I'm only a few paragraphs from being done with my magnum opus of a meditation on "The Last Jedi." In the meantime, to keep you entertained, here are two takes on the movie—one an attack, the other a defense.
First, the attack: a guy named James Raney claims "The Last Jedi" is objectively bad:
Next, the defense: Jenny Nicholson (whose humorous shtick seems to involve an autistic avoidance of eye contact with the camera) offers up "The Top Ten Worst Reasons You Hated 'The Last Jedi'":
I watched these in reverse order, because I suspected I would be more inclined to agree with the first one. To my surprise, I ended up agreeing with most of what was said by both of them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Jenny seemed to be fixating on a lot of straw men, at least from my perspective. That is, none of the reasons she cited (except the single one I disagreed with, #4 (everything is Holdo's fault)) are reasons why I didn't like the film. Maybe there are people out there who didn't like the film for those reasons, but I am not one of them. (I did really enjoy her take on snakes in the SW universe, though.) Aside from the fact that I hated Holdo, my main disagreement with Jenny is that subversion of expectations is automatically a good thing. Yeah, that only works if you have something meaningful to bring to the table instead--otherwise it's just snark.
I didn't like the film mainly for the reasons that James cites: It was just a poorly written film with main characters who were not compelling. I completely agree about Rey. She is the worst Star Wars character, perhaps next to only Jin Urso (we go from a strong female character who has no agency to a strong female character who is way more powerful than she has any right to be... hmmm). And I think James makes a very good point at the end about critics giving the film a pass when it is so poorly written. I could speculate on why that is, but then I would be getting political and I don't want to do that. Not in public, at any rate.
Bottom line: I didn't love the film, but I didn't vehemently hate it, either. Maybe that is why I found something to agree with in both of these videos. (And also because they are not talking about the same things, I guess.)