Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 5 - The Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I think I'm pretty much done writing about The Last Jedi. I've already gone through the film scene by scene and now I'm just going to put down a few final thoughts. Well, maybe a lot of final thoughts. It's The Last Jedi, there's a fair bit to talk about.

Click PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE or PART FOUR if you want to revisit an earlier chapter.

One last bit of trivia for you: The Last Jedi was released in 2017, just in time for a couple of major anniversaries. It was the 40th anniversary of the original Star Wars, which started this whole franchise, and the 30th anniversary of Spaceballs, the second Star Wars film I ever saw (after Return of the Jedi).

40 years is a ruby anniversary, so maybe that explains all the red in the movie and the marketing. It's like how Doctor Who switched back to the classic diamond logo for its 60 year diamond anniversary last year. I've been trying to remember if Star Trek did anything similar for its 50th anniversary in 2016, but there's not much evidence anyone was even aware of it. In fact, the way Star Trek Beyond was marketed, it's more likely they would've been celebrating 15 years of The Fast and the Furious.

There will be SPOILERS below as I'm giving the whole movie a bit of a review. Maybe I'll still like it after 7 years of reflection and watching YouTube videos hating on it, maybe I won't. You'll have to keep reading to find out.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 4

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last quarter of The Last Jedi. I'm going to leave the overall review for a separate article this time, that'll be Part Five, but this article will bring you to the end of the movie.

Click PART ONE, PART TWO or PART THREE, if you want to jump back to an earlier page.

The Last Jedi was the highest grossing movie of 2017, which is interesting as if it really wasn't connecting with people it would've dropped right off after its opening weekend. I mean it did have the largest drop of any of the movies so far, clearly it was not winning everyone over, but it was still topping the charts.

It ultimately brought in $1.334 billion, putting it between the other two sequel trilogy episodes in success. But it was apparently the cheapest of the three movies by a significant amount, so it made a suitable amount of bank. It's still the 12th most expensive film of all time though. Incidentally, The Force Awakens is still considered to be 1st most expensive movie ever made after almost a decade, which is kind of crazy to me.

There will be SPOILERS below as I go scene by scene and wrap this film up.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I am yet to stop writing about The Last Jedi.

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.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I am continuing to write about Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

You're reading part two (of five), but if you'd rather jump back and read PART ONE, just click the text.

It's a bit of a shame I reckon that this isn't called Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, to match the earlier films. Sure it says 'Episode VIII' in the scrolling text at the start of the movie, but it's not on the poster or the Blu-ray cover. They could've at least stuck the number on the spine!

To be fair, the Star Wars movies only started to put emphasis on the episode numbers when the prequels came out. Before The Phantom Menace's name was finally revealed the movie was just called Episode I. You can get Episode I: The Visual Dictionary and Episode I: Racer. Companies only like numbers in their titles when they're low, that's why comics keep getting rebooted to a new issue #1. Funny thing is, in the rare cases when sequels do get high numbers in the title, they seem to sell just fine. Star Trek VI and Furious 7 did well enough, and the Final Fantasy games didn't truly take off until Final Fantasy VII.

Okay, I'll be going through another 50 minutes of this movie scene by scene, so with any luck I will be hitting the film's halfway point this time. It'll be close though. Also, there will be SPOILERS.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 1

Written by:

Rian Johnson

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Directed by:

Rian Johnson

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Release Date:

2017

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Hey, they got the logo right. So far so good!

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the first part of my review of the most divisive Star Wars movie: Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi. And it really is his movie as he was both director and writer (with a little help from Carrie Fisher). He brought his style to the Star Wars universe here in a way that a lot of fans... responded to.

If you organise all the Star Wars episodes by their user rating on sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, etc. there's always one movie that ends up right at the bottom, and that is... The Rise of Skywalker (except on Metacritic where TROS came second to The Phantom Menace). The Last Jedi is even higher up the rankings when you look at critic scores, and I've seen plenty of positivity from fans on podcasts and YouTube. But when people talk about "the movie that ruined Star Wars", it's usually this one they're referring to. There's so much hate for this film out there you'd think it was on the level of franchise killers like Batman & Robin, Jaws: The Revenge, or Alien: Resurrection.

