Star Wars: The Last Jedi

It’s the night after I saw it and I actually don’t know whether Disney’s shift of the saga is good or not. The first part of the new trilogy was great, there’s no denying that. The characters were interesting and the reference to the original story was obvious. Here, things are no different. The entire premise is actually centered around Luke Skywalker and it’s flawless. Also, the introduction of new worlds worked out perfect. At times, I was really enjoying the film’s cuteness when a new animal that hasn’t been seen yet made an appearance on the scene. Pretty much all those animals’ eyes were like Puss in Boots’ eyes in Shrek, so you can imagine how soft I was getting during every scene involving animals. On the other hand, I kept telling myself that it seemed a bit too childish. The reviews mentioned that this episode is much darker than the previous parts, but for me, darkness looks a bit different than this. I think I would liken it to episode 2. This episode is sort of cute, a little childish, full of action and war. All in all, it’s actually quite good, but for me to give it a five-star review, the film would need to be more epic in relation to the entire Star Wars universe. (15/12/2017)

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. (15/12/2017)

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. (14/12/2017)

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. (20/12/2017)