Movie Review: Star Wars Episode 8 - The Last Jedi

The short version of this review is that even after several viewings, and about half a year since it was released, I still hate Star Wars Episode 8 - The Last Jedi.  And I'm genuinely deeply upset at the people who put that movie together, and the one before it.  Oh, and I'm upset at people who say they like the movie.  I feel like they gave up expecting something good, and are just accepting the crap that's being put out for the numbered episodes.  And the Star Wars universe means too much to me to just accept it, and not speak out.  So, here I am writing another review for the new Star Wars numbered episodes.

George Lucas has an impressive imagination and an impressive ability to draw from other sources to make his own story.  But his ability seems to fail completely when he doesn't have anyone willing to point out bad ideas.  He's responsible for the original trilogy, but he wasn't the famed creator of Star Wars then.  He was just a movie maker working with lots of experienced people who pushed back and prevented him from doing something stupid like making Han a weird lizard man or making C3‑P0 into a slimy car salesman type.  Sadly, one thing seems to have slipped through by the end of Return of the Jedi... the use of Ewoks instead of Wookiees in the ground battle on Endor.

The next thing we get from George is the Special Editions, which made some tweaks to some special effects that were very pretty.  But it also brought back the unnecessary scene with Han talking to Jabba; unnecessarily changed the ending celebration in Return of the Jedi; and drastically changed the character growth of Han Solo by poorly editing in Greedo shooting at Han first.  What a stupid idea.  I'm guessing George wanted Han to not be a "bad guy" for callously shooting Greedo.

But Han shooting Greedo and it not affecting him any more than motivating him to toss the bartender a coin... is exactly what Han needs to be.  He's the selfish smuggler that has lost his value for life.  The scene tells us all we need to know.  Han is in trouble with a crime lord for failing to deliver some goods.  Han loves his ship (Greedo suggests Jabba might take Han's ship as payment).  Han responds by saying "over my dead body", to which Greedo says, "That's the idea".  Han shoots him under the table, and Greedo never gets a shot off.  This shows us how practical Han is... and very specifically that he's not a "good guy".  George's concept of his own character is shown to be wildly broken by his change in the Special Edition release of the original trilogy.

Next we get the prequels.  They're garbage stories with nice special effects.  It would take me far too long to re-hash everything that's wrong with the prequels, but they represent George's attempt at giving us new Star Wars stories after he became the legendary creator of Star Wars.  By this point, no one was going to tell him his idea was awful.  And we end up with Jar Jar Binks stepping in poop to be funny.  We end up with thrilling senatorial discussions to entertain children.  And worst of all, we end up with a story not even close to the set up George gave himself in episode four.

Obiwan Kenobi told us what should have happened in the prequels.  Instead of a stupid pre-adolescent child version of Anakin and about half a movie wasted on pod races, we could have had an interesting story of how Obiwan Kenobi met a great pilot, and noticed his connection to the Force.  Yoda can warn him that something is off, and Obiwan can decide to train Anakin anyway.  In Episode 4, he tells us that he was the best pilot in the galaxy (possibly hyperbole), a cunning warrior, and a good friend.  Obiwan gives the impression that Anakin knew of his son, and wanted him to have his lightsaber.  The prequels do a fine job of working with the idea that Obiwan told Luke the almost truth of his father becoming Vader... but they ignore the timeline.  And then don't bother using clues like Luke's uncle being involved and knowing Luke's father.

I'm going a little off track.  I'm trying to point out that the prequels were almost entirely George's doing, and he was out of control.  The result was really crappy stories that include things like Jedi being cannon-fodder; Quigon Jinn; Jar Jar Binks; some kind of awful political maneuvering; pod races; horrible romance scenes that aren't believable at all; and gobs of choices made to show pretty special effects instead of telling a good story (like the 45 minutes lightsaber fight on the volcano planet and near a lava river).

The prequels are awful.  But they are in the same story as the prequels.  They are the story of Anakin Skywalker.  Episodes 1 to 6 are the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, and episodes 4 to 6 are excellent.  It's a great story.

When I hear that there's going to be an episode 7, I expect it to be an episode in that story.  I expect to hear what has been happening to the characters that are still there.  I expect new characters... sure... you add characters to the story, but I wanted to see the story of Han, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, R2, 3PO, and Lando.

