Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi Reaction/Review (No Spoilers)

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi Reaction/Review

This is going to be a pretty short review. 

The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars movie since the original trilogy. See it. 

Really, I could just end it there, but I’ll go into a bit more detail. No spoilers, though. 

I’ll answer a few questions I had going into the movie: questions I’m sure many others will have. 

1) Is it just a remake of Empire Strikes Back, the way The Force Awakens was essentially a remake of A New Hope? 

No. A word that’s going to be thrown around a lot when discussing this movie is “bold”. And it’s true. I so hoped this movie would take risks. It does, and they paid off big time. That’s not to say it doesn’t borrow elements from Empire and make plenty of references to the original trilogy, but unlike with Force Awakens, every one of the call backs to the old movies felt purposeful and meaningful, not just there for nostalgic reasons. 

2) We know Luke Skywalker will play an important role in this one. How was he? 

Mark Hamill gave the best performance I’ve ever seen from him. His chemistry with Daisy Ridley (and others) was off the charts. He truly delivered on bringing back the legendary character in a way that worked perfectly for the story. Unfortunately, every scene with him is so strong, when it cuts away to the other storylines, they don’t feel as strong. It’s not that I didn’t like the storylines with Poe and Finn and newcomer Rose (who all have much more depth/screen time)—in fact I really liked all of them. It’s unfair, because how could anything live up to the majesty of Luke Skywalker, especially when his scenes are written so perfectly? 

3) Is there a big twist? 

Don’t go in expecting a one-sentence “I am your father” type of twist, but Luke’s line in the trailer, “This is not going to go the way you think”, is extremely accurate. For the first five or ten minutes, things felt…normal. Suitably exciting, but, not particularly show stopping. Then around the twenty minute mark, it kicks into gear and continually left me with my jaw hanging open, taking turns I absolutely did not see coming.

Here’s a shortlist of the things I didn’t like. 1) The opening title crawl. I think because it so closely follows up The Force Awakens, the information came off as a bit redundant, but also the wording didn’t seem quite right. 2) The humour. There’s a joke early on that did not work for me, and there are a few jokes throughout that fall flat, but thankfully many of them land. I was glad the sense of humour from The Force Awakens was retained, but if you didn’t like it before, you definitely won’t like it this time. 3) There’s a part of the story where some characters travel to a planet that did not look or feel quite right. It felt too modern and not enough like Star Wars. I liked the concept, but the execution seemed off. At this point, we meet a minor character who has an annoying stutter that was entirely unnecessary. 

 

And that’s about it. I found The Last Jedi to be an improvement over The Force Awakens in nearly every regard. The story is much more original, the characters drive the story even more and are explored in greater depth, the acting, though great before, is even better this time, the music is incredible, the visuals are striking, the action is better, the dialogue is quotable, and it packs in so much excellent material, the two-and-a-half hour runtime flies by. In fact, it’s so good, they’ve screwed themselves for the next one. I don’t even feel like I need a third and final movie for this trilogy. The Last Jedi is so grand and satisfying just on its own, that I highly doubt the next movie will be able to live up to this one. 

So that’s all I have for now. It’s certainly the kind of movie that I’ll need to see multiple more times, and perhaps my opinion will change, but for now, I absolutely loved The Last Jedi, and am shocked by the initial rejection of it by so many fans. Then again, when Empire Strikes Back first came out, this is how people reacted: “Why isn’t it as fun as the first Star Wars?” “Why was it so dark?” “Why was Luke trained by a little green puppet?” “How could Darth Vader be Luke’s father?” I’m guessing people are just taken aback by how different The Last Jedi is from previous Star Wars movies, and the general opinion will change after some time has passed. 

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Predictions: Movie Predictions Issue #9

 Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Predictions

I don’t do predictions on movies like I used to when I first started this blog. When I first began doing them, I got really hyped up for movies. Now, I don’t do that to nearly the same degree, because over the years, I’ve continually been disappointed, and really, it’s usually my own fault. I set expectations much too high, and forget that at the end of the day, these are just movies. But people get passionate about them, and when you hope for something great and get something that sucks, it’s hard not to take it to heart. 

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you might remember back in 2015 I wrote a series of top ten lists and predictions about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I brought up theories, things I wanted to see, things I didn’t want to see, questions, concerns, and then when it came out, I did an in-depth analysis. 

The weird part is, I’m not even a huge Star Wars fan. 

I got caught up in all the hype, and looking back on it, it’s easy to see why. The Force Awakens really was the movie event of a generation. It brought back characters who hadn’t been seen in decades, yet these were characters who had become some of the most iconic movie characters of all-time. It was a return to what is undeniably one of the biggest franchises in film history. The trailers were expertly crafted, the fans were outspoken about their excitement and hopefulness that it would deliver, and it seemed like the perfect storm to produce the first great Star Wars movie in far too long. 

The Force Awakens certainly did deliver, and my initial reaction was overwhelmingly positive. It’s been two years since I first saw it, and my contemporary take on it is…still positive, but less so. I think it did the right thing by being closer to what the original movies were all about, but it was a little too close. Familiar things like a death star and evil bad guy with a mask and cape and an important character dying and a droid carrying crucial information turned a lot of people off, and I get it. But for me, the positives still heavily outweigh the negatives, thanks to the characters, both new and old. They are interesting, fun, sympathetic, and the acting is great.

Now here we are, the next chapter of the saga begins. So why don’t I feel as excited? I think a big part of it has to do with the marketing. I am in awe at the marketing scheme for The Last Jedi. Minimal trailers, minimal footage shown. I don’t know the plot (though I can guess), I only know vague shots of a couple action scenes, and I don’t even know what the big twist will be (or if there will be one), and that makes me excited in a very different way than I was with Force Awakens. I wouldn’t even say it’s excitement, so much as patient anticipation. 

Though people were excited, there was still a lot of uncertainty with The Force Awakens. Would it really turn out to be great? Could writer-director J.J. Abrams successfully continue the story? Would seeing the old characters again be satisfying? Would the new characters be able to carry the torch? All of the big questions were answered with resounding yes’s, and now, I’m not curious about any of that. Writer-director Rian Johnson has proven himself in the past as a capable writer/director, so having him helming this sequel sets many of my concerns to rest before I’ve even seen the movie. Will it be darker, more serious, more original, more poignant? I don’t see why not. 

I haven’t thought about The Last Jedi in great detail leading up to the release. I haven’t generated tons of theories about what might happen, about who is who, what direction the story will take, what the characters will do, who might die, etc. I think because it’s predetermined that this is the middle chapter of a three-chapter story, and everyone who fell in love with the first chapter (which was mostly everyone) will be back there for the next one, it carries a different kind of anticipation. It’s not as boisterous as the hype was for Force Awakens, and I’m glad. It’s like everyone has this quiet, shared understanding that “of course it’ll be good, but how good do you think it will be?” 

I could easily be wrong about The Last Jedi. For all I know, it might end up sucking worse than Rogue One (I know a lot of people enjoyed last year’s standalone Star Wars story but I strongly disliked it), but I won’t be let down. What came before it (The Force Awakens, and the original trilogy, of course) still stands on its own as being great, but seeing as this is, as I said before, chapter two of three from the same story, it’s hard to imagine The Last Jedi not being a worthy continuation for the series. 

Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) Review

Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) Review

As of this month, I have been writing this blog for four years, and one of the first things I ever talked about was the TV Christmas special How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s time to re-visit what is, hands down, my favourite Christmas TV special of all.

When I was four or maybe five, my dad taped The Grinch (yes, taped, as in recorded the show off TV onto a VHS tape, remember when that was a thing?) and ever since, I have watched it with my parents at least once every Christmas season, without fail (though we have since upgraded to the blu-ray, the original VHS still exists). Even though I have seen The Grinch more than 20 times and every word and frame is embedded in my memory, I still notice new things each time—whether it’s an object with the wrong colour, or a recycled piece of animation—and during this year’s viewing, it occurred to me that no one in this show is human. The Who’s, though human-like, are not people in the sense that Charlie Brown is a young boy or that Santa Claus is a jolly man with a beard. Is this perhaps the only Christmas special without any actual humans in it? I can’t think of any others: another way in which it is wholly unique. 

The Grinch came out during an inundation of Christmas specials. There was Charlie Brown Christmas the year before, Rudolph and the Flintstones Christmas special two years prior, but Grinch stood out because of its unique story. It is a nearly word-for-word adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ book, but all of the small additions or changes are for the better. The story draws on the classic Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by being about a character who is anti-Christmas. The Grinch is like Scrooge, but unlike Scrooge, he takes matters into his own green hands and attempts to take away the very thing he despises, while still learning a valuable lesson by the end. 

The Grinch isn’t brought up in the conversation of best screen-adaptations of books, but it should be. It is such a perfect half-hour of comedy, excitement, drama, emotion, even horror (some of the faces he makes are actual nightmare fuel) and of course Christmas cheer/jeer, I can’t imagine it any other way. The animation (from Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones) is fantastic, the music is classic, the narration/voice of the Grinch by Boris Karloff is iconic, and the message, that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store” but instead “means a little bit more” is a beautifully simple one.    

Christmas, to me, is not about any one thing. It’s not about gifts or decorating a tree or celebrating the birth of Christ. To me, Christmas is about tradition. It’s about continuing to do things each year that previously brought you joy, whatever they may be, and preserving those traditions every year. Watching How The Grinch Stole Christmas with my family is not just my favourite Christmas tradition, but one of my favourite traditions in general. It’s something I look forward to, and will continue to look forward to, for as long as the tradition can be preserved. 

“Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.”