Though to be honest, I actually liked Alien: Resurrection, and I enjoyed the The Last Jedi as well. At least I think I did... it's been a while. I don't know if this rewatch is going to turn me against the film, but I'll definitely see if I can pinpoint where other people's frustration is coming from. I'll be going through the movie scene by scene, so there will be SPOILERS below for this and any of the Star Wars episodes up to this point.

The Orville 1-12: Mad Idolatry (Quick Review)

Episode:

12

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Writer:

Seth MacFarlane

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Air Date:

07-Dec-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about The Orville's first season finale: Mad Idolatry. Nice title, I like it.

This is the 8th episode to be written by creator Seth MacFarlane and the 4th to be directed by Brannon Braga, and that seems like a lot seeing that this season only has 12 episodes in it. It should've had 13 but one of them's been held back until next season, presumably so that they weren't stuck with a single episode left over to air after Christmas. The episode's production code is 1LAB13 so I'm guessing this the intended season finale and it's episode 12 that's been moved, but I don't know for sure. Fortunately it doesn't actually matter and no one really cares; it's not a continuity-heavy series.

Beware of SPOILERS beyond this point.

The Orville 1-11: New Dimensions (Quick Review)

Episode:

11

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Writer:

Seth MacFarlane

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Air Date:

30-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally writing words about New Dimensions, the 216th episode of The Orville to be written by series creator and lead actor Seth MacFarlane. Well actually it's only his 7th, but seeing as this is episode 11 that's still a lot.

The episode was directed by script supervisor Kelly Cronin, who hadn't done a whole lot of directing before this, but then neither had Brannon Braga and he's done alright with the 216 Orville episodes he's helmed so far. Well actually it's probably more like, I dunno... 3? I can't be bothered to check.

Anyway there's going to be SPOILERS below this point, for this episode and earlier ones, as I'll be assuming that everyone reading has either seen the episode or doesn't care.

The Orville 1-10: Firestorm (Quick Review)

Episode:

10

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Writer:

Cherry Chevapravatdumrong

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Air Date:

16-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing a quick review of The Orville's 10th episode, Firestorm. So quick in fact that I'm just going to say SPOILER WARNING then get on with it. Also CLOWN WARNING.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-09: Into the Forest I Go (Quick Review)

Episode:

9

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Writer:

Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt

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Air Date:

12-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Discovery's epic mid-season finale, Into the Forest I Go! I mean I'm just assuming it's going to be epic. It was originally scheduled to be the first episode to air in January after the break, but it got moved forward for a mysterious reason and I'm theorising that reason to be that the last episode was significantly less than spectacular and they wanted more of a hook to get people eager for chapter 2.

The episode is the directorial debut of Chris Byrne, who's directed absolutely nothing before this so I can't have any opinions about his work whatsoever. Though he was a second unit director on several episodes, including Discovery's pilot, so I expect he knows which direction to point the cameras. Writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt have got even less on their IMDb pages, but according to Memory Alpha, the repository of all Trek knowledge... they wrote the Discovery mid-season finale Into the Forest I Go together. Well, that's a big help.

This is one of my rushed scruffy reviews, meaning no long screencap commentary, just a few opinions and observations. Also SPOILERS, for this and earlier Trek episodes as well.

The Orville 1-09: Cupid's Dagger (Quick Review)

Episode:

9

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Writer:

Liz Heldens

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Air Date:

09-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing some thoughts down about the ninth episode of The Orville, Cupid's Dagger.

The official synopsis for the episode says:

"The Orville is called to mediate a peace treaty between two warring cultures, but tensions run even higher between Ed and Kelly when a familiar face boards the ship. Meanwhile Yaphit declares his love for Dr. Finn with surprising results."

Or to summarise: "Skip this one". At least that's how I read it. The tension between Ed and Kelly has to be my least favourite part of the series so far, with Yaphit's love for Dr. Finn being a close second place, so I'm already getting ready to call this my least favourite episode so far. I've got all kinds of preconceptions formed. But I suppose I'll have to actually sit and watch it first before I can really list all the reasons I hate it.

