Good Movies versus Star Wars

Last night, my wife and I rented Star Wars: The Last Jedi and watched it together for the first time.  Now, let's be clear on one thing - I am not a Star Wars guy.  My fandom is pretty much limited to the hobbit/wizard/balrog spectrum - little green guys who speak with appalling grammar have never really done it for me.

That being said, I always give a new movie a fair chance, even when it's not something I'm predisposed to like.  But no free passes here - when watching a new Star Wars movie, a critical eye I will employ.

Which leads me to The Last Jedi, or "TLJ"* for the fanboys.  Much as I want to be nice to all you Yoda-lovers out there, I have to say that this movie really did not do it for me.  It was not a good film.  It may have been a good Star Wars film, but it was not a good film (there is a difference).  To be a good Star Wars film, the bar is set pretty low.

OK, that was a low blow, but you get the idea.  I really did want to enjoy The Last Jedi.  I like movies in general and usually don't want to feel like I've just wasted two hours of my life, or, in the case of TLJ, approximately 37.  Oh, wait, it was only two and a half hours?  Hmmm, that's funny - 'cause I kind of felt like this when it was over:

Let's be clear, though: as a self-described film buff, I do have some actual reasons for not liking this movie.  They pretty much all center around the facts that: 

1. It was heavily overplotted

2. There were no balrogs (only strange llama-creatures with vaguely balrog-shaped heads: more on them below)

What I mean by the first point is that SO MUCH HAPPENS in this movie that the main conflict is completely overwhelmed and lost in the shuffle.  Is it about Rey wrestling with the dark side?  Ren wrestling with his tormented soul?  Luke wrestling with his past?  A restless wrestler arrested with a nestling?  I just don't know. 

Then there's the whole storyline involving Finn, Rose, the creepy code-breaker guy, and the galloping balrog-llamas (my own name for them).  Oh, and then there's the fact that the movie keeps cutting back to the least exciting space-chase EVER, in which Leia's ship is putzing along while being spit-balled by the star destroyer while the bad guys wait for it to run out of gas.

Yes - there is a whole subplot in this film whose entire tension rests on waiting for something to run out of gas.  If you're thinking this sounds about as exciting as watching grass grow or NASCAR, you're right.

And that's not even HALF of the plot points that Rian Johnson (heretofore affectionately known as "My man RJ") stuffs into this film.  Just watch it and you'll see (but only if you're under 35 - again, we're talking major time commitment here).

Now, I know what you're thinking: But, Jon!  Seeing lots of cool stuff happen is what makes movies cool!  ME WANT SEE COOL STUFF!  HE HAVE BLUE LASER STICK!!!

This is where I disagree.  What makes any film good is NOT the amount of plot points the director can cram into it: rather, it's the power of the overarching conflict and how it transforms the characters.  In most cases actually, the simpler this is, the better.  Let me give you an example.

Arrival is a science-fiction film released in 2016.  If you haven't seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to do so.  It is so achingly beautiful that you will never want to watch another film again for fear of defiling your retinas.  It is also less than two hours long, has only 3 major characters, and there are no balrog-llamas (the one strike against it).  More importantly, it was nominated for Best Picture, which should tell you something.  What is striking about this film is how incredibly simple the overarching conflict is: aliens land on earth, and a linguist (Amy Adams in a beautifully understated performance) has to figure out how to communicate with them.  There.  That's it.  

And it is SO. DARN. GOOD.  Like, man.  It is good.  And not only because it gave us this meme, which will only make sense to those who, like me, spend WAY too much time on CNN:

Trump jokes aside, what makes Arrival so powerful is the incredible unity of the story.  Everything, from plot to theme to character development is played out along the same lines, tied together with the same big ideas: memory, time, and language.  Most of the film consists of characters talking to each other in dimly-lit rooms about words and their meaning.  And then, at the end, it sucker-punches you in the gut with THE most heart-wrenchingly emotional plot twist of all time.

Now, after that scathing burst of logic, you're probably saying, Well, OK, Jon.  I'll give you that one.  But can't movies be complex and still be good?  OK, first of all, this debate is NOT about complexity of theme and character - Arrival's themes are incredibly rich and complex.  But, yes, plots can be complex, too, and still result in a good movie.  Take Christopher Nolan's Inception for example.  This movie's plot is so crammed full of events that it takes about 13 viewings to properly sort it all out.  But it is an excellent film because the main conflict is SIMPLE: can Cobb and Co. (I just copyrighted that) successfully plant an idea in Fischer's mind and get out without having to spend a trillion years in limbo-tropolis?  (If you haven't seen the movie, that sentence probably sounds kind of weird.  I won't even try to explain it).  So even though there's TONS that happens, and the plot has even more twists and turns than Lord Snoke's forehead, it is unified by a fundamentally simple conflict.  This is, again, where my man RJ sadly lost his way. 

By the end of The Last Jedi, I simply didn't care anymore.  There was too much going on for me to care about.  All my care was used up on the unanswered questions about the balrog-llamas: What are they?  How did they get there?  Would Gandalf win if he had to fight one?  And come on: that part at the end where Rey lifts the rocks - she did NOT earn that moment.  She hasn't even trained!  How do I know this??  Because there was no montage!!!  Everybody knows that in order for a good guy to train, there HAS to be a montage.  How do I know?  Because this.  And this.  And this.  

And even if there maybe was a montage that I'm forgetting about, it still would never be as good as this.

***

*Geeks like us often use abbreviations for faster writing.  Thus, it would be completely normal to come across the following conversation on a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) message board ('normal,' of course, being a relative term):

"IMHO, in terms of LOTR, the TTT EE is way better than the ROTK TE, but when it comes to HP, POA is better than COS and OOTP.  But if PJ and FW do another film, I'd love to see it be a mash-up of SW and DW, so long as OB is the main character."

ROTFLOL.