Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

"This is not going to go the way you think!"
— Luke Skywalker

Genre:	Science fiction Space opera Fantasy Adventure
Directed By:	Rian Johnson
Produced By:	Kathleen Kennedy Ram Bergman
Written By/Screenplay:	Rian Johnson
Based On:	Star Wars by George Lucas
Starring:	Mark Hamill Carrie Fisher Adam Driver Daisy Ridley John Boyega Oscar Isaac Andy Serkis Lupita Nyong'o Domhnall Gleeson Anthony Daniels Gwendoline Christie Kelly Marie Tran Laura Dern Benicio del Toro
Cinematography:	Steve Yedlin
Distributed By:	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release Date:	December 9, 2017 (Shrine Auditorium) December 15, 2017 (United States)
Runtime:	152 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$200–317 million
Box Office:	$1.321 billion
Franchise:	Star Wars
Prequel:	Star Wars: The Force Awakens (chronologically) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (by release)
Sequel:	Solo: A Star Wars Story (by release) Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (chronologically)

"I said to Rian, 'Jedi's don't give up.' I mean, even if Luke had a problem, he would maybe take a year to try and regroup, but if he made a mistake, he would try and right that wrong, so right there, we had a fundamental difference."
— Mark Hamill

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (also known as Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi) is a 2017 American epic space opera film and the eighth film in the Star Wars Skywalker saga, the second installment in the series' sequel trilogy, and the sequel to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was written and directed by Rian Johnson, had its world premiere at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on December 9, 2017, and was released in the United States on December 15, 2017. The sequel, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was released on December 20, 2019.

Plot

The Last Jedi picks up the moment The Force Awakens left off, it's still 34 ABY and Luke Skywalker's peaceful and solitary existence gets upended when he encounters Rey, a young woman who shows strong signs of the Force. Her desire to learn the ways of the Jedi forces Luke to make a decision that changes their lives forever. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren and General Hux lead the First Order in an all-out assault against Leia and the Resistance for supremacy in the galaxy.

