In what’s becoming a winter holiday tradition, a new Star Wars movie is currently dominating the box office as one year ends and the next year begins. The eighth episode of the main series and the ninth live-action theatrical release for the franchise so far, The Last Jedi has a lot of people talking. Some people love it, some people hate it, and a lot of people fall somewhere in the middle. Talking with friends about the movie will probably lead to some fun debates about what you liked, what you didn’t, and what you wish had happened, but if you delve in to the wretched hives of scum and villainy of the internet (i.e. most comment sections) you’re likely to find an abundance of polarized arguments.

Did The Last Jedi ruin Star Wars and forever taint the legacy of beloved characters which will lead to the downfall of a sci-fi empire? Is it the best entry since The Empire Strikes Back? Is it just another movie about space magic and we shouldn’t think about it so hard? Is there any way to sort through the mire and come to a conclusion about The Last Jedi that isn’t emotionally charged or overly critical? To answer the last question, yes, I think there is a way. But how? In an online culture where film analyses and opinions are often conflated to the point of confusion, how do we judge a movie?

Caution: There are plenty of spoilers for The Last Jedi written below. Proceed with care.

What do the numbers say?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been out for a couple of weeks now, and if you look at the numbers, the movie seems to already be a great success. Rian Johnson’s much-debated midway point of the new trilogy is closing in on $900 million globally^[1] heading into its third weekend, and its domestic haul has it closing in on the fifth or sixth best domestic box office take of all time. Looking at it from a different perspective though, The Last Jedi‘s 67% box office drop-off^[2] in its second week has some “experts” and online commentators calling it the beginning of the end for the Star Wars franchise. While the doomsayers might or might not be overreacting, it can’t be denied that The Last Jedi is making a lot of money no matter how you choose to frame and interpret its financial situation. But maybe dollars aren’t the numbers that matter.

I’m one of the first people to support the idea that the amount of money a movie makes is not necessarily indicative of the quality of that movie. Many movies of questionable quality make millions while excellent films struggle to make their budget back. So maybe it’s the review numbers that matter. Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at 91%^[3] and Metacritic has it at 86^[4]. That’s very good, but those are the critic’s scores.

There seems to be a growing resentment of professional critics within certain online communities, and the audience scores for The Last Jedi appear to point to a widening gap between the two groups. Audiences on Rotten Tomatoes have given The Last Jedi a dismal 51%^[3], and Metacritic is even worse with 4.7 out of 10^[4]. Those numbers appear to indicate that regular moviegoers aren’t in love with the movie, but again, it depends on how you look at it and where you get your information from. The movie scores on IMDB are also open to the public, and the public has given The Last Jedi a 7.6 as of December 28^[5]. And CinemaScore, a reputable polling service that collects information directly from people who have attended a screening, has determined that general audiences give The Last Jedi an A^[6].

So what do the numbers tell us? All they really say is that people are divided about The Last Jedi. Critics, however various sites choose to define what a “critic” is, seem to approve of the movie on average. Audiences generally seem to approve of the movie as well, but a very vocal minority might be pulling down the numbers on certain sites. Looking at the IMDB breakdown of scores, it shows an anomaly at the bottom of the scale with an unusually large amount of people rating The Last Jedi as one star. There’s a smaller anomaly at the top with more people giving it a ten than expected given the trend shown on the chart, but it would appear, proportionally, that the extreme naysayers are more likely to leave their mark than anyone else. How much the binary, 1-or-10-and-nothing-else raters influence the numbers across different sites is entirely up to debate though.

What are people saying?

So if the numbers are inconclusive, then maybe we can look at what people are actually saying about The Last Jedi. Diving into the comment sections on most videos, articles, and social media posts relating to the movie will almost surely expose you to a plethora of salty commentary. Movie review sites are also being loaded with negative reviews from users who range from being disappointed to being out of their minds with anger. A quick perusal of the first twenty or so user reviews on IMDB reveals no rating above four stars and review titles such as: “The Last Jedi is a Disgrace to Every Star Wars Film That Came Before It,” “Total Disaster: Not worth the paper the ticket was printed on,” and “NEVER, in ALL MY LIFE, have I been more GENUINELY ANGRY at a movie.”

