Star Wars Episode 8 - The Last Jedi Review (SPOILERS)

Hey you, welcome back to the channel. And guys, today we're going to talk about Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, and this will be a spoiler-filled review. If you haven't seen the movie yet, please go watch the film, come back after you've seen it, come back here, we can talk about it. So, The Last Jedi, guys, we got a lot to talk about in this review. As always, I'm, I'm late to the party but always on time. So give you guys some time to watch it, let it marinate, so we can try to talk about it and see where things went right with The Last Jedi and maybe where some things went wrong. So we're going to jump right into it, guys. And this won't be in any particular order, so I'm just going to go at some of the areas of the film that really were concerning to me. And that would be Supreme Leader Snoke. Um, so there are a lot of theories going around about who Snoke was. Some people were saying he was probably the first Jedi, um, you know, that he, uh, had been around, uh, to see the rise and fall of the Jedi Order. But, um, you know, we find out that in this film Snoke is little more than a MacGuffin, right? He's just there to move the plot along. His story is never really addressed. I mean, who he is or anything like that. And on one hand, I can kind of see why they would have went in that direction, but I also see a lot of a missed opportunity with that and what I think was a mistake. I don't think they should have made Snoke this MacGuffin. Just to kind of move the plot along. I think that it probably would have worked better had they dealt with who Snoke was, because Snoke was a very big part of this story going forward, how it was set up from Episode 7. And, you know, he was basically— we always want to see who is leading the Empire, who's leading the dark side of the story in Star Wars, as it is a story of light versus dark. And we didn't get that in this film, and I think that's a problem for Star Wars. Now, whereas I kind of agree with them not focusing in on Snoke, I can see that between this film and episodes 4 through 6, that they're almost repetitive, right? Everything is just mirroring what we got in episodes 4 through 6. You know, we got the new Han Solo, we got the, uh, basically, uh, the new, uh, Luke and Leia. Played out by Rey and played out by Finn and played out by Poe Dameron. And so this was getting so repetitive. Now we got Snoke as the Emperor and everything is, you know, pretty much a cycle repeating itself. And so I can see where maybe the film wanted to kind of get away from that. Let's just not focus on who's heading up the First Order, the dark side, you know. Let's just focus in on this story of the Skywalkers. And so, you know, I kind of seen them just hurry up and pushing Snoke out the way. Kind of saw that as, you know, maybe they would have went in that direction. But I really think they needed a setup with Snoke because Snoke was very, very interesting. You know, he just turned out to be too much of an interesting character, and it was just too much setup in Episode 7. 7. If they wanted him to be a MacGuffin this way, they should have downplayed him a lot with Episode 7, kind of like how they did Palpatine in the original, you know, in the first— you know, even though of course Palpatine had a lot of, you know, to do with the story. But you know, if you look at The Phantom Menace, he was kind of like, you know, it was he was behind the scenes somewhere but wasn't really that important to the story at that stage. I think the important character in Phantom Menace was like Darth Vader's history of growing up, his beginnings, right? So, but it's done different here with this, and that was problematic. Now, some things that I did like about the film was that, you know, a lot of people complained about Kylo Ren, you know, especially from Episode 7. He has this fight with Rey. Rey beats him. She's, you know, more in tune with the Force, more powerful in the Force. And because she beats him in Episode 7, now we got this figure who's kind of supposed to be the new Darth Vader who's not threatening at all. You know, he's just this He's like this kid with family problems and having temper tantrums. Kylo Ren just didn't— although he did some cool stuff in Episode 7, we could see that he was going to be nothing like the Darth Vader presence. I think that threw a lot of people off about Kylo Ren. From Episode 7, I never saw him as would be the person. I always saw him after that point as someone in conflict who would be an underling. And in this film, it makes him the chief villain of the story, and I think that's problematic as well. But what did work, I felt, with Kylo Ren is this Star Wars film film was very emotional, and it worked. You know, you— I really cared. You really— especially if you grew up on the original movies, and you know, a lot of the parts of the movie, there were a lot of callbacks to that, and you kind of felt that nostalgia of when you were young. And just where— how far the