, why did it take almost the entire fleet being wiped out before she decide to kamikaze Stoke’s ship? First ship taken out should have made her mission clear. Further, if they assumed that Stoke, the worst evil since the Emperor was on board, wouldn’t that maneuver have already been in your thoughts, given the context of that situation and the limited options anyway? And more than that, in the dialogue they say this is the last of the Rebels, which means, you don’t sacrifice your top officers! That, Mr. Jonson I love women and controversy, was an insult to women who serve in the military. You don’t throw away your leaders, you assign some dumb ass that tried to mutiny because he thought he knew better than his superiors! That whole scene was clearly contrived by you to make men look stupid and women smarter, but it backed fired on your ass because it so poorly executed!
But, let’s forgive that. The Vice Admiral did execute a kamikaze against the Stoke’s ship. Nicely done. Probably the best scene in the whole movie, going silent, watching the equivalent of an atom smasher, collision of material at relativistic speeds. We now jump to the scene inside the ship, where every single person is knocked unconscious. No, let me be clear here: every single storm trooper, people in armor who likely have internal air supply, knocked unconscious. The two people not wearing armor get up and plot their escape. Seriously? Captain Phasma, who was standing right there about to watch our heroes be executed, was suddenly, and surprisingly, not in the scene when our heroes recovered. As the heroes fled, suddenly, Phasma, and a contingent of guards, were suddenly back in the scene. This scene had no continuity, there wasn’t anything believable about it. Our heroes making it out by blind luck is simply too much to hope for, even beyond it being fate or the Force.
Now, let’s talk about BB in this scene. And believe me, I love BB, but there are some scenes missing from this movie, and I guarantee you, you will see them on DVD. But let’s rewind to the previous movie. BB, according to ‘The Force Awakens” suggests it is a one of Kind. There were BB’s everywhere in the Last Jedi! There was even an Imperial BB, painted black and all shiny and new. In Star Wars lore, droids can be evil. I get that. I accept that. But, something to explore here, is it programming? Why is the black droid evil? Surely, that isn’t PC. So, Imperial droid sees something off, a trash can covering our hero BB moving. You clearly get movie time suggesting this Imperial BB Droid suspects something’s up, and contextually, that may be how our heroes get caught. (We learn later, it isn’t.) Jump to our heroes get caught. There is the Imperial droid, and again, we get that look from the Droid, oh, it sees something. Our BB unit was caught with them, right? Did he get taken by the Imperial BB? Was there a fight between the two? Did any Storm Troopers say: “where did this trash can come from? It doesn’t belong here!” How did our hero BB suddenly get into an ATAT just when it was conveniently needed? OMG, can you say RANDOM? Do you, RYAN, DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS, DISNEY, HOLLYWOOD, think we are morons and we will just accept anything you cram down our throats? I can so see a meme with Mickey Mouse carrying Neegan’s bat, with a quote, “I just put my MickeyDick in your mouth, and you swallowed and said thank you.” Yeah, that’s what it feels like when you insult smart people, and I am not saying thank you.
Let’s look at another example of this. Wookies are carnivores. I have seen absolutely zero evidence that they are omnivores. They eat meat. Are you pushing vegetarianism by showing faces that cry when Chewbacca tries to eat one of these optimally placed creatures for future merchandising? I am okay with the merchandising, but I am not okay with you neutering Chewbacca to push some covert agenda. Lions eat meat. Wookies eat meat. That’s just life. You certainly didn’t show any fish crying when Luke speared a huge fish. I assume it was a fish. I hope it wasn’t a dolphin. It did have a face. It could have been as sentient as the little penguin things Chewbacca wanted to eat. Probably tastes like chicken.