Sith Qualities

The movie suffers from simplistic and poor set-ups for concepts and scenes; for example, the explanation of why the First Order is suddenly so powerful is a single sentence in the opening crawl, which flatly declares that they now reign.
- Another example is in a scene that explains how the Resistance ships are faster and can keep at a range where the First Order ships' cannons are ineffective against their shields and that they wouldn't last long burning fuel like this, which is not only false, since the Resistance ships never pull away from the First Order ships despite supposedly being faster, but also doesn't fit with anything that has ever been depicted in Star Wars before and thus feels contrived.
The viewer is expected to know lots of things from external source material, which has always been a questionable practice for movies.
Just like Man of Steel and the reboot of Fantastic Four, this movie uses a rather washed-out "gritty" color palette template typically seen in war films, instead of using bright colors like the previous films did; as a result, it looks rather faded and dull.
Bad pacing, which makes the movie come across as boring.
This sloppy approach to causality and continuity results in frequent cases of what can only be described as "teleportation," with characters simply appearing where the plot has decided they ought to be; for example:
- Rey and Chewbacca arrive at the Supremacy in the Millennium Falcon, even though they logically should not know where the Supremacy is, let alone that it exists; similarly, Finn, Rose, and DJ arrive at the Supremacy, even though they also should not know where it is at by this point.
- Even objects are affected by this, with a knife-like weapon belonging to one of the Praetorian guards seeming to disappear in the next shot so Rey wouldn't be impaled, allowing her to defeat him so easily.
- BB-8 appears inside an AT-ST without any explanation for how it got in there.
- Rey gets to Snoke's escape craft, leaves the Supremacy, and gets inside the Falcon off-screen in a manner that is never made clear.
- Rose, BB-8, and Finn all leave the Supremacy in a First Order shuttle, which then arrives at the door of the abandoned Rebel base right as it is closing, even though none of these characters should know where the base is.
- Rose's speeder is suddenly right next to Finn's, even though an overhead shot clearly showed how Finn's was the only speeder going in that direction.
The film shares the same problem as its predecessor of lazily recycling several plot points and tropes from a specific installment of the original trilogy, but this time it rehashes not only The Empire Strikes Back but also some parts of Return of the Jedi. For example:
- Good guys are chased out of their main base by the bad guys; due to an unfortunate circumstance, the good guys are stuck being chased by the bad guys because they cannot jump away.
- The Force-sensitive hero finds a Jedi master in exile on a remote planet, ostensibly to train; however, the Jedi master is not what the hero expects.
- The hero learns about the Force and goes into a dark side cave where they face a vision of himself; later, they have a vision of the future and rush off to confront the villain against the wishes of the Jedi master.
- The friends of the hero are betrayed by their ally after being captured by the bad guys.
- The hero believes that the villain has good in their heart and can be turned, so said hero turns himself in and tries to convince the villain to turn back, but the villain appears unmoved.
- The villain presents the hero to his master, who places the hero's lightsaber on the armrest of his throne and later goads the hero about how his forces have the other good guys trapped and are killing them.
- The villain kills his master to save the hero.
- The hero fails in their mission, is told some bad news about their lineage, is given an offer to join the villain, rejects it, and is left on the run.
- There is a battle on a planet with a white surface where the good guys, in trenches and weak speeders, face off against the bad guys before the thing that is protecting them is breached.
Supreme Leader Snoke is killed off all of a sudden without having any of his backstory or motives explained prior. Additionally, the plot twist of Snoke's death relies on shock value as a way to get a reaction from the audience, as there's no meaningful payoff to this, as it is still the same generic good vs evil formula, and doesn't make sense because Snoke said he could see into Kylo's mind, if he could, why didn't he sense the lightsaber turning around?
Several plot points that were set up in the previous film are ignored and have little payoff:
- Rey's parents and Kylo Ren's training are now suddenly unimportant.
- The Knights of Ren are absent and only indirectly mentioned by Luke in one scene.
- Finn now knows how to pilot spaceships, despite it being a major plot point that he did not know how to do so in the previous film and no time has elapsed for him to learn.
- The loss of Starkiller Base, if anything, seems to have made the First Order stronger, even though they should be weaker as Starkiller Base cost them resources.
- Snoke, despite having repeatedly seen Kylo Ren in a mask before the events of the film, suddenly dislikes it.
- Rey is suddenly interested in the identities of her parents and wants to know who they were, even though that was not the case in the previous film; in The Force Awakens, she simply wanted parental figures and was waiting for her actual family to return, before accepting that they would never return to get her.
Constant clunky attempts at humor that are badly placed and usually disrupt tense action scenes, even slowing down the pacing of the film; for example, the opening sequence is an extended set-up to a bad "yo mama" joke, delivered to a character who is supposed to be powerful and threatening.
The film shares almost the same problem as The Force Awakens of lacking a sense of scale: The set-up of the midsection of the film would only work if every ship in the First Order is chasing every ship in the Resistance since otherwise one or both sides could summon more ships to assist them. The only real attempt to compensate is to make individual vehicles larger, so the First Order has Star Destroyers and walkers called AT-M6s, which are extremely large.
The film has several internal contradictions, including but not limited to:
- Supreme Leader Snoke seems to have been genuinely unaware that his own flagship has a hyperspace-tracking device on board to the point where he tortures General Hux for allowing the Resistance to escape.
- Rey has lived on a desert planet since as a child and thus has never seen rain before, but later knows how to swim despite having left Jakku only a few days earlier and no time having elapsed for her to learn.
- Finn goes from assuming that hyperspace-tracking is impossible to later reveal that he mopped the breaker room for the tracker on the Supremacy (despite him having been stationed on Starkiller Base) in between scenes.
- Rose preventing Finn from sacrificing himself to destroy the cannon contradicts her motivations: her sister laid down her life to protect the Resistance, while Rose risks her life to destroy it.
  - A common attempt to defend this mentions that Finn was never truly going to be able to destroy the cannon, even though he is the viewer's insight into the First Order and has previously provided information for Starkiller Base and the hyperspace tracker on the Supremacy, so he should know that this would destroy the cannon; not to mention that, although parts of the speeder are melting, the main body of the speeder seems to be fine, especially in the moment right before Rose prevents Finn's sacrifice.
- In one scene Admiral Holdo explains to Leia how she likes Poe, even though this is the same man who jeopardized her escape plan, endangered everyone on the Raddus and held her at gunpoint.
Poor grasp of the Star Wars lore, technology, and sci-fi space physics in general:
- The golden dice, which were just a background prop in A New Hope, are now suddenly important.
- Admiral Holdo sacrifices herself to jump into lightspeed to split an entire wing off of the Supremacy and destroy several Star Destroyers by ramming into them; this creates plot holes in the franchise since a kamikaze attack of this type renders super-weapons such as the Death Star as well as large spacecraft extremely vulnerable and easy to destroy.
  - The fact that director and writer Rian Johnson himself has claimed that no one in the Lucasfilm Story Group thought it contradicted anything in other Star Wars media does not exactly help.
  - Force ghosts can now call down lightning to blow things up in the real world and hit others in the face with physical objects, even though the Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi mentioned that he cannot interfere in The Empire Strikes Back.
- Captain Phasma's armor is immune from damage by blaster bolts; if this were the case, she never would have had any reason to be afraid when Finn put a blaster to her head in The Force Awakens.
- Luke considering killing Ben and igniting his lightsaber upon probing his mind only to end up seeing his dark intentions is framed by dialogue as "instinctual," which misunderstands his character in the original trilogy, in which he isn't instinctively murderous, not in situations where the threat isn't active, and especially not against family members; there is no instinct, every time he reacts with violence he has to be heavily coaxed into it in highly-stressful situations.
The battle scenes are very simplistic and seem "turn-based," with seemingly only one side doing something at a time; this leads to awkward moments, such as the AT-M6s and AT-ATs just sitting there while Finn flees across about miles of open ground while carrying an unconscious Rose.
The acting in this movie is very mediocre; particularly, Daisy Ridley who just widely opens her eyes and stands around with her mouth open to express every type of emotion just like in the previous film.
Luke Skywalker's reaction upon learning about the death of Han Solo was filmed, but was ultimately cut from the film and the scene just ends after Luke asks about him upon realizing the Millennium Falcon is on his island but Han is nowhere to be seen.
Uninspired and flawed ship designs. For example:
- The Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought appearing in the opening battle is essentially "designed for the plot," and suffers from numerous flaws in its designs which seem to exist solely for the Resistance to exploit; its bridge is protruding from the flat hull and is extremely wide, making itself a wide target, and the ship is also very lacking in point defense weapons, having only twenty-six turrets (even the old Republican Venator-class Star Destroyers from the prequels have better defense) which are all positioned on its dorsal surface, leaving the ship's main weapons, the ventral-mounted twin orbital bombardment auto-cannons, defenseless (this is a flaw that the Resistance somehow fails to exploit, Poe could simply fly to the ventral surface of the ship and destroy the auto-cannons himself instead of calling in the bombers; remember, he even seems to be aware of its destructive capabilities). The dreadnought also has a docking point for a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer on its dorsal surface which is a major weakness in its hull, allowing the MG-100 StarFortress SF-17 bombers to easily destroy it.
- The MG-100 StarFortress SF-17 is designed to be a World War II-styled heavy bomber in an era of space battles, and it is a fairly big target due to its large bomb bays which protrude out like a magazine from a gun, as well as being absurdly slow and having weak hull armor; they also heavily rely on outdated tactics such as flying in tight formations (so tight a single damaged TIE fighter manages to take down three bombers by simply crashing into them), and attack by positioning themselves "directly above" enemy ships and "drop" their payload directly onto the target. While using magnetic force to push the bombs out of bomb bays to create a "free-falling effect" is possible in space, not using weapons with better range such as proton torpedoes or smart bombs makes no sense. Even the only redeeming quality of the StarFortress, which is its high bomb capacity, is insignificant since it should not be a bomber in the first place.
Many original characters from the prior films have still several dramatic problems, that given to questionable characterization:
- Rey is a bit more of a rather dull and overpowered protagonist who pulls abilities out of nowhere as the plot requires, suddenly knows the Force after roughly a single lesson from Luke, and is shilled for by the narrative: notably, Luke claims her power frightens him, despite having been in the presence of other Sith, and even Yoda talks about how awesome she is. Rey also seems to barely acknowledge Finn for most of the movie as if he didn't exist to the point where she only calls out Kylo for killing Han and never brings up the fact that he endangered Finn's life, and she even defeats Luke in combat (not physically, though) and lectures him for being a coward.
- Luke Skywalker is given a very questionable characterization throughout the movie, as he is now a terrified and cowardly man committed to dying alone wallowing in regret after a failed attempt at a cold-blooded murder, instead of being an optimistic hero who refuses to give up. Luke also seemed to have never tried to redeem Kylo even though he was certain that there was good in Darth Vader, who was one of the most evil people in the galaxy. The fact that Luke also gave into his impulses and considered cold-bloodedly murdering his sleeping nephew based on a vague premonition rather undermines his arc in Return of the Jedi, in which he learns to control his emotions and impulses that made him prone to temptation by the dark side.
- Supreme Leader Snoke isn't a threatening villain, as he turns out to be just a (mostly) regular-sized and weak-looking humanoid alien with silly-looking golden robes. He is also comedically overpowered. He appears to be more powerful than the Emperor.
- Leia can now use the Force to "fly through space" and her scene felt like a Deus ex Machina; the fact that Leia is a powerful Force-user undermines the entire quest to find Luke in The Force Awakens, since she could've just helped the Resistance defeat the First Order.
  - The scene also felt awkward in light of the tragic real-life death of Carrie Fisher.
- Luke says Kylo's strength didn't scare him before, which is ironic because he ends up almost killing him in his sleep, making that line make no sense.
- The quote: "Let the Past Die, kill it if you have to" line is rather hypocritical of not only Kylo, but also Disney allowing this line to slip into the film, given that Disney has made it quite a focus to make live-action versions of their old animated movies, and hypocritical of Kylo, given that he goes back to being an angry villain after being calm for half the movie. While it is not meant to be taken seriously, given that Kylo is trying to gaslight Rey, it still comes across as poor taste.
- Poe Dameron's arc consists of him getting demoted for making what in retrospect was the only correct decision (even if the Resistance wasn't aware of hyperspace-tracking, he knew that they would've been obliterated in their next encounter with the dreadnought had it not been destroyed), being constantly talked down to, and learning a lesson about the value of mindlessly obeying orders and ignoring his instincts. Given that the bombers are slow and weak, it is not clear how they would've been able to join up with the Resistance fleet to flee before the dreadnought had a chance to fire a second shot, even if Poe had listened to Leia's orders.
- BB-9E is supposed to be a threatening villain, despite its harmless appearance since it is just a black-plated BB-8.
- Chewbacca is very underused except for interactions with the porgs and taking Rey to places via the Falcon, and isn't shown to be grieving for the death of Han Solo.
- Everyone in the First Order is incompetent to the point where Captain Canady, the commander of the dreadnought, orders the destruction of the nearly-empty Resistance base rather than the escaping Raddus.
- Captain Phasma is wasted again, as she fails to execute Finn and Rose, loses a fight with Finn, and dies again and she is never seen or mentioned anywhere.
- Yoda is given a rather goofy characterization, similar to when he first met Luke on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, in which he acted like this to test Luke's patience before turning to his usual stoic and wise characterization; only there is no reason for him to act like this in this movie. Also, how come Yoda didn't help Luke before Luke cut himself from the force?
- Maz Kanata is also inconsistent, as in the previous film she is a quirky but sincere criminal leader who cared about the fate of the galaxy and offered sage advice to young adventurers, but here she is now too busy with union disputes and implied sexual innuendo to fight "the only fight that matters".
The film continues a tendency started by The Force Awakens to quickly replace classic characters with new ones without any proper setup. For example, Luke is given a new characterization so that Rey can easily be better than him. Admiral Ackbar is pointlessly killed off after having spent less than a minute on-screen and Leia is pointlessly rendered unconscious for most of the second act, and both are replaced with a new admiral character who is also killed off in this movie.
At times, it does not even feel like an actual Star Wars film. For example:
- It shares another problem with the previous film of its tone and much of the attempts at dialogue and humor being reminiscent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which feels out-of-place in a Star Wars film; the original six films felt timeless, as they felt as if a myth were playing out on-screen, and part of the reason why is because much of the dialogue (as clunky as some of it is) feels as if they were from another galaxy rather than from our Earth. Here, in The Last Jedi, the characters are spewing outdated and unfunny jokes much of the time and it sucks the viewer out of the mood; it works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since this was the tone that was established from the start, but none of the previous six films have done this, so this doesn't work in The Last Jedi.
This film lacks the Wilhelm scream as well as a character stating, "I have a [very] bad feeling about this," both of which have always been used in prior Star Wars films; director and writer Rian Johnson did make up for the latter by stating in one interview that BB-8 gives a series of beeps in the opening battle that translates to, "I have a bad feeling about this," but the translation itself is not really in the actual film.
Scenes, plot holes, and plot points are severely affected by poor writing and are sometimes redundant. For example:
- The script constantly re-uses the idea of a character being rendered unconscious before switching to another scene; Poe, Finn, Kylo Ren, Leia, and Rose are all rendered unconscious before the scene can move to another location.