stories progressed, and you know, how It went from like at the end of Return of the Jedi with Luke defeating the Empire and everything, getting back on course and working out, to like this disaster, this family disaster. So this is a family— this is a movie about a family in severe chaos, and it's very emotional. And that did work. I could feel it, and it worked throughout the film. And that part of the film I liked. I liked the emotional attachment I had to the film and how I felt about it. And it wasn't a happy film at all. It was this family with Kylo Ren in conflict. We get this scene where he can basically kill his mother, Princess Leia. General Leia or General Organa, he could kill her, but he can't. You can tell he's still in conflict. He just can't bring himself to do it. And, you know, some of the other pilots from the First Order, they actually do it. And they, you know, you know, but, you know, we also got to see where Leia didn't die and she did this interesting Force thing, and we'll talk about, you know, that a little bit later. But That part of the film worked for me. The emotional connection I had to this film, and that's something that the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey and Leia, these 3 characters, that this tragedy, you know, this tragedy that's going on with all these characters, very compelling and it works. And I feel feel it, and I'm, and, and I'm, you know, I'm emotionally disturbed by it, you know. So, uh, that, that, you know, that, you know, I did care about the film. So, uh, that tells me that it wasn't a bad film. It wasn't a bad film. But I'm looking at it as like one of these movies where a lot of things are done— like, a lot of things are done correct to them for no reason at all. They just do something that doesn't make any sense and it messes up the film. And I think that's what happened here in Star Wars Episode 8. I think it was a lot of just— they was getting everything right, then there will be these little things they do at the end, as I'm going to talk about a little bit, these little things they do at the end of a scene that just didn't work for me and I thought it was silly. And that's looking— and that's going back to the, uh, the General Organa Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher. And that, and that was very interesting. A lot of people were talking about with Carrie Fisher that, you know, of course we know that she died in real life, and it was a lot of concern about, you know, how it was going to be with her going forward through the films. And so we then finally started hearing things like, oh, she's going to be in a lot of the film. And then some people feel like she wasn't in as much of the film as they were led to believe, but I thought that she was in much more of the film than I thought she would be in. So I was actually very, uh, happy about that and great that they were able to get that footage, and it felt like a complete story. Didn't feel like they had to kind of just, you know, patch her in, um, you know, because going back to some of the scenes, the, uh Things that didn't work at the end of scenes is the one scene where of course we see her get blown out of ship. I thought she was— that was her death scene. I was like, okay, well, this is how they're going to deal with the actress Carrie Fisher's death in real life, you know, playing General Organa, by, you know, killing her and having her do this peaceful death scene out in space. And, uh, you know, that would be the end of the story. But, uh, of course we got to see her use the Force at the end and she flies through space back in the ship. A lot of people had a problem with that, um, and I think understandably so. I think that's one of those things where at the end of a scene it just didn't work. So I'm assuming she creates some type of Force bubble and she was able to do that. But, uh, you know, there seemed to be no, uh, we never had a precedent set on, you know, Jedi doing anything like that. And we— it was kind of surprising to see her do it, as, you know, we never seen her use the Force to a degree like that. We was under the assumption that— we were under the impression that Jedi had to be trained and master use of the Force, and that she wasn't trained unless maybe during the gap between um, the episodes 6 and 7. Uh, maybe she learned some of these, you know, things through Luke or something, or naturally. But whatever occurred, she was able to do this thing, and a lot of people had some issues with that. Uh, and I, I did as well. I didn't, I didn't really like that part at all. I would have preferred that, you know, that, that something else, you know, occurred that allowed her to to stay alive, or maybe just a bad injury during the battle, but she wasn't dead. But I thought that was a bit too much, and a lot of people did complain. They didn't like that there wasn't this continuity with the use of the Force as we've been accustomed to seeing. So, you know, all that occurred, but, you know, then also there's a leap forward to