I love the new actors and actresses. I think they are strong individuals, and I want to see them in Star Wars, but I want to see them in believable scenarios. Grown ass warrior ina chain of command don’t throw hissy fits when they don’t get their way! I don’t have problem with the new Force abilities. I am even okay for the attempt at humor in the opening sequence, but it was just not believable. Shoot first, take no prisoners, was kind of the standing line there, before you hear the record scratching, plot contrivance, bring the who scene to a halt. I am even okay that Snoke was killed off. Quite frankly, there was nowhere to take that character, because he was simply too cliché, too two dimensional. There was no depth there, he didn’t even rise to the level of evil; it was just laughable. Kylo Ren, still not buying into him, but I have hope that his internal conflict may translate into something Shakespearian perhaps. Ultimately Star Wars was about redemption of the one, the father. But I don’t see this as a metaphysical journey equal to the likes of Joseph Campbell wrote about in “Hero With a Thousand Faces.” Yes, I am a geek, I have read Joseph Campbell, and watched the interview of him and Lucas with Bill Moyers. Most fans have. We are smart, and we want the thing we love, Star Wars, to reflect the ideals we see in it. Star Wars can even be darker and still be Star Wars. Wars, after all, can be pretty dark. But Droids torturing droids, as they did in ‘Return of the Jedi;’ well, no, don’t do that.
One of my complaints with the previous movie was the Big Gun. I didn’t like the mirroring of the first movie and the destruction of the Death Star. We didn’t need another trench run to capture the magic of Star Wars. In fact, Darth Vader in that first movie said it best: “Don’t be so proud of this technological terror you’ve created. Destroying planets is nothing compared to the powers of the Force.” ‘That’s scary! Give me something like that,’ I wrote. ‘Not something you can resolve by throwing an Xwing fighter at.” Let me rehash: Funny, how what I wrote ends up being a line in this Star Wars movie, spoken by none other than Leia. I am even okay that Leia finally displaying some Force abilities. Interestingly, in my own fan fiction, I have a character survive the vacuum of space, just like Leia. Interestingly, my fan fiction also introduces a Jedi who is capable of bilocation, using the Force to interact in situations remotely, just Like Luke demonstrated in this movie. And yet, I dare say, fan fiction, and not just mine, is better written than the Last Jedi. Star Wars Porn is better written than that shit! (Mostly because there is little dialogue, and what is there, well, it’s Porn, it’s supposed to be cliché!) You can go to any one fan and they would be more than honored to help you write something better, and they would likely do it for nothing. Again, fans make better continuity directors and can keep you straight on Cannon, which I know, you can’t honor everything that’s out there in Star Wars, but you sure as hell can write better movies. Surely Disney has at least one writer and director at their disposal who actually cares about Star Wars, not as a franchise and way of making money, but someone who believe in the art of storytelling and who wants to create something that provokes an internal response that inspires us to grow as human beings. Not fluff. Magic. Tech and mysticism. I am not a hater. I am someone who loves Star Wars so much that I want it to last my life time and the life times of those who will follow. This was not that.
How is it that I am aware of this? Do I read a lot of fan fiction? No, I don’t read fan fiction. I write it. I wrote both the fan fiction written above. I am fairly pleased with the books, too. And no, I am not disgruntled that it appears that someone ‘borrowed’ from my work. It actually validates me as a writer. There is evidence that JJ Abrams also borrowed from my Star Trek fan fiction for the 2008 reboot, and even said he got the idea from reading fan fiction in a Forbes interview. Still, not disgruntled. Would I like a little more courteous fanfare, like honorable mentions? Sure. And I am not pressing the issue that it was borrowed, because I also know things can get parallel development. It’s called synchronicity. But if they borrowed from it, it would have been better had they more, because ‘the Last Jedi” was just awful, but when I read the article where Ryan Johnson (Last Jedi director) defends it, saying he is happy for the controversy and the ensuing dialogue, I was only further insulted. There is no controversy. The simple, unmitigated, bottom line is there was absolutely no quality control, and zero script, and one would imagine that as much money that went into buying Star Wars from Lucas that there would be someone who would want to create a product that would be watchable for years to come. This is not that. It saddens me so much that I fear what may become of the next one, and my present thought is it can’t get worse, but what gets turned out at the box office frequently amazes me in how bad it can get. Seriously, when you consider how many movies Hollywood is remaking, you have to wonder if they killed all the good writers. Maybe they should consider hiring authors of fan fiction, for less money by the way. If not for writing the script, hire us as continuity directors; we can tell you why you can’t or shouldn’t do stuff.