Of course, not every written user review is so dramatically negative, but after scrolling through the top 100 or so most “helpful” reviews (since that’s how IMDB sorted them), I only found two or three that were positive. Being generous with the margin of error since I didn’t scroll through the thousands of reviews, a 5-10% positive review average doesn’t come close to even Metacritic’s abysmal user rating average. What that tells me is that the people who really don’t like The Last Jedi are extremely eager to let everyone know how they feel about it. More so than people who love it or just think it’s alright.

Since complaining and tearing things down is a popular pastime on the internet (and for humans in general), it’s not much of a surprise that there is so much negative feedback visible online for the new Star Wars movie. Ask anyone who has ever worked in the service industry, and they’ll say that people are more likely to say something if they had a bad experience than if they had a good one. This leads to a sampling bias for review sites that skews towards the negative, and it leads to comment sections feeling more like a place to air grievances than a place to have a reasonable discussion.

It’s just an opinion, until it isn’t.

The perception of negativity directed towards The Last Jedi might be overblown, it can’t be denied that there is a sizable portion of the film’s audience who had a bad time in the theater. Those feelings can’t and shouldn’t be dismissed, but they aren’t unassailable either. One of the major defensive postures people take when challenged on their view of The Last Jedi or any movie is to say, “it’s just my opinion.” That’s fair enough in many cases. Opinions related to personal tastes can’t be faulted. Someone simply saying that they didn’t like or even hated The Last Jedi is fine, but I’m the type of person who will want to dig a little deeper. Why didn’t they like it? Specifically.

I do think that some opinions are better than others, and asking for reasons why someone feels the way they do helps to separate the emotional responses from the responses based on reasoning. As someone starts to list the reasons why they didn’t like a movie, they’re also likely to start listing things that can be discussed and debated.

Using an example from The Last Jedi, maybe someone didn’t like it because they disapproved of the direction taken with Luke Skywalker’s character. Okay, that’s fair, but why? They didn’t like his jokes? Alright, Yoda was pretty jokey in Empire, but comedy is subjective so that’s understandable. But perhaps they don’t think Luke’s character in The Last Jedi matches what was established for Luke in the original trilogy. Or maybe they don’t think Luke has a decent character arc in The Last Jedi, or that his usage in the movie was completely pointless. Those are complaints that begin to creep into the area of film analysis. Film analysis isn’t entirely objective all the time, but good analysis relies on looking at what is in the film to support a position. If you can point to specific scenes to bolster your opinion, then your opinion becomes stronger. Luke’s characterization and story arc can certainly be supported in this way, though saying what a character should or would do is a tricky subject with few real answers.

An area of complaint which many people cite as a reason to hate The Last Jedi and which can most definitely be refuted has to do with the structure of the film itself. From my experience, the majority of the negative reviews and comments claim that The Last Jedi made no sense, was terribly written, and was riddled with unforgivable plot holes. While complaints about creative choices related to characters and their actions often ultimately come down to taste and preference, complaints about the movie making sense can most often be explained more objectively. There actually can be right and wrong answers when it concerns a film’s plot, and those answers don’t necessarily involve opinions.

That’s no plot hole.

People online apparently love to point out plot holes in movies. The Last Jedi is no exception. Unfortunately, there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of what a plot hole is. Marie-Laure Ryan provides a good definition of what a plot hole is in her essay titled “Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design” by writing that a plot hole is something which “ignores or fails to notice logical inconsistencies that should normally prevent the progression of the plot toward its outcome.”^[7] To expand on her definition, a plot hole is not something that is simply left unexplained, it is something in the plot that illogically contradicts something already established within the logic of the universe created for the film.

Something related to a plot hole but different in significant ways is what Marie-Laure Ryan calls a “cheap plot trick.” I call it a contrivance, and it’s something in the plot that makes sense, but it feels like a stretch of logic and reason to varying degrees. It’s the hero who always arrives at the exact right moment, or the unlikely yet fortuitous meeting of two essential characters. Something that technically could happen, but probably wouldn’t. Plot contrivances are certainly more forgivable than actual plot holes, but a reliance on them to move the plot forward can be irksome for many viewers. The Last Jedi, just like countless others films, has some plot contrivances which people may or may not forgive depending on their contrivance threshold. But I have yet to see any of the negative reviewers and commenters provide an actual plot hole that stands up to scrutiny.

