You've found part three, so if you want to return to PART ONE or PART TWO, click the links.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm and the Star Wars rights in 2012 for $4 billion, the plan seemed to be that they'd have a new hit movie out every single year, which is exactly what happened... for a while. We had The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo, The Rise of Skywalker, and that was it. Despite all their best efforts, Lucasfilm haven't been able to get a Star Wars movie into cinemas since 2019.
The funny thing is, Rise of Skywalker was a huge hit and passed a billion dollars at the box office. Sure that was only half the take of The Force Awakens, but Star Wars got off the blockbuster bus long before big film franchises started seriously bombing at the cinema and people started watching Barbie and Mario instead. Either Lucasfilm has learned their lessons and are taking the time to do it right... or all of their movie ideas have been getting turned into TV series to feed Disney+.
There are going to be SPOILERS if you continue reading any further, but I won't say a thing about anything that happens in things that were released later. So I can't go into detail about why the last season of The Bad Batch was so good, but I'll totally give away the endings to earlier stories when they're relevant.
Previously, in Star Wars: The Last Jedi:
The Resistance fleet has failed to escape the First Order and they're now stuck in a sublight chase with their fuel dwindling and the unpopular Vice Admiral Holdo in command. Well, she's failed to win over Poe and his friends on the Resistance cruiser at least. On the plus side, the First Order fleet has so far failed to blow them all up, much to General Hux's annoyance.
Finn, Rose and BB-8 sneaked out of the Resistance cruiser on a mission to recruit a trustworthy master codebreaker who could disable the First Order's hyperspace tracker, but they failed and ended up with a shady thief instead. Meanwhile, Rey headed off on her own mission to recruit the legendary Luke Skywalker to restore hope to the galaxy... and failed.
Things sound kind of bad, but ghost Yoda dropped by the sacred Jedi island to tell Luke that people can learn a lot from failure. In fact, Rey believes she's learned enough to bring Luke's apprentice, Kylo Ren, back to the Light Side and she's currently on her way to his dreadnought.
And now, the continuation:
The thief they've brought with them (called DJ by the subtitles) is willing to help but first he wants something from them: Rose's medallion as a deposit. It's precious to her, the last thing she has of her sister, but she does it for the cause.
Finn's pissed off about this, but DJ has some advice to give him about causes: don't join them. Look after yourself, don't fight other people's battles. That's why he's called 'DJ', annoyingly.
This kind of puts a twist on the whole Canto Bight sidequest. Finn and Rose were having fun rebelling against the evil rich people and animal abusers, but those aren't the people the Resistance actually fights. Those are the people the Resistance pays. They had to go rogue on a secret mission to even get to Canto Bight. Finn already decided in The Force Awakens that he won't fight for the First Order, but is there a reason to fight for the Resistance?
Finn is a bit naive in this scene, but why wouldn't he be? He's spent his life in Star Destroyers and First Order bases being fed nothing but propaganda. The dude's learning.
Poe's been barred from the bridge but he barges in anyway because Holdo still hasn't told them anything. Not just him, anyone. He yells at her to at least tell them she has a plan. She refuses... though she also stops her guards from removing him.
Then he notices what she's up to. She's redirecting their fuel to their unshielded transports so they can make a run for it! He calls her a traitor and then she has he guards remove him. But she doesn't keep him separated from the rest of the crew.
This is a movie about failure and if there was a correct choice to be made here, Holdo certainly didn't make it. Poe isn't just a hotshot insubordinate pilot, he's a hotshot insubordinate leader and the man who's representing the concerns of her crew. The concerns of the audience as well. The movie is written to put us firmly on his side; we're not watching this from an objective position where we can see both sides.
What's interesting is that these ships have been going full burn for the best part of a day, but compared to the Falcon, the escape pod and the TIE fighters, they're basically not moving. Imagine how different this would look if there was a road or an ocean under them and we could see how fast they're all moving.
Of course, everything's relative and everything's moving. You see ships just roll up to a planet and enter orbit all the time and don't even question it. You know how fast the Earth is moving right now around the sun? 67,000 mph. That's nothing, our entire solar system is moving around the galaxy at 500,000 mph. Plus our galaxy itself is moving at 1,300,000 mph, so just staying still requires you to exit hyperspace going incredibly fast.
Chewie flies the Falcon flies away from the chase and then Finn's yacht arrives, coming from underneath the ships. I like how the VFX team took into account that they'd be flying here from different star system. DJ manages to slip their ship into the Supremacy by slicing a slit in their shield, blip bloppity bloop, and making it appear like it was just a glitch. So they're not met by Kylo Ren.