Think of it this way. Most Sci Fi fantasy folks, in terms of audience members, are smart folks. They know a thing or two about science, they definitely know cannon for their preferred line of fiction, and we have an expectation that something will be internally consistent. Okay, maybe we aren’t all at the level of Neil deGrasse Tyson in terms of our criticism, but you can bet your ass, we (nerds) know Tyson and we will have heard his opinion, and likely agreed with him. You could use him as a litmus test for how we think.
Geeks, and I am one, love women; we love strong women. There is no controversy about the women with leading roles in the Last Jedi. I do have some questions about Laura Dern’s character, though. She is supposed to be a Vice Admiral, which means she rose to the ranks not because of her looks, but because she has some merits as a leader, right? So, she knew she was going to die; why the hell did it take so long to decide to use her ship as a weapon? Seriously, when the enemy ship started taking out the Rebel Shuttles (Yes, I am not calling them the Resistance, they won the fucking war against the Emperor, they have earned the right to be the legitimate government, but they were, always will be, the Rebels.) picking them off one by one, why did it take almost the entire fleet being wiped out before she decide to kamikaze Stoke’s ship? First ship taken out should have made her mission clear. Further, if they assumed that Stoke, the worst evil since the Emperor was on board, wouldn’t that maneuver have already been in your thoughts, given the context of that situation and the limited options anyway? And more than that, in the dialogue they say this is the last of the Rebels, which means, you don’t sacrifice your top officers! That, Mr. Jonson I love women and controversy, was an insult to women who serve in the military. You don’t throw away your leaders, you assign some dumb ass that tried to mutiny because he thought he knew better than his superiors! That whole scene was clearly contrived by you to make men look stupid and women smarter, but it backed fired on your ass because it so poorly executed!
But, let’s forgive that. The Vice Admiral did execute a kamikaze against the Stoke’s ship. Nicely done. Probably the best scene in the whole movie, going silent, watching the equivalent of an atom smasher, collision of material at relativistic speeds. We now jump to the scene inside the ship, where every single person is knocked unconscious. No, let me be clear here: every single storm trooper, people in armor who likely have internal air supply, knocked unconscious. The two people not wearing armor get up and plot their escape. Seriously? Captain Phasma, who was standing right there about to watch our heroes be executed, was suddenly, and surprisingly, not in the scene when our heroes recovered. As the heroes fled, suddenly, Phasma, and a contingent of guards, were suddenly back in the scene. This scene had no continuity, there wasn’t anything believable about it. Our heroes making it out by blind luck is simply too much to hope for, even beyond it being fate or the Force.
Now, let’s talk about BB in this scene. And believe me, I love BB, but there are some scenes missing from this movie, and I guarantee you, you will see them on DVD. But let’s rewind to the previous movie. BB, according to ‘The Force Awakens” suggests it is a one of Kind. There were BB’s everywhere in the Last Jedi! There was even an Imperial BB, painted black and all shiny and new. In Star Wars lore, droids can be evil. I get that. I accept that. But, something to explore here, is it programming? Why is the black droid evil? Surely, that isn’t PC. So, Imperial droid sees something off, a trash can covering our hero BB moving. You clearly get movie time suggesting this Imperial BB Droid suspects something’s up, and contextually, that may be how our heroes get caught. (We learn later, it isn’t.) Jump to our heroes get caught. There is the Imperial droid, and again, we get that look from the Droid, oh, it sees something. Our BB unit was caught with them, right? Did he get taken by the Imperial BB? Was there a fight between the two? Did any Storm Troopers say: “where did this trash can come from? It doesn’t belong here!” How did our hero BB suddenly get into an ATAT just when it was conveniently needed? OMG, can you say RANDOM? Do you, RYAN, DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS, DISNEY, HOLLYWOOD, think we are morons and we will just accept anything you cram down our throats? I can so see a meme with Mickey Mouse carrying Neegan’s bat, with a quote, “I just put my MickeyDick in your mouth, and you swallowed and said thank you.” Yeah, that’s what it feels like when you insult smart people, and I am not saying thank you.
