Star Wars: The Last Jedi (gets into spoilers)

So, Saturday I watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I will get into spoilers here, but I'll see if I can push those below the Blogspot cut, at least.

In general, I enjoyed the movie. I understand, and agree with the existence of, some criticisms I've heard. None of those seriously dragged down the experience for me, though. There were some good characters. There were some awesome scenes. There was some unnecessary fluff. The movie felt very full. But it was all pretty good and felt Star Warsy enough for me.

And with that, let's get into some details...

Whereas The Force Awakens felt like almost a remake of A New Hope, this movie has callbacks to The Empire Strikes Back. In my perception, they don't feel as direct, but I can't deny the parallels. The opening and ending scenes are clearly evocative of the battle on Hoth. Rey's time with Luke could equate to the training on Dagobah. But at least there's no new Death Star/Starkiller Base.

I like Rose. She's a good new character full of Rebel/Resistance "heart" and some idol-worship that gives a perspective we usually don't get to see much of, without being blindingly naive. I'm not sure what I think about her professed "love" for Finn, though, considering his impassive response at that moment. Finn clearly still feels closer (albeit perhaps not romantically) to Rey. Whether this is the seed for a Finn/Rose romance or those feelings are unrequited, though, I think I'm okay with either.

I really loved the look of Crait (even if the name bugs me a big, since the planet seems to have nothing to do with Krayt Dragons). The crystalline foxes were neat, too, though I admit to pegging them as more feline than vulpine at a glance and I have to wonder why they seem so friendly with the Resistance (befriended by previous inhabitants maybe?). The salt/crystal look of the planet was visually striking and really cool - though there is a scene shift during the ending that has the surface layer seem to reappear over a place it was blasted away and that bugged me a little bit.

After the movie, I was thinking about how full it was and I asked myself what I would cut out. I started thinking about the scenes and story thread and the move obviously unnecessary part was the detour to Canto Bight, with the casino and race tracks to find a slicer. You could just give the Resistance a competent slicer in their small fleet and bypass that whole segment of the movie without changing the plot.
What do you lose? Some Finn/Rose time expanding on her background. The spreading the ember of resistance with the stable children. And the arguably heavy-handed points about the economy of the setting, where arms dealers are pointed out as making profit off the ongoing conflicts in the galaxy.
I think that last is the primary point of those scenes and, while I see some value in it, I'm not sure its necessary to try to establish that depth and "reality" to the setting when the world-building in Star Wars is already so very superficial. I'll circle back to that point. So... I'm not sure I would cut it out, but I'm also not sure it contributes enough to keep in. Hmm. If I were an editor, that'd be a tough one.

Porgs. Okay, I'd also remove the porgs. They're cute, but don't offer anything outside a marketable cute "thing" for a franchise which is already everywhere. The movie doesn't need them for levity. There's enough of that elsewhere. And the guilt scene with Chewie is... kind of distressing when you think about the roast porgs are already dead and eating them for sustenance is probably the lesser of evils there.

I enjoyed Luke's arc as tormented and tired ex-teacher. I was a little iffy on it until Yoda made his spectral appearance - that helped bring things together. I think the burning of the tree would have had more impact if the books didn't seem to make it onto the Falcon somehow, but still. Luke's wariness of Rey is warranted. His "lessons" are a bit cynical, but not without merit. And his stand against the Order and Kylo at the end was nothing short of awesome (getting a reaction out of the audience, even).

Y'know, Admiral Holdo could have done a lot for morale (and possibly prevented a mutiny) by explaining she had a plan. Even just that would have helped, rather than saying absolutely nothing. Surrounded by desperate people looking for anything to go on, her reply is "get to your stations." That doesn't offer much hope to work with.

Poe's arc seemed to be about learning sometimes you should run away. Not even precisely when, just that sometimes its preferable. I guess. Honestly, the trade of a bomber wing for a dreadnought seems pretty good from a military standpoint. And sending a few people to shut down a tracking beacon seems like exactly the sort of mission the Rebellion/Resistance is built on. I get that he needs to temper his go-get-'em fire a little to be a good leader, but I feel like there are some mixed messages going on here.

Speaking of mixed messages, we get both Kylo and Luke making arguments for "leaving the past behind." If that's meant to be a metatextual message to the audience and fanbase, then the movies really need to stop leaning as heavily on the past themselves. Which, maybe there's room to do now. Hmm.

One of my actual disappointments with the movie is the utter lack of payoff when it comes to mysteries set up in The Force Awakens.
Snoke was built up as this mysterious Emperor-like figure who rules the First Order, has vast Force powers, and somehow led Kylo (and the no-longer-mentioned Knights of Ren?) down the path to the dark side. That sort of person doesn't come out of nowhere and has to have some history. How/when did he build up the Order? When did he get at Ben Solo? Well, none of that is explained here, and he's cut in half perhaps more unceremoniously than Darth Maul.
Similarly, Rey has this incredible connection to the Force, fighting Kylo in a saber battle even though she's utterly untrained. She might have some particular connection to the dark side. Who are the parents of this Force-savant? Nobodies, if Kylo is to be believed (and I'm not sure I do, still). That could be an attempt to say "Force powers go beyond bloodline," which isn't bad itself (and syncs up with a kid in an ending scene), but it's horribly unsatisfying if that's really all there is to it.

Which brings me back around to the other disappointment. Star Wars movies are good at whipping up cool, cinematic scenes. They are kind of terrible at building on a world in ways that make sense. There are a few major moments in this film that open up huge cans of worms when you start thinking about them in a context of implications for the setting in a sense of stories (or RPGs). And, frankly, this is not the first movie in the series to do that by any means.
Here, we have light-speed ramming. It's actually an we-inspiring scene. There's some emotion. The visuals are stunning. And yet, if you start thinking about it, questions start to bring it down. Why didn't she do that when they started firing on the shuttles? Wait, why didn't they do that with their first ship that was about to run out of fuel? Hold on, why not do that with a hyperdrive-capable fighter, sacrificing one person to split a line down the keel of the dreadnought rather than sending in bombers? Or droid-ships? Why aren't hyperdrive torpedoes a common thing in the setting? It just sort of unravels into an unwieldy mess.
Similarly, the whole fleet chase situation is awful contrived when you think about it. Calling fighters back doesn't make a lot of sense when much of the point of a fighter is to strike beyond the range of a capital ship. And only one Order capital ship can track at a time? That doesn't make sense, especially if they can transfer tracking...
But none of this is new. Starkiller Base's hyperspace multi-beam makes little sense in the context of what has been established before. Hyperspace travel itself seems to move at the speed of plot more than anything. The Republic/Empire/First Order seem to be able to do total fleet refreshes from fighters to monolithic planet-killers in the space of maybe twenty years, when that's a mind-boggling amount of personnel, materials, and "money" even when considering multiple planets-worth of GDP.
Minimum crews, droids, cloning, technological advancement in general... a lot of things serve as superficially cool while not make much "sense." This stuff does bug me about Star Wars in general. I forgive a lot of it, though, reminding myself that the sci-fi aspects are trappings for a fantasy story.

And... I've probably had other thoughts, but that's all I can put together at the moment. Long post anyway. ;)