This will be one of my quick reviews without the epic screencap recap; just a few opinions, a couple of observations perhaps, and a lot of SPOILERS.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-08: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum (Quick Review)

Episode:

8

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Writer:

Kirsten Beyer

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Air Date:

05-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've got another rushed Discovery review for you. This time I'm writing about Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum, which I've had to type so many times now in my notes and for filenames that I don't even have to check how to write it anymore.

Memory Alpha tells me that this is the ninth Trek episode with a Latin title, after Sub Rosa, Dramatis Personae, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, Ex Post Facto, Non Sequitur, Alter Ego, Terra Nova and Vox Sola, and I hope it's a hell of a lot better than most of them were, because that's the opposite of a 'Best of Trek' boxset. Memory Alpha doesn't mention that it's also the eleventh title with a comma in it, probably because who would ever care?

This is the first ever TV episode to be written by Voyager novelist Kirsten Beyer, and I'm not sure if I should be worried about that or not. I've never been keen on Trek tie-in novels, and I'm not all that keen on Voyager either, but she'll likely know the Treknical terms and suchlike better than most so there's a chance I may end up pleasantly surprised by how much closer to classic Trek this one feels.

If you want to read further, prepare for SPOILERS, both for this and earlier relevant episodes of Star Trek.

The Orville 1-08: Into the Fold (Quick Review)

Episode:

8

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Writer:

Brannon Braga & André Bormanis

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Air Date:

02-Nov-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Into the Fold, the eighth episode of The Orville's first season. Of at least two. Because it just got renewed for a second season!

Now it just has to hold out for one more year and it'll reach the fabled season three, where Star Trek series get really good. Though sometimes it takes until season four, so Fox should probably hold off cancelling it until then just to be sure. Not that Fox actually kills off every sci-fi series early, it probably just seems that way because short-lived series like Firefly and Terminator had such a vocal fan base. And Dark Angel, Dollhouse, Space: Above and Beyond, Alien Nation... okay, I suddenly feel like checking Wikipedia to see how many of their science fiction series actually made it past season two.

Hmm, there's X-Files, Fringe, uh... Sliders. Man this series is so doomed.

This is one of my quick reviews so there'll be no epic screencap recap, just a few words on what I thought about it and a lot of SPOILERS.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-07: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad (Quick Review)

Episode:

7

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Writer:

Aron Eli Coleite & Jesse Alexander

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Air Date:

29-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching an episode that skips the pre-credits entirely and jumps straight into the action, so I'm going to do the same for a change. SPOILERS tho.

The Orville 1-07: Majority Rule (Quick Review)

Episode:

7

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Writer:

Seth MacFarlane

|

Air Date:

26-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm trying to get some words down about another episode of The Orville as quickly as my brain will go.

The series is back after taking a week off, presumably to give Seth MacFarlane a break to write more episodes, seeing as he's been credited on 6 out of 7 of them so far. Actually, I'm sure he probably he wrote all these scripts before filming even began, seeing as he's the lead actor and kind of needs to be working on set all day when the filming's happening. Though part of me still wants to believe that whenever the rest of the cast were playing around on their phones waiting for the next shot to be set up, he was sitting somewhere quiet with a laptop out, just hammering out these scripts like a machine.

This is a quick review of Minority Rule without my usual recap. There may be some SPOILERS for earlier The Orville episodes beyond this point. There definitely will be for this episode.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-06: Lethe (Quick Review)

Episode:

06

|

Writer:

Joe Menosky & Ted Sullivan

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Air Date:

22-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm trying to get some words written up about the new episode of Star Trek: Discovery in a hurry before a newer one comes along.

Lethe was written by Supergirl writer Ted Sullivan and Star Trek legend Joe Menosky... who wrote that episode of Deep Space Nine I hated. He's written better stuff than Dramatis Personae though, like Next Gen's Darmok and almost every Voyager two-parter. To be honest, I wasn't all that keen on a lot of his Voyager or Next Gen work, but I've got no worries about this episode. Discovery's been so consistent for me so far that I'm sure I'll like this episode exactly as much as I've liked the other five so far. Probably.

This is one of my quick reviews, so there'll be no recap, but there will be lots of SPOILERS, both for events in this episode and maybe a couple of other Trek stories. I won't spoil any episode that hasn't aired yet though.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-05: Choose Your Pain (Quick Review)

Episode:

5

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Writer:

Kemp Powers

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Air Date:

15-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching an episode of Discovery with a title that sounds like it should be a quote from a Mortal Kombat game.