To use an example from the movie, one of the main “plot holes” that people try to point to has to do with Vice-Admiral Holdo’s actions. Specifically, if she had just told Poe Dameron of her plan to use the escape ships to sneak away from the First Order’s sensors and secretly make their way to the abandoned Rebel base on Crait, then many problems could have been avoided and much of the middle part of the movie wouldn’t have been necessary. Without thinking very hard about it, some people might agree that realistically, Holdo should have told Poe her plan. It might seem illogical to some people for her not to tell him. But if you watch the movie and pay attention to the details, there are clear and valid reasons for Holdo to act the way she did.

Poe had just been demoted from Commander to Captain by Leia for his actions at the beginning of the movie. Poe disobeyed a direct order and led an attack which, even though it destroyed the intended target, had gotten many Resistance fighters killed. Even though Leia had a good relationship with Poe, she could not ignore his insubordination, nor could she endorse his method of shooting first and thinking about the consequences later. After Leia was rendered unconscious by the First Order’s continued attack, Holdo was put in charge of the Resistance fleet’s escape.

Holdo did not have a close relationship with Poe. To her, he was a hotshot pilot who made rash decisions and was a danger to the people he led. She even said at one point in the film that she’d dealt with arrogant pilots like him before. Her line of dialogue gives insight to her character and shows that she already doesn’t think much of Poe. When you add to that the fact that Poe was very confrontational with Holdo in nearly every conversation they had, it is completely understandable that she would want him to just shut up and follow orders.

Poe was not part of her command crew, so she had no reason to tell him anything. In fact, it is entirely likely that she didn’t want to reveal her secret plan since the existence of the Rebel base on Crait was a secret to almost everyone. The more people she tells, the more likely that information is going to leak to the First Order. In Holdo’s eyes, Poe had a recent history of getting people killed, so why should she trust him with information that could wipe out the rest of the Resistance? It’s hard to argue against that logic since Poe DID leak part of her plan when he told Finn about it and DJ overheard.

Was Holdo wrong to withhold her risky plan from nearly all of the crew, including a recently demoted Captain? No, I don’t think so. The movie gives clear reasons to support the idea that her character would make that choice, even if it’s not a choice that the audience agrees with. That’s one of the major flaws in trying to point out plot holes with choices made by characters. A lot of times it might seem illogical only because the viewer is reacting to it from their own personal perspective or from the omniscient perspective that the movie gives us. Characters don’t see everything, and they’re not perfect. That’s what makes their character arcs fulfilling. By the end of the The Last Jedi, Poe understood that he had been acting rashly (he admired Holdo’s courage, and he made the choice not to make a suicide run on the ramming beam on Crait), and Holdo eventually saw what Leia knew about Poe, that he cares deeply for the Resistance and its people.

In general, plot holes based on character choices are more likely going to be plot contrivances if anything. It takes a bit of film analysis to follow the logic that supports the idea that a character would make a particular choice, but I feel that The Last Jedi isn’t very subtle about its characterizations. I’m not saying characters aren’t nuanced, some of them certainly are, but the reasons they do what they do are fairly clear if you pay attention to the details. These types of issues can be debated and have well-supported answers. Some opinions are definitely better than others. If someone says The Last Jedi doesn’t make sense because the characters act out of character, that can absolutely be refuted to a reasonable degree.

Another type of “plot hole” that can be refuted has less to do with potentially unpredictable characters and more to do with the physical universe created by the filmmakers. Some of the complaints have to with movement, such as the idea that Rey couldn’t logically have gotten from Snoke’s throne room to Crait in the Millennium Falcon. That’s an easy plot hole to dispel. We hear Rey tell Chewie to wait for her signal before she ejected from the Falcon to head to the First Order’s ship. After her big fight in Snoke’s room, Kylo Ren told Hux that Rey took Snoke’s escape ship. So she did. Then she signaled Chewie who picked her up. Easy. We don’t have to see it to know and accept that it happened. Events that aren’t shown are not automatically plot holes.