Luke's use of the Force and One big problem a lot of people had too was when Luke at the end faced off with Kylo Ren, it wasn't really Luke, it was a projection. A lot of people felt that took away from showing Luke with this extraordinary ability. I agree, that's another thing that didn't work. It all started off great with us thinking it was really Luke there. Taking all the fire from the First Order and us believing that he was able to do that by some use of control of the Force. And I would have loved if it really happened that way, if it was really Luke, because it kind of harkens back to Rogue One, one of my favorite Star Wars movies. A lot of people disagree, but I think as time goes on, especially with these new Era of Star Wars films, that maybe there's gonna be a lot more appreciation of Rogue One. Because, you know, I don't think Episode 8— and I don't know how— what they could do with Episode 9 now that's gonna really be, you know, anything that's really gonna pull us in, because I think it's pushed itself so far forward now that we kind of see how Episode 9 is gonna end too, right? But, but anyway, With the situation with Luke, it would have been better had it really been Luke and not a projection with the face-off. I think it would have harkened back to what we did get in Rogue One with Darth Vader with his great scene at the end showing how powerful he was. I would have loved to see Luke's version of that, but it actually be going on. And not be this projection, right? And that's something that we haven't seen done by a Force wielder yet as well. So we're getting to see all this where he projects this and Kylo Ren is unable to, you know, to know the difference. And that's kind of weird too to me that they in this film— I don't know if they're inconsistencies, but There, certain people are able to use the Force and seemingly maybe cloud the minds of people even more powerful than them, or people that are powerful and you think would be aware of these things. I guess I can kind of see Luke being able to do it to Kylo Ren, but we did get the Kylo Ren scene where he's able to kill Supreme Leader Snoke. With the lightsaber to the abdomen and whatnot. But kind of thinking like, you know, Snoke would be able to sense that and stop that. Maybe not, you know, maybe he had dropped his guard so much that he was unable to do that. And that's what it seems like. But I, you know, I think it would have been great to just have that really be Luke there, him really take that fire and him really face off with Kylo Ren. And what I thought I was gonna see I think it would have worked. I think it would have worked awesome. I would have loved to see— if you go back to the first original Star Wars, when Darth Vader faces off with Obi-Wan Kenobi, student to teacher, Obi-Wan allows Darth Vader to strike him down so he can be more powerful as a Force ghost, right? So I think it would have, would have done— I know a lot of people say, what's paying fan service? And we do get fan service throughout this film, but it's not so much focus on it as far as I can see. But I think it would have really worked better had they done it like that. It came full circle with Luke, Luke watching Obi-Wan get struck down and then consequently being struck down himself by his student Kylo Ren, who perhaps he had failed, much like perhaps Obi-Wan felt he had failed Anakin or Darth Vader. So I think it was a lot of great things they could have done with this film that would have worked. And I don't understand— my concern too with a lot of these type films like this is I think sometimes you do need to have fans involved and people who can tell the story in more of a modern-day way, what's going on around us, but at the same time respect and honor what the story was all about. And, and what's happening a lot, I, I see now with a lot of these films, is, uh, they're trying to get so far away, change the film around so much, I think they're losing a lot of the spirit of the, uh, of what the core story was. And I think that's a mistake when you're taking on a franchise and going forward. And that's what I think happened in this film, and I think it's hurt this film quite a lot. But with that said, that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of great things in this film that worked. I think the throne room face-off was my favorite. I do like Kylo Ren's relationship with Rey. I like the emotional part. And the chemistry between these characters, that works really well. And I think that alone can, you know, can, you know, make me want to keep finish out this series and see, see what episode 9 is about and how they plan to finish this. You know, obviously this has gotten pretty predictable, you know, for us, these type films. And we, you know, a lot of us see Kylo Ren dying and we kind of expected to you know, kind of, you know, go a certain way. But, uh, you know, I guess getting there is going to be part of the journey. And, and I think this— there will be a lot of good things that are going to happen going forward. But