- Kylo Ren goes from wanting to create something different from pretty much anything made before to just deciding to be in charge of the First Order, something that also existed in the past, without a clear reason.
- Kylo Ren is also a hypocrite for demonizing Luke for almost killing him, yet in The Force Awakens, he kills his father of his own volition, making his reason to hate Luke make no sense.
- At one point Finn and Rose get arrested for a parking violation, which is too mundane for a Star Wars movie.
- The script sometimes forgets that the Resistance is not referred to as the Rebels, notably when Finn refers to himself as "Rebel scum" while fighting Phasma.
- The interactions between Rey and Kylo feel very forced (considering that they are in separate locations across the galaxy and that there would've been no other logical workaround to get them to interact) and weren't developed enough for her to decide to go risk her life to save him although he had previously injured Finn and killed Han Solo.
- Similarly, Rose kissing Finn felt rather rushed, especially considering how she was never shown or told earlier in the film to have romantic feelings for Finn.
- Overuse of lazy plot conveniences, such as DJ arriving out of nowhere with a ship to find Finn and Rose on the edge of a cliff.
- Some lines aren't necessary and point out the obvious stuff, like in the opening scene where Lieutenant Connix says "oh no" upon discovering a First Order fleet arrives above the atmosphere of D'Qar.
- The Canto Bight subplot has a lot of filler, consisting of Finn taking the time to run around the casino wide-eyed and wanting to have some fun gambling and Rose spending a few scenes worried about capitalism and animal cruelty despite the fact they are on an urgent mission to save their friends. While on the topic of capitalism, it is ironic that there is a subplot about how rich people are bad, given that Disney (who owns Star Wars) has bought out a lot of properties (Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and Marvel) in the past decade.
Many scenes are copied from other movies, notably the scene where Luke is revealed to be a projection, which recycles the ending of Escape from L.A. Aside from copying plot points from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the plot itself is also blatantly rehashed from Crimson Tide (another movie distributed by Disney).
Both of Luke's lessons on why the Jedi Order should end that he gives to Rey don't do much of any analysis beyond empty assertions. For example:
- The first lesson is about how "the Force doesn't belong to the Jedi," which was never a claim that the Jedi had, especially not with how Luke was taught about the Force. The Force has always been described as an all-encompassing energy field in previous films. The Jedi's mandate is to work with the Force, not control it or claim ownership of it.
- The other lesson, about how "at the height of their power the Jedi allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire and wipe them out," is equally empty, as it doesn't raise any further questions or provide greater reasoning for the Jedi's failure beyond "they lost," which would be a dumb thing to use as evidence that the Jedi are bad, as that loss only occurred at the end of a thousand generations of being successful peacekeepers, and if there were no Jedi, it would allow Evil to dominate without anything to stop it. This is the equivalent of hating the police because they failed to stop a bank robbery, and wanting them disbanded, which increased the crime rate.
- Also the Jedi weren't at the height of their power during Sidious' rise, they were quite honest with themselves during Attack of the Clones, before the start of the Clone Wars, that their powers had been diminished. They also didn't allow Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire and wipe them out, they weren't sitting idly while he took over; they actively fought his forces and sought to keep the Republic together; and finally, the Empire was only created after most of the Jedi were exterminated.
The middle of the movie is a digression caused by Admiral Holdo refusing to tell one of her subordinates enough information to perform his job of reassuring his subordinates, which results in Poe, Finn, and Rose creating a rather convoluted plan to find a code-breaker to get onto the Supremacy to get into a breaker room to switch off a breaker to disable a tracker so that the Resistance fleet can jump to lightspeed, which is useless since the Resistance never needed the tracker to be off anyway.
- Yoda shows up to teach Luke a valuable lesson, telling him that "The greatest teacher, failure is," which is a lesson Luke has already learned for the original trilogy; there is no reason for Yoda to point this out to Luke.
- Luke's death at the end was pretty underwhelming and empty, as he uses up all of his life force by projecting an image of himself across the galaxy just to distract Kylo Ren and the First Order.
- The ending sequence is very contradictory with the protagonists cheering, which feels very forced despite the death of Luke Skywalker and the Resistance being almost entirely decimated.
The new characters aren't a lot better.
- Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo^[1] is a very flat character and her feud with Poe is pointless given that she could just tell everyone about the existence of a plan, given the clear crisis of morale on her ship. Also, her uniform, consisting of pink hair and a ballgown, is very odd, given that she is supposed to be a military officer. She also sits around doing nothing on her cruiser's bridge while the First Order destroys most of the remainder of the Resistance.
- Rose Tico, the new main character added to the cast, barely does anything in the movie and is just annoying.
  - Speaking of Rose and her line about how they'll win "not by fighting what we hate... but saving what we love"; that specific line also makes no sense in context, given that Finn was trying to "save what he loves" in the first place, and without knowledge that Luke was coming to save the day, she doomed the entire galaxy!
Not great direction by Rian Johnson, who directed Looper, (another science fiction film) which is far better than this film.
- Howver, Rian Johnson would redeem his directing career with Knives Out two years after this film.