This is one of my quick reviews, meaning that I'm writing it in a rush and I'm leaving out the scene-by-scene observations I usually do. There'll still be plenty of words though and many of them will be SPOILERS for this episode and earlier ones.

The Orville 1-06: Krill (Quick Review)

Episode:

6

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Writer:

David A. Goodman

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Air Date:

12-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I've finally done it! I've finally reached an episode of The Orville not credited to Seth MacFarlane! Not that I had any problem with MacFarlane's episodes, it was just starting to seem like he'd written the whole series by himself.

This one's called Krill, which is at least one letter more than Pria, though it's still another tiny boring title. It's very disappointing when Star Trek: Discovery is pulling out names like The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry and Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad. The Orville writers need to step up their game.

The writer responsible in this case seems to be David A. Goodman, who wrote the Star Trek episode of Futurama and four episodes of Enterprise, so his sci-fi credentials seem to be sound. The director on the other hand, Jon Cassar, has never worked on Star Trek... but he did direct 65 episodes of 24 (plus 24: Redemption). So I'm hoping for gritty, ultra-high stakes action taking place in real time across Los Angeles, and at least one helicopter. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was one of the most successful and beloved films in the franchise and it only had a helicopter on screen for like 30 seconds; imagine how well The Orville would do with a full minute or two.

Anyway, this is one of my quick reviews, so it's basically going to be a scruffy stream of thoughts and opinions without a recap. There will be SPOILERS though, for this episode and maybe earlier ones. Plus I'm throwing in a free bonus spoiler for you from the first few minutes of third season Next Gen episode, The Survivors. So look forward to that.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-04: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry (Quick Review)

Episode:

4

|

Writer:

Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite

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Air Date:

08-Oct-2017

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Discovery's fourth episode, The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry... holy shit that's a long episode title.

In fact, at 38 letters it's the second longest episode title in all of Star Trek after The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky! It kicks the crap out of Doctor Who's recent The Pyramid at the End of the World with its pathetic 28 letters.

The episode was written and directed by a bunch of people I've never heard of, so instead of filling space with what I think about them, I'm going to get straight to the part where I say that this is going to be a really rushed scruffy review without the long recap I usually do. It'll still have SPOILERS for this episode, but I'll probably not be spoiling much else.

The Orville 1-05: Pria (Quick Review)

Episode:

5

|

Writer:

Seth MacFarlane

|

Air Date:

05-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm rushing through another The Orville episode review. I have to get this finished and posted before they go and air the next episode.

This is apparently the fifth episode in a row written by Seth MacFarlane, so he's either pulling a J. Michael Straczynski-style feat of marathon script writing, or they've been forgetting to update the opening credits each week. Plus this is the fourth time they've gotten Trek veteran in to direct and this time it's Jonathan Frakes! He's one of the best Trek actors turned directors so I'm always happy to see his name show up. Plus it means that in a few weeks I'll be able to watch his episode of Star Trek: Discovery and compare the two series fairly.

Okay, past this point there be episode SPOILERS, so continue no further if that's an issue.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-03: Context is for Kings (Quick Review)

Episode:

3

|

Writer:

Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts & Craig Sweeny

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Air Date:

01-Oct-2017

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm got another rushed Discovery review for you. I'm up to episode 3, Context is for Kings, which is a weird name. Very un-Star Trek. Though to be honest, I'm just happy we're actually getting new Star Trek episode titles again; it's been a long while.

The episode's written by showrunners Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts, who also wrote the last episode, but they're joined this time by Limitless creator Craig Sweeny. Lots of writers. They even got a writer to direct it: Batman & Robin's Akiva Goldsman. Funny that the third episode of The Orville was directed by a notorious writer as well; I hope Goldsman did as good a job as Brannon Braga did.

This is one of my quick reviews, meaning that I'm skipping the screencaps and in-depth scene-by-scene observations, and going straight for the SPOILERS. I'm considering all 51 years of Star Trek up to this point to be fair game for my spoilers, especially Where No Man Has Gone Before, plus Where No One Has Gone Before and other episodes with super space travel.