I think the problem has been that it's kind of like, um, it's kind of like, uh, having a winning championship record, I guess. You could have been, uh, you could have had a perfect season, uh, easily, but, uh, you, you just did a couple of silly things throughout the game and throughout the season, and because of that, you ruined your perfect record. And I kind of see these Star Wars movies as that, these, these later generations of them, that they're not bad films, they're entertaining films. They do a lot of stuff right. I find a lot of things interesting about how they're choosing to do these films and tell these stories now. I definitely still like them better than the George Lucas trilogies we got with the Episodes 1 through 3. So, you know, if anybody's complaining about these films, I think it's safe to say that both of these films so far, Episodes 7 and 8, have been far greater and better than anything we could we got in episodes 1 through 3, but they aren't better than the originals. You know, I don't think that they— and they aren't better than Rogue One, in my opinion. I think Rogue One is better than episodes 7 and 8. I think Rogue One has been the best— the new generation of Star Wars films has been done to come out yet. I really do. And I think maybe episode 7 follows after that, and episode 8 here— I think episode 8 was fair. But I think Episode 8 has created a lot of problems from Episode 7 and going forward into Episode 9. You know, also the situation with Rey, that was a big shock. Another one of these theories, like the Snoke theories, the Rey theory, where we get to find out Rey's not this great promised Jedi or has the lineage of the Skywalkers or the Kenobis or Palpatine or anybody that's important in the story. And we get to hear Kylo Ren express that to her, that she's, you know, she plays no real significant part in the story. She's just powerful in the Force some kind of way. And, um, you know, uh, I thought that was an interesting approach. It looks like it almost just seems like they purposefully wanted to go against some of the theories people came up with, you know, and just went, okay, well, let's switch this around or change it. Maybe that's not what happened. Maybe that it was always meant to be this way, but it just seems so weird how everything just went a different way. And did it go a different way for the better? No, I don't think so. I think they— I think it would have been better to go with some of the fan theories actually this time around. I think Snoke was a very interesting character. He was somebody I wanted to see a lot more. He gets killed. We're not going to see any more of him, unless he has some power we don't know about. He's splitting that. But anyway, as far as we know, he's dead. And with Rey's story of her coming from nothing, didn't really like that either. I think it would have been a more interesting story to go And just, you know, even though it might have been predictable, just because something's predictable doesn't mean it's a bad idea. So I think it would have been best to take that route with her. Although I do have this theory, and it's that, uh, them saying trying to throw us off is— I think that's what it is. I think they're just trying to throw us off. I think Rey is somebody, uh, who is important. She could be Luke's daughter. You know, or something, you know. And I think Episode 9— my theory is I think in Episode 9 we're gonna actually get to learn that Rey is somebody. She might even be Kylo Ren's sister, and hence the concern of wanting to turn Kylo Ren kind of goes back to how Luke and Vader were father and son. They were relatives. So that would be very interesting to see, and I think that'll, you know, kind of, you know, bring a lot of interest to, you know, what we might get in Episode 9. But guys, anyway, that's my review on Star Wars Episode 8. I thought it was fair. I thought it was an emotionally gripping film, and I was very surprised and impressed with the amount of emotions I felt with the film, and I cared about the film. But I don't think that The story itself was well done, well written and put together. And them using Snoke as this MacGuffin and then trying to say, well, Rey's nobody, she's just here, and all this setup for Episode 7, it just seemed like a lot of work just to, you know, have them, you know, all of this occur. And, you know, I just think that that was a You know, it was a mistake on the writing part. But again, with Rey, I think this is just to throw us off. I think we're gonna find out she's somebody very important to the story and not someone who was sold for drinking money, but someone who did have a part to play in the story. But anyway, guys, that's my review on Star Wars Episode 8. Let me know what you think. Comment below. Let me know what your favorite Star Wars film is of the new set of series. That'll be now considering Episode 7, Episode 8, and the Rogue One movie they did. Guys, if you like content like this, don't forget to like, subscribe, and until next time, take care.