No spoilers here. Go see it.
The latest installment of the Star Wars franchise is certainly
a good story, with lots of action and excitement, infused with
more humor and notably more racially diverse than were the previous
stories.
I left the film feeling a little confused. Oh, of course it was a
good show — but there were a couple of things in the film that left
were a little awkward.
The first has to do with General Leia following an attack on
her command ship. The first part of this scene was actually captured
in one of the trailers. In retrospect, what followed seemed a bit
uncomfortable, bordering on absurd, although Luke seems to support
the notion with a key sentence or two of his dialog.
The second happens at the very end — a scene that seemed appended
to the script, really, to appease Disney. I thought it was completely
cheap, played directly to young kids, and seemed intended to support
Disney merchandising.
A note on cinematography: When the Star Wars franchise first dipped
their toe into 3-D, they did it with Episode I and did so in a very
understated way, using shading to emphasize spatial relationships
instead of adding some really in-your-face effects. I believe
The Last Jedi was done in much the same way. I can't recall
the urge to dodge anything that seemed to be flying right at me.
My point here is simply that I feel you won't really miss out on
anything with the 2-D show.
JJ Abrams, credited with the revival of the Star Trek franchise,
certainly left his thumbprint on the Star Wars saga. He seems to have
a penchant for taking dialog from previous movies and playing with it
in the context of the current scene. He did it with Kirk and Spock
in Star Trek: Into Darkness and he does it again here.
Once again, a very worthy addition to the Star Wars saga.
UPDATE:
I just saw the movie for a second time. There was a bit of humor
in the movie that, when I first saw it, I failed to recognize as
homage to Hardware Wars, an early parody of Episode IV.
We laughed. We cried. We kissed three bucks goodbye.
Well played, Abrams and company.
Also, Add an Item 3 to the list of things that don't quite add up:
There is no gravity in space. On its face, it doesn't seem like a
World War II-style bombing raid on a space cruiser would work.
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