Jedi Qualities

Whether you like it or not, the cinematic aspect of the movie is SPOT ON. The visual design, cinematography, lighting, and integration of digital and practical effects are all top-notch; all the action scenes are well-shot and excellent from a visual standpoint, and nearly all scenes are beautifully realized. All of this is thanks to Rian Johnson's fantastic directing skills.
- The scene of Holdo's kamikaze is stunningly executed.
- The Yoda puppet is an amazing replica of the original puppet used in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi; the original molds and the original painter for Yoda's eyes were even used.
- On that topic the scene where the Force ghost of Yoda hits Luke in the face with his cane is a funny moment and a nice call-back to The Empire Strikes Back, despite its issues.
- The final battle and the fight between Kylo and Luke have astonishing cinematography and color.
The sound design is excellent, and most tracks from John Williams' score deliver the precise mood and tone they are supposed to, despite feeling a little played-out at times.
Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Andy Serkis are doing a good job with the material they were given, and of the younger cast Adam Driver in particular also puts in a great performance.
There are some references to the three films in the prequel trilogy, like when Luke mentions how the Jedi fell and how Darth Sidious formed the Empire.
Very great scenes in the movie.
- The scene where Luke speaks to R2-D2 aboard the Falcon is not only pitch-perfect and genuinely touching but also gives the viewer a moment where he has proper characterization.
- The scene of Finn accepting that he is now fighting for something bigger than himself as he heads toward the battering ram cannon is extremely well-handled.
The Porgs are, admittedly, very cute to look at.
- In particular, BB-8 is still cute, despite having unoriginal design.
Despite having mediocre choreography, the scene where Rey and Kylo Ren team up to fight the Praetorian guards is pretty awesome.
While his screentime is rather small, Snoke is still a menacing and memorable villain
Much like Darth Vader in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Yoda gets much of his original characterization restored after going through a personality overhaul in the prequel trilogy. Whereas Yoda in those films was noted for a frequently somber, serious tone, putting predicates before subjects in his dialogue on a near-constant basis and tending not to express emotion strongly (at least when not physically fighting), The Last Jedi follows the template of The Empire Strikes Back in making Yoda a much more optimistic and expressive figure while de-emphasizing his famous speech pattern.
Even Luke Skywalker's death, despite suffering from a botched execution, has some redeeming qualities, too, specifically the score from John Williams as well as the fact that the death occurs in front of the twin suns, mirroring one of his most iconic moments from A New Hope.

Reception

Critical and audience response

Star Wars: The Last Jedi received positive reviews, with praise for its ensemble cast, musical score, visual effects, action sequences, and emotional weight. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 91% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 479 reviews, with an average rating of 8.09/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi honors the saga's rich legacy while adding some surprising twists — and delivering all the emotion-rich action fans could hope for." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."

Despite the positive reviews from critics, it divided the more devoted fans of the Star Wars franchise, receiving a 43% audience rating. Some fans have considered The Last Jedi to be the worst film in the series' Skywalker saga to the point where the prequels, namely The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, once widely considered the worst films in the saga, are now looked on more favorably in hindsight by some fans. On Metacritic, the film earned an average user score of 4.1 out of 10.

The media called the fans out for this, referring to them as a "vocal minority"^[2], claiming that they were opposed to the film's "diversity" or failed to understand "its message" or accusing them that they disliked it because it failed to match their "fan theories"^[3] (even though there were fan theories it did match^[4]), proclaiming that this was Star Wars for "a new generation," or even attacking the original trilogy by saying it "wasn't as good as they remembered."

Several scenes prompted a humorous reaction from the Internet Star Wars community, notably the shot where Luke Skywalker makes a disgusted face after drinking a green liquid milked from a seal-like creature (also known as a Thala-siren in the official Star Wars canon^[5]) being used to describe the reaction to the movie itself; the scene where Leia flies through space was also referred to as "Leia Poppins" or "Super Leia" due to how forced some fans considered it to be. A clip of an interview where Mark Hamill, the actor of Luke Skywalker, is describing BB-9E became another meme associated with the film^[6].

One of the more major criticisms from viewers described how characters lacked their proper characterization in the movie, with Hamill backing them up by stating how Luke Skywalker was written in a way he wasn't supposed to be. In one interview he referred to the film's portrayal of Luke as "Jake Skywalker,"^[7] which would become a term used by Star Wars fans to refer to the aforementioned portrayal of Luke Skywalker. John Boyega, the actor of Finn, also criticized Finn's characterization.

Director Rian Johnson stated in an interview^[8] that he never felt comfortable directing a Star Wars movie in the first place, admitting that he never cared about the series' canon or history, thus explaining the inconsistencies in the movie.

Box office

The film made $1.3 billion at the box office worldwide throughout its theatrical run, with a budget of $200–317 million, though it had a colossal 68.5% second-week drop at the US box office. The film was also a box-office bomb in China, as movie exhibitors dropped the film's showtimes by 92% before it was pulled entirely after two weeks.

Trivia

To promote the movie, Roblox sponsored this movie of the event, named Space Battle. This event received criticism due to the game choice of Red vs Blue vs Green vs Yellow!, due to it being critically outdated (the game has not changed that much for a decade since its release in 2008), and many people considered the overall game choices to be poor.
The Porgs were created to digitally replace the puffins that inhabited the island of Skellig Michael in Ireland (the island where the scenes on Ahch-To were filmed), as the island is so heavily populated with them to the point where the production staff decided to digitally replace the puffins rather than try to remove them.
The concept of Force-users communicating with each other from across the galaxy was originally going to be in Return of the Jedi, but was cut from the finished film.
YouTube user Lukimus Prime regards this among his most hated movies of all time and one of his most hated sequels of all time.