I LIKE the characters introduced in Episode 7 - The Force Awakens.  Rey, Finn, Kylo, and Poe are fun characters. But that's really all I like about Episode 7.  The story is a literal copy of Episode 4.  If you want to read more about that, you can read my review of Episode 7.  But beyond it being a copy of Episode 4, it wasn't a movie as a part of the numbered episodes of Star Wars because it didn't continue to the story.  Maybe as standalone movies, unrelated to the original characters it could have been better, but there's still the problem of it being a copy.

What they should have done with Episode 7 was re-introduce us to the Star Wars Universe.  Give us the familiar characters, and at least hint at what happened in the past 30 years.  Maybe talk about the decades of work to free star systems from the remnants of the Empire.  Show Luke running a Jedi Academy. Show Han running the intelligence portion of the New Republic military, and getting wind of a remnant of the Empire that has managed to hide and grow in power.  There's plenty of room to introduce the new characters.  Rey can have been a baby dropped off at the Yavin IV Jedi Academy in an escape pod.  We still get the mystery parents thing.  Or Luke is just her dad, and he's trying to raise her and train her at the same time.  Finn is still an escaped storm trooper of the new non-clone kind, and Poe is the operative that runs into him while working for Han Solo.  We don't have the stupid map thing that they did.  And we don't have another super weapon.  We do have a new story to tell.

But we didn't get that.  And it's not George's fault this time... he handed over the reigns.  But by doing so, we got no underlying vision for where the story should go, and we got people starting from scratch... and just throwing in familiar faces as supporting characters.

Again... to tell that story... it shouldn't have been numbered episodes.  But it also shouldn't have made nothing change in 30 years with respect to the state of the galaxy.  The First Order is the Empire.  They are still the military power in the galaxy, and somehow the resistance is still the rebellion.

What Episode 7 gave us for set up for the rest of the new trilogy was a very weak offering.  We got that nothing changed; the there's some mystery dark side Force user that we don't know the origin of; and there's a new Force user with a mystery past that is going to be one of the hero's of the story.

Along comes episode 8.  And what does it do?  It chucks the meager offering in the trash; chucks the old characters in the trash; chucks the flavor of Star Wars in the trash; and builds an amalgamation story that fails at being engaging.

What happened in Episode 8?  There's a casino world where Finn and the new girl go... and we get a story about the evils of capitalism in war... which is a fine concept, but not what I look for in Star Wars.  And it's just a time waster in Episode 8.  Nothing of value comes from that side story that couldn't have been handled in 3 minutes of movie a different way.  The trip to the enemy capital ship for Finn and company is also useless.  It gets no one anything.

The setup for running out of fuel while trying to escape the bad guys doesn't fit in the Star Wars universe either.  And it leaves us with a terrible set up where Leia and company are stuck on a ship for most of the movie.  Just flying away from the bad guys.  And Leia's shining moment is being sucked out into space and surviving.  ugh... so dumb.  Abysmal waste of one of the original characters.  And she's gone now.

What happened to Luke?  When did the most optimistic and motivated person from the original trilogy become a dispirited sap?  His dad wiped out the Jedi Order, and made the galaxy suffer.  And he had hope his dad could be redeemed.  But he considers killing his nephew instead of talking to him about the darkness he perceives?  Terrible writing.

There's more.  But I've already written about a lot of it here and here.

I feel like something I love is being abused.  It hurts my heart.

As a side note: I think the actors all did fine work.  No complaints there.

Politics: Socialism, the Dirty Word

Let's start with the meaning of the word.  Unfortunately, the definition isn't really precise.  There's a really long wikipedia article about it, that is worth reading through, even if you don't read every word.

The short version of the definition as I understand it, and as I use it, includes the idea that the government controls some resources for the benefit of all its citizens.  Maybe my definition is off.  But I think I'm close enough for a working definition.  To give you an idea of my definition in practice: I consider the fire department to be a socialist construct.  Our tax money is used by our government to provide a service we don't all use, but which we want in place.  It has the potential to benefit all of us.  It's there for all of us.

And I don't think anyone wants to complain about paying taxes that are used to fund a fire department.

