10 Problems I have with Star Wars: The Last Jedi *Spoilers*

Okay, so this article will be talking about major spoilers for the Last Jedi, so stop reading unless you want it spoiled!

Overall I would say I enjoyed the movie. It did not blow me away. It definitely does not hold a candle to the Empire Strikes back. In fact, I think I liked Rogue One a lot more. It still had some good moments though. I really liked Kylo Ren and Rey's relationship and interactions.  I enjoyed the overall plot of the movie even if I didn't like how it was always executed. I liked some of the little characters and potential stories that could spawn from behind the scenes of this movie. I also really liked the very end of the movie and what it could mean, and I will get to that later. But in this article I will touch upon some of the stuff that I did not care for and why.

SPOILER WARNING!!!

1. Hyperspace combat - This was a cool part of the movie, where Admiral Holdo, who we thought was being a bit of a coward, or at least not a decisive leader, got her badass ending by using her ship to go into hyperspace through the First Order fleet, destroying most of it. I think? They still managed to land a force on the ground and did not seem to be bothered that much by the set back, so I dunno. But it looked like she destroyed several destroyers and cut the major ship in half. I don't really like the precedent this sets. Seeing how devastating one ship could be would just cause me to use droids to pilot any number of objects, and fling them into hyperspace at the enemy. They can't shoot down everything, and even if a little X-Wing goes into hyperspace through a ship it would be more devastating than any bomb. It just seems too obvious a tactic. We haven't seen it used before and I was glad for it, because I knew this type of hole would exist. From now on, all space admirals will look a little incompetent to me if they do not use this tactic. But if they use this tactic, space combat will look dumb.

2. Finn's "sacrifice" - So the Resistance is piloting a bunch of broken down speeders, to try and knock out a giant laser battering ram. Then, they start getting blown up and Poe tells them to break off, because it is apparently a suicide mission. What were they planning on doing when they got close? Finn got close, and the only reason he didn't run into the ram and blow it up was because Rose stopped, or saved, him. It looked as if it would have been a suicide mission for anyone of them. Did the speeders not have any weapons?*** And how did Finