Saturday, December 16, 2017

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi": one-paragraph "pre"-review
(no spoilers)

I'm planning on watching "The Last Jedi" again because there's a ton of information to process, so I'm writing this very vague, spoiler-free review that will give you a general idea of my emotional reaction to certain aspects of the film. Expect a "real," full-scale review soon. First and foremost: is the movie worth seeing again? Even though the film is highly frustrating, I'd say the answer is yes, and the YouTube-based reviewers I've watched (I just binge-watched a slew of spoiler-filled reviews) also seem to think that the film really needs to be seen at least twice before a person can come to any firm conclusions about what works and what doesn't work. As I wrote above, the film was frustrating on some levels, mainly as relates to what the movie's preview trailers led us to believe about Rey's training under Luke versus what the movie actually delivers. As to the question of whether "The Last Jedi" falls into the trap of recapitulating "The Empire Strikes Back": the answer to that is "yes and no": there are definite (and probably deliberate) visual callbacks to "Empire," and certain plot elements also hark back to the 1980 film. The movie does deliver on the space battles; there's also a lightsaber-combat scene that deserves special mention, occurring right after the surprise death of a major character who, it turns out, may have been more of a MacGuffin than anything else. "Last Jedi" is laced with humor and even some sentimentality. As for the much-ballyhooed expansion of the theology of the Force: oh, hell, yes: there's a lot to talk about there, and I'll definitely do so when I write a more detailed, spoiler-filled review in a few days. And about those porgs: not to worry. They're little more than a punctuation mark in the film, little beasts whose only role seems to be comic relief. I didn't mind them one bit. So overall, I'd recommend seeing "The Last Jedi" at least once. You might think a single viewing is enough to gain a firm impression of the movie, but for me and, apparently, for a host of other people, it's going to take at least two viewings to form anything approaching a coherent opinion.



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