But, if you say the word "socialism", it seems to draw a nasty reaction from a fair number of the people I communicate with.  The word seems to be a dirty word, and when people argue against another socialist idea, universal healthcare, the argument made is simply that it is socialist as if that ends the argument.

But it really doesn't make a good argument.  Police departments, the military, public school, road maintenance, child protective services, and as already mentioned: fire departments, are all socialist concepts.  Tax money (resources) from all of us supports those services that all of us do or can benefit from.  Are those bad ideas because they are socialist in nature?

Let's consider the idea of universal healthcare, and take it past the point where someone calls it socialist in a dismissive way.

Right now, because medical costs can get to be enormous, most of us have a health insurance membership.  Usually, some part of our pay from our jobs gets taken out automatically and sent to one of these health care companies.  Then if we have a medical need that costs money, we get in touch with our health insurance company, and ask them for money.  This is the maddening part.  They can deny us coverage... they don't have to give us money.  If they can find an excuse, they can deny us coverage.

Okay, there's a more maddening part.  While we're giving them money so they can deny us coverage, they're paying the top-level people millions of dollars a year.  In bonuses.  I worked for a software branch of one of these health care companies, and I have a very strong and upset memory of being told there would be no raises that year because the company overall wasn't doing very well.  And then that same year, the publicly traded company announced its numbers and the top-level managers were getting bonuses in the millions of dollars.  I was very angry.

That's the capitalist way of doing things.  And for the most part, I think that the competition of a free market is a good thing.  But for healthcare, I think it's a bad thing.  When the poor family has a 6 year-old with a heart problem that needs incredibly expensive surgery to live, their options are limited.  One of those options is going into incredible debt that the family is likely to never recover from so the child can live.

Money decides who gets medical help.  And that means that a lot of people don't get medical help they need.  At the same time, there are very rich people sitting at the top making more money in one year than most of us will make in a life-time of work.  This situation makes me angry.  Selfish people making money from the suffering of millions of people.

Now instead of the capitalist solution, let's just think about the socialist solution.  I know the word makes some people cringe, but it shouldn't.  It's just a different way of doing things.

Medical costs might still be enormous if all we change is the health insurance industry.  And we probably still need insurance in case of big medical costs.  Changing it from a private industry with those jerks at the top making millions of dollars from denying us coverage, to a government run organization that provides service to all citizens, changes it from a decision based on whether you have money, to a decision about whether the medical need is genuine.

And no one at the top is making millions of dollars.  In your paycheck, you'll still only see a similar amount taken out of your check.  Maybe less, because we don't have to cover the salaries and bonuses of rich jerks.  We don't ruin the job market because we'll still need people to run the new health care organization.  We make things better for people that need medical help (which I'm in favor of).  And the only people that suffer from this change are the rich jerks that were screwing over millions of people including their employees (which I'm also in favor of).

It's a simple good idea that is seemingly opposed because it comes with the word "socialism".

I'm not suggesting we turn the United States into a socialist country.  But some things like road work, and fire fighters, and police, and public school are better when the population of the country comes together and helps each other out.  By that I mean: we all accept that our tax money gets spent on those things.  And Universal Health Care is an excellent example of something that should be tax funded and provided to all citizens.

One argument against it that I'd like to address is the one: I won't use it, so why should I pay?  It's very selfish question.  Right there you have an answer.  You should want to pay because it helps humanity.  Other people.  Like you.  Maybe who aren't as lucky as you having perfect health and never needing medical attention.  But there's also that you can't know you'll never need it.  That's what insurance is for.  And maybe we can also remember that we're trying to be part of a country... a group of people that supposedly are part of one "tribe".  If you choose to not pay into the system, you're not part of it.  If you don't want to be part of the group of people, then I hope you're not being a hypocrite by benefiting from anything else the government provides.  Like roads.  Or the protection of the military or the police.  Or school.

I completely agree that things like computers, cars, houses, and so on should be part of a free market.  But services that are necessary to live shouldn't be decided by capitalism.  Medical care is not a luxury, and I'm not okay with punishing a family with a sick kid for being poor.

The combination of capitalism and socialism is possible.  We're already doing it.  We just need to do it better.  And socialism has to stop being a dirty word.  We need to start considering ideas based on their merit instead of their label.