Holdo could tell him the plan right now, pull him aside and whisper it in his ear if necessary. Just say "They're only tracking the cruiser and I've got somewhere for us to go. If this information leaks out then everyone is dead," but she refuses to do it! She just accuses him of risking all of the lives on bad odds.
Poe got them the map to Luke Skywalker, blew up Starkiller Base, and led an assault on a dreadnought against orders, so his loyalty to the cause is not in dispute. The only way the First Order is learning about the transports from him is if a shady thief overheard him talking to Finn earlier.
This could be a Hardware Wars joke, or it could be the director having some fun with the props. All I know is that it really draws attention to this being a movie, tapping on the fourth wall in a way that Star Wars typically doesn't. I guess if it works for you it works.
Finn's team steals uniforms from the laundry room and then heads for the hyperspace tracker. The ship is 60km wide and five times taller than the world's tallest skyscraper, but Finn knows where to go, and it seems like they have to walk there very slowly.
BB-8 starts humming the little tune that Imperial robots play and I suddenly want to forgive him for all the goofy things he's been doing in this movie. But they stuck a box on his head as a disguise and he keeps accidentally driving into stuff, so he gets no forgiveness from me. Especially as it seems like he's blown their cover and Evil First Order BB-8 is onto him!
The movie has gone a bit askew here, as up to this point Rey's story was echoing Empire Strikes Back. She went to a secret planet, did some lessons with a Jedi hermit, and then left due to a vision of the future. But now she's skipped straight to that scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke gave himself up to Vader, assuming that he wouldn't give him over to the Emperor. They're doing the villain's redemption a movie too early!
As they ride the lift, Rey and Kylo both admit that they've seen the future and know a bit about what will happen. Both of them think the other will turn, but Kylo claims he has some extra info she doesn't have: he knows who her parents are. He won't tell her however, because mysteries have to be dragged out for ages in these sequels.
The heroes probably shouldn't be discussing secret plans on their radio right next to him though, as he may well have a heart of gold, but he's made it absolutely clear he's not on anyone's side.
Poe seals off the bridge to buy a few more moments for Finn's team to sort out the hyperspace tracker, but after a tense few moments he hears over the radio that they've been captured. It was that evil BB-8 that caught them, so it was Bar-Bar 8inks driving into walls that gave them away, not the shady thief they picked up.
I don't know why they didn't put her in this movie as a character from the start instead of saving her as a surprise like this. They just keep hyping her up and then giving her nothing to do!
Poe knows he's got a lost cause at this point, especially as Holdo's people start cutting open the door to the bridge.
Connix and C-3PO surrender (he didn't want to be part of a mutiny anyway, it's against protocol), and the shuttles begin leaving the cruiser.
The trouble I have with this twist is that the film spent all this time showing us Holdo is a bad leader, from a certain point of view, but then it doesn't show us why that interpretation was wrong. Sure it shows that she had a decent plan all along, but she still looks like a bad leader! Star Trek captains privately doubt themselves, they wonder if they're making the right choices, and that helps us get behind them even as they make mistakes. But Holdo's only takeaway from this is that Poe is a loveable troublemaker! It's a movie about failure but it doesn't even wonder if Holdo failed.
Instead the scene is about her staying behind and sacrificing herself to let the others escape, which I guess she knew she was doing all along. C-3PO seems keen to get out of there before anyone can suggest a machine could pilot the ship just as well.
Then Snoke just picks the Light Side's chosen one with his mind and pulls her over to him like he's not even trying. It's never explained why Snoke is apparently so much more powerful than the other Force users we've seen, like Yoda, Anakin and Palpatine. They could pick up X-Wings just fine, but not other Force users. It doesn't feel like the movie's playing fair with the rules of the setting. Though it does make him come off as fairly unstoppable.
Snoke's got some bad news for Rey: it's a trap! He was the one who linked her with Ren and he deliberately pushed his buttons to make his apprentice appear conflicted, all to lure her to him. And now he's going to rip Luke's location from her mind. Well, she hasn't gotten her hand cut off as consequences for her choices but she is utterly helpless and screaming in pain, which seems kind of bad. People call Rey a Mary Sue, but when she's up against a Force user who isn't a depressed old man or an angsty kid she puts up about as much resistance as Hux did. She really misjudged her plan to come here.
They're going to the planet they're right next to, Crait, which has an old Rebel base they can use to find shelter and call their allies. So hang on, when Leia said they needed to find a planet earlier, was that just a lie to keep their true plan a secret from spies on the crew? Because it seems like they jumped straight to Crait's system and headed there right away. Though if they were always going to Crait why wouldn't they hyperspace to the planet? I'm confused again!