“But why didn’t the First Order immediately shoot her down,” you might ask? Well, that was also explained in the film. Holdo explains that the First Order isn’t scanning for small ships, they’re only focused on the Raddus, the main Resistance ship. So the First Order wasn’t scanning for anything the size of the Millennium Falcon, and even if they did see it, their starfighters would’ve had to have been deployed to take it down. In the time it took for that to happen, the Falcon could have easily flown down to Crait. There would have been no reason for the First Order to engage the Falcon.

Is there a right or wrong answer?

Those were just a few examples of the many, many supposed plot holes that people are pointing out in The Last Jedi. I could go on (and I will in a separate article which I’ll be writing soon), but the point I’m trying to make is that many of the technical problems with the film’s script and plotting that people point to when reacting negatively to the movie are not actually problems at all. Some of it has to do with people not paying close enough attention to the movie and how the filmmakers establish the logic of the universe and characters being created. Some of it has to do with people wanting something different than what they were given, so they view their dissatisfaction as an objective flaw in the script. Some of it has to do with an emotional response to a universe that means a lot to a lot of different people.

Like so many others, I’m one of those people who has always had Star Wars in their life. My earliest memories of watching a movie are of the trash compactor scene in A New Hope. Whether or not the original Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw, it definitely made the biggest impact on my young mind. I owned the Star Wars storybooks and toys as a kid, I read the comics and novels growing up, and I’ve played the video games on every console generation. The Star Wars universe means a lot to me, so I completely understand the emotional reactions that people are having to The Last Jedi.

I also understand that different people look for different things from a movie. Those differences partially explain the gap between critic and audience reactions on some review sites. To vastly overgeneralize, critics look for cohesive story elements, effective direction, overarching themes, etc. Audiences, on the other hand, vary greatly in what they want from a movie. Some want escapism. Some want a message. Some prefer happy endings. Some like dark endings. When it comes to a franchise like Star Wars, many people have been invested in the universe for years, and with those years come expectations. Some people can’t let go of what they wanted to see in this new trilogy, and that’s fair enough. But attempting to judge a movie like that is almost always going to be a disappointing endeavor.

So are there right and wrong answers when it comes to judging The Last Jedi? It depends on how you choose to judge it. Everyone has different tastes and expectations, so there’s no chance a movie seen by so many people will be universally loved. If you judge The Last Jedi only on your tastes, then no, there is no correct answer. I loved the movie, but you might hate it. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is what it is. But saying “I hated it” and “it was terribly written” are two very different things.

If you attempt to judge The Last Jedi by pointing out film-breaking flaws in the plot, then yes, there are definitely correct answers. If Rey’s appearance on Crait in the Millennium Falcon ruined the movie for you and you refuse to accept the very clear elements in the film that made her journey work in context, then you are wrong. You might not like it, but that has to do with preference. Other people do like it, and you can’t fault them for that.

Ultimately, movies are art. They are meant to be discussed and analyzed. Sure, the film industry is a business and Star Wars is a juggernaut of merchandising and money, but it still takes creative people to bring the characters and stories to life. These films touch us so deeply because of the artistry involved in making them. Art inspires us, and it brings up our emotions. Too often online, people feel that they are being attacked if someone disagrees with them or questions their opinions. While there are plenty of people that do attack, if you enter into a discussion with the knowledge that your feelings can’t be invalidated, then there’s not much reason to get angry. The seething reviews and comments we see directed at The Last Jedi are a product of at least some of the films in the Star Wars franchise having made an emotional impact. That, at least, is a wonderful thing, and something I would remind people to hold on to if they feel angry or upset about a movie not living up to their hopes or expectations.

 

 

References:

1. ‘The Last Jedi’ Jumps To $447M Overseas, Closes In On $900M WW Box Office

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/12/27/as-the-last-jedi-tops-800m-is-star-wars-beyond-saving/#c1d87c369626

3. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi/

4. http://www.metacritic.com/movie/star-wars-episode-viii—the-last-jedi

5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

6. https://www.cinemascore.com/

7. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/256471

Tagged : Analysis / Art / Critics / Film Analysis / Reviews / Star Wars / The Last Jedi