Star Wars: The Last Jedi ** (2017, Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran) – Movie Review

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi is nominated for four Oscars and has earned a fortune ($1,311,425,821 by 28 January 2018) but it is a letdown and certainly comes complete with a full cargo of downsides, especially including the off-putting performances of Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo and Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico. I’m afraid this has to count towards the negativity surrounding the movie.

[Spoiler alert] The main disappointment of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, though, is that finally having persuaded Mark Hamill aboard, they have given him a huge star role, but not really anything actually much to do, certainly nothing fascinating, and then they just lamely kill him off. They have hired him just to kill him off, just like they did with Harrison Ford in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. How boring and depressing is that?

Daisy Ridley plays Rey.

Yes, they give Hamill lots to do, and he is great, but it is all down to just two things: (1) the retired Luke Skywalker is definitely not ever, never going to fight for the Force again, despite anything Rey (Daisy Ridley) can say; and (2) he does, and he gets killed, though it turns out he isn’t even needed, and he is not our only hope, Obi Wan, because he has taught Rey in the way of being a Jedi, and, with Luke out of the way, Rey is the Last Jedi and she can save the day herself, moving a mountain of rocks with what now appear to be super-powers. She is a superhero, not a Jedi knight, and the story could easily have found a way to get the rest of the cast out of the way of the lethal General Hux, without any of this. The story bears no serious examination at all. It is infuriating.

Meanwhile, the Star Wars new crew are having problems of their own as John Boyega’s Finn is bossed around by annoying Rose Tico, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron is having problems with Admiral Holdo, who has replaced the incapacitated Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) at the helm, after Leia goes into a coma after flying unaided through space back to safety. Laura Dern’s performance as Holdo is as truly peculiar as her hair style, but not in a good way.

Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren.

There is way too much of Gleeson as Hux. A little of this camp and arch performance would go a very long way, and there is a lot of it, all on the same note. Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is a bit more interesting, and he is good, but the ‘is he a good guy?’ or ‘is he a bad guy?’ thing gets tedious. Boyega and Isaac also help to keep things going smoothly enough, and Andy Serkis’s Snoke isn’t too annoying, though Anthony Daniels’s C-3PO is, but that is normal.

Needless to say, though I will, the production is absolutely marvellous, with Oscar nominated Visual Effects by Ben Morris the main brilliant achievement, though the Oscar nominated John Williams score and the Oscar nominated sound mixing and editing are remarkable too, as well as Rick Heinrichs’s extraordinary production designs. It certainly achieves the highest possible technical standard.

The film is dedicated to ‘our princess Carrie Fisher’, who died on 27 December 2016, aged 60, before filming was complete, so some of her performance is created on camera. It is darkly ironic that it is her character of the three original stars who survives. On the day after Carrie died, her grief-stricken mother Debbie Reynolds had a stroke and also died. RIP beloved Carrie and Debbie.

J J Abrams’s idea that any negativity surrounding the movie is because some Star Wars fans feel threatened by women is of course just so much nonsense.

Mark Hamill: ‘You have to have the epidermis of a rhinoceros to withstand the comments.’

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.