Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Part 2

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI IN THIS POST


As a counterbalance to yesterday’s post about some of the problems I had with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, today I want to quickly mention aspects of the movie that I did like. In spite of its flaws I enjoyed the movie both times that I watched it and wouldn’t discourage anyone from checking it out themselves (and if you’re a Star Wars fan, I guess you kind of have to see it since it’s now a canonical addition to the series). Below are some of things I think The Last Jedi did well.


Visually stunning scenes
The Star Wars series is full of visual spectacle and the cinematography of The Last Jedi is simply top-notch. Two moments that stand out in my mind from the movie are Holdo’s kamikaze attack and the battle on the salt flats.

Luke is right about the Jedi dropping the ball
Luke’s jaded cynicism isn’t for everyone, but I think Luke is absolutely right in his statement that the Jedi did a lousy job of stopping the rise of the Sith.

The fight between Rey and Kylo, and Snoke’s guards
While we didn’t get a true lightsaber duel in The Last Jedi, we did get a great fight scene where Rey and Kylo team up to take down Snoke’s personal guard.

Poe prank calling Hux
The humor of The Last Jedi didn’t always work, but I thought this scene was absolutely hilarious.

Luke looking like a total badass before his death
Don’t pretend like you didn’t get chills when Luke, after being hit by a concentrated bombardment from an army of AT-ATs, emerged from the cloud and merely brushed the dust off his shoulders.

Carrie Fischer’s best performance in all the Star Wars movies
It is a great tragedy that Carrie Fischer died before the current Star Wars trilogy was finished, but at least we got to see her go out on top with her best performance as Leah.

The First Order (sensibly) beating down the Resistance
I’m not rooting for the First Order, (they are the villains, after all) but it made sense that they were winning in most of The Last Jedi. They have an overwhelming military advantage in the movie and it would be weird if they were regularly losing.

The connection between Kylo and Rey
This might be my favorite part of the movie. Yes, it did give us the meme-tastic scene of shirtless Kylo, but I thought it was really well done and cemented the interesting relationship the two characters have.