Let’s look at another example of this. Wookies are carnivores. I have seen absolutely zero evidence that they are omnivores. They eat meat. Are you pushing vegetarianism by showing faces that cry when Chewbacca tries to eat one of these optimally placed creatures for future merchandising? I am okay with the merchandising, but I am not okay with you neutering Chewbacca to push some covert agenda. Lions eat meat. Wookies eat meat. That’s just life. You certainly didn’t show any fish crying when Luke speared a huge fish. I assume it was a fish. I hope it wasn’t a dolphin. It did have a face. It could have been as sentient as the little penguin things Chewbacca wanted to eat. Probably tastes like chicken.
I love the new actors and actresses. I think they are strong individuals, and I want to see them in Star Wars, but I want to see them in believable scenarios. Grown ass warrior ina chain of command don’t throw hissy fits when they don’t get their way! I don’t have problem with the new Force abilities. I am even okay for the attempt at humor in the opening sequence, but it was just not believable. Shoot first, take no prisoners, was kind of the standing line there, before you hear the record scratching, plot contrivance, bring the who scene to a halt. I am even okay that Snoke was killed off. Quite frankly, there was nowhere to take that character, because he was simply too cliché, too two dimensional. There was no depth there, he didn’t even rise to the level of evil; it was just laughable. Kylo Ren, still not buying into him, but I have hope that his internal conflict may translate into something Shakespearian perhaps. Ultimately Star Wars was about redemption of the one, the father. But I don’t see this as a metaphysical journey equal to the likes of Joseph Campbell wrote about in “Hero With a Thousand Faces.” Yes, I am a geek, I have read Joseph Campbell, and watched the interview of him and Lucas with Bill Moyers. Most fans have. We are smart, and we want the thing we love, Star Wars, to reflect the ideals we see in it. Star Wars can even be darker and still be Star Wars. Wars, after all, can be pretty dark. But Droids torturing droids, as they did in ‘Return of the Jedi;’ well, no, don’t do that.
One of my complaints with the previous movie was the Big Gun. I didn’t like the mirroring of the first movie and the destruction of the Death Star. We didn’t need another trench run to capture the magic of Star Wars. In fact, Darth Vader in that first movie said it best: “Don’t be so proud of this technological terror you’ve created. Destroying planets is nothing compared to the powers of the Force.” ‘That’s scary! Give me something like that,’ I wrote. ‘Not something you can resolve by throwing an Xwing fighter at.” Let me rehash: Funny, how what I wrote ends up being a line in this Star Wars movie, spoken by none other than Leia. I am even okay that Leia finally displaying some Force abilities. Interestingly, in my own fan fiction, I have a character survive the vacuum of space, just like Leia. Interestingly, my fan fiction also introduces a Jedi who is capable of bilocation, using the Force to interact in situations remotely, just Like Luke demonstrated in this movie. And yet, I dare say, fan fiction, and not just mine, is better written than the Last Jedi. Star Wars Porn is better written than that shit! (Mostly because there is little dialogue, and what is there, well, it’s Porn, it’s supposed to be cliché!) You can go to any one fan and they would be more than honored to help you write something better, and they would likely do it for nothing. Again, fans make better continuity directors and can keep you straight on Cannon, which I know, you can’t honor everything that’s out there in Star Wars, but you sure as hell can write better movies. Surely Disney has at least one writer and director at their disposal who actually cares about Star Wars, not as a franchise and way of making money, but someone who believe in the art of storytelling and who wants to create something that provokes an internal response that inspires us to grow as human beings. Not fluff. Magic. Tech and mysticism. I am not a hater. I am someone who loves Star Wars so much that I want it to last my life time and the life times of those who will follow. This was not that.
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