Leia tells Poe that Holdo's goal was always to protect the Resistance, not to seem like a hero. On the one hand, I like that Leia's treating Poe as a protege who will become a great leader if he learns from his mistakes, on the other, the movie's not been doing a great job of making me feel like he made mistakes.
They learn that DJ has given the First Order information in exchange for freedom and money. When they were travelling here on the yacht he overheard Poe mentioning that they were evacuating the cruiser in transports. DJ wasn't a lying traitor from the start, he's not a Lando Calrissian, but he wasn't about to give up his own head for their cause.
Also Lando was blackmailed and ultimately did the right thing, while DJ really is just going to fly off with his ship and money. I guess the First Order likes having people out there spreading the word that betraying the Resistance pays well.
I mean, I don't think DJ would've ever risked his life to save Finn, but he doesn't even seem guilty about setting up the Resistance to die. And I don't think Han really had any guilt about abandoning the Rebels after dropping off his passengers either, only about letting Luke and Leia down. I'm sure that changed in Empire Strikes Back as he stuck around with the Rebels and fought with them, but I still didn't see him as someone committed to changing the galaxy. He became loyal to his tribe, thought maybe not any more than that.
But Finn reveals that he's now committed to the cause. He's moved onto the next level, not just trying to save the tribe, but the whole damn galaxy. He tells DJ that he's wrong and there is a side worth fighting for. DJ says "Maybe," and walks off. The line was apparently supposed to be "Wrong and rich," but Del Toro improvised his own reply and the actor had a lot of good instincts it seems. The character is so morally grey that he won't even commit to his own cause.
It's all on Ren now. His choice will decide how this goes down.
It's funny how all three Force users came into this room believing that they'd seen the outcome. Snoke even narrates what he knows is going to happen: Ren turns the lightsaber to strike true, ignites it, and kills his true enemy.
So there's Snoke gone, to actor Andy Serkis' annoyance. A lot of fans were pissed off as well, seeing as the big mysterious villain behind everything was killed off so easily before we even learned anything about him. The Force Awakens encouraged speculation, The Last Jedi subverted expectations.
It's not hard to see why this could be a bit disappointing, but personally I think The Force Awakens did a terrible job of making me give a damn about the guy. I was certainly curious about where the First Order came from, but Snoke just seemed like a big Emperor Palpatine retread to me. Just a moustache-twirling super-powerful final boss.
So I was a bit surprised when he turned out to have bit of a personality and I was delighted when he got bisected before the end of the second movie. It's so sudden and satisfying!
It's amazing to me how the first Star Wars took the flash off the side of an antique camera, stuck some bits on the base, and turned it into something so iconic. They told us it was a lightsaber and now that's what it is. More than that, this is Anakin's lightsaber specifically, from the duels in Revenge of the Sith and Empire Strikes Back. Duels that the person wielding it lost.
Anyway, Rey and Ren face each other with sabers drawn, before turning back to back to fight against the surprisingly loyal red guards. Why would they die for a dead man who did nothing to inspire loyalty? It doesn't make much sense.
It's funny how much of this was done practically. You might expect a sci-fi throne against an entirely red background to be done with CGI, but nope they had a real chair and real velvet curtains, they were fighting with real glowing sticks, and there was real flaming debris dropping down that was apparently really hot. Even the actors were really there doing the fighting. That's nothing unusual for Star Wars, but this is an elaborate fight with long takes and a lot going on.
People have criticised the fight for all the errors in it, but to be fair the director made a point of showing the heroes' faces in almost every shot and the actors aren't Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh. You could argue that they're not even Ewan McGregor or Hayden Christensen and yeah those two are genuinely impressive in their prequel movies, but it's much easier to get your timing right when you're only facing one opponent. Plus I found that the actors successfully misdirected me away from the missed timing and missing knives, so personally I found nothing to complain about.
Rey's first thought is of the transports being blown up by the First Order and she asks Ben to call off the attack. It soon becomes clear that Ben isn't here though. Kylo is still convinced that it's time to let old things die, but he wants to let the Jedi and the Sith die, and start something new. Something new that's basically just the Sith except with him in charge. It turns out that he didn't kill Snoke because he turned to the Light Side, he did it because he saw Rey turning to help him and wanted to rule the galaxy with her.
She's resistant however, so he unleashes his ultimate super move: he tells her that her parents are dead. In fact, he tells her they were just filthy junk traders that sold her for drink money.
How satisfying the revelation about Rey's parentage is depends greatly on your point of view. If you're interested in the answer because of Rey's arc, then it's a good reveal as it's unexpected and pushes her to re-evaluate who she is. But if Force Awakens made you anticipate an interesting name then 'no one' is among the worst answers you could get. Why have people guessing for two years when the answer is 'oh, it's no one important'? And this comes right after Snoke was revealed to be no one important!
