asastewart

Ironically enough there seems to be a split in the opinions of this movie. I hated it. I thought it was crushingly dull and derivative. Good performance from James McAvoy... but these type of high concept, slightly hammy, chameleon-like roles are bread and butter to a trained actor. It's the sort of setup that drama students practice (not always successfully) Not taking anything away from his performance as it was very good. The movie as a whole was uninteresting to me though. I'm a fan of Anya Taylor-Joy and hopefully she can find better movies that fit her talent, like The Witch in which she was excellent.

I'm going to focus on one aspect in my review as I feel it's the worst aspect of the movie and really lets it down; the script. It's truly awful. It also spoils the portrayal of the characters, as statements come out of their mouths that no-one with an IQ above 90 would utter, let alone a scientist. The military characters are all lazy stereotypes, their stupidity and impatience only there for exposition and to move the plot along. Forrest Whitaker's character at one point can't understand the difference between translating a well known human language with an alien one (also why is he trying to do a bad Bostonian accent?) My PhD was in a project related to astrophysics and I didn't recognise any qualities in the scientists on screen with real life. Maybe it's too boring to portray scientists as they are, but I think The Martian did an OK job of it (leaving aside other issues with that movie) There is some antagonism between the social and hard sciences in real life, but some of the exchanges between Amy Adams' and Jeremy Renners' character were excruciating. She says language is the foundation of civilisation, he contradicts and says it's science. That's just wrong and anyone with an inkling of history wouldn't make the claim that it's science as the scientific method was quite a late innovation in humanity's history. I wanted to like this movie, but I found it truly exasperating.

I had quite high hopes for this movie as I've enjoyed some of Rian Johnson's films in the past. The Last Jedi ultimately fell flat for me however. The main problem was Rian was extremely cautious in his main themes and tried to be ambitious in the ancillary parts, but this created a disconnect making the side quests and extra characters seem pointless and underwritten. The whole script was quite weak, but that's never been Star Wars movies' strongest points in fairness. The whole movie did need tightening up though, the whole middle section was baggy and unmemorable. In contrast a movie like Rogue One was safe at the edges but ambitious in it's main theme. The Force Awakens was safe in most ways but introduced several interesting characters. Both these movies were superior to TLJ in my opinion.

The humour in TLJ grated on me quite a bit. The actual gags in themselves weren't the problem but rather the context in which they were placed as every time they occurred they undercut a dramatic scene, or a plot point. It made me think am I supposed to take this bit seriously or not, or really care. Star Wars has always had humour but it's been character driven. A lot of the gags in this were misplaced and unnecessary.

At the end I thought what has actually happened, has this universe become more interesting, do I want to see more of these movies. The answer is I'm not sure. I worry that we're going to seesaw between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi rehashes till everyone get sick of them.

Some things I liked were Mark Hamill who added a gravitas to older Luke. The interplay between Kylo Ren and Rey was interesting and Adam Driver has grown into the part well. Leia was a powerful character with some interesting choices and wasn't just a damsel in distress. (although one scene jumped the shark for me) The end battle scene was visually stunning.