This really isn't the movie for you if you were hoping the mysteries of the Force Awakens would lead to interesting new lore. This reveal is meant to be the most unsatisfying answer imaginable, because that is the worst thing for Rey to hear. She wants to matter to someone, she doesn't want to be alone, and Ren is trying to make her feel like he's the only one that's there for her. Just ignore all those people getting blown up outside, they'll be gone soon.
The thing is though, Jedi don't have children, so as far as I can remember these three are the only Force users in the whole entire franchise to be related to another Force user. Well except for that Jedi in the Clone Wars cartoon who had a twin sister. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, none of them inherited their high Force sensitivity.
While this is happening, Finn and Rose are about to get their heads cut off by double-bladed energy axes, and Holdo is firing up the Resistance cruiser's hyperdrive. Connix thinks she's making a run for it, but Poe understands her better now. Personally if I was Holdo I'd move my ship between the Supremacy and the Resistance transports to block their shots, but Holdo's idea is more showy and heroic. I guess Poe's been rubbing off on her.
The lightsaber breaks in half under the strain, releasing enough energy to knock the two of them flying. But the light show is outdone by what happens a split-second later.
This is a fantastic moment with beautiful visuals and amazing sound. Or lack of sound. But there's one problem with it: establishing that ramming ships at lightspeed can do this kind of breaks the Star Wars universe. It serves the movie at the expense of the series. In fact, it serves the scene at the expense of the movie, as they could've done this at any time with one of the other ships they abandoned. The scene works in the moment and then a little later your brain goes 'hang on...'
Fortunately Finn and Rose weren't in the bit that got annihilated, though everything around them is on fire. And Phasma is still there ready to kill them... though she ended up some distance away for whatever reason.
Unfortunately Phasma's special metal armour is actually blaster-proof (it's presumably made of Mandalorian beskar), and Rose's shots just bounce off. So Finn tries a different approach, running at her with a Stormtrooper baton.
They swing weapons at each other for a bit, with Finn getting pushed back the whole way, and then he falls down a hole. Rose distracts Phasma for a second, then Finn comes up on a lift and smashes her helmet open with one good swing. So probably not beskar then.
I'm glad that Finn didn't win the fight fairly, because that would've been weird. Phasma's the most elite Stormtrooper and he worked as a janitor, mopping floors. It's a bit unsatisfying though that he lands on the bit of floor that moves up and she lands on the bit of floor that falls down. In the end, he just had the better luck.
He's also had more practice falling down, now that I think about it. He fell out of bed, got tased at the escape pod, slipped backwards in the stables, got flung off the fathier, was knocked out by the explosion...
I'm not sure why the final movie went with a simpler resolution, maybe it's because it gets Rose involved, maybe it's because they didn't want Finn to kill Phasma directly. Either way, both of Phasma's endings feature the same bit of dialogue. She tells Finn he was always scum and he replies "Rebel scum," completing his arc! Unfortunately there are still 30 minutes of this movie to go, so they screwed up the timing a bit there.
Oh, plus I guess Phasma also completes her own arc of showing up twice and then dying.
Ren claims that Rey killed Snoke, but it doesn't really matter at this point. When Hux gets all pissy about Ren giving him orders, Ren uses his Force choke for the first time, hinting that he's gone full Dark Side. In fact, I don't think he ever pulled a Vader and attacked his own people to establish dominance/weed out the idiots until now. Funny thing is, this is the point in Empire Strikes Back where Vader stops choking subordinates. After his duel with Luke he never hurts anyone again.
Hux takes a hint and acknowledges Ren as the new Supreme Leader. Snoke called Ren a disappointment compared to Vader, but now he's surpassed him by seizing power and becoming the main villain. This is actual new territory for Star Wars! Ren doesn't seem very happy about it though. In fact, all he wants to do is chase Rey down to the planet to make the Resistance suffer in an epic conclusion that'll look good in the trailers.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART FOUR
My epic The Last Jedi review actually has two more parts to go, but really Rian Johnson could've ended his movie right here and let J.J. Abrams figure out what happens next. The film's almost reached 2 hours, Poe vs Holdo has been resolved, Rey has confronted Ren, Finn has chosen a side, Luke had a final chat with Yoda, Snoke is dead, the Resistance kind of got away, it's okay to end here!
NEXT TIME
I look forward to reading your comments!
Not to take away from his character arc, but I always imagined Chewbacca being a bit of an angel on Han's shoulder before he went back to attack the Death Star.
ReplyDeleteI completely forgot about Phasma dying. She was this trilogy's Boba Fett without the hilariously memorable finish.
Definitely, we even get a moment of Chewie starting the guilt trip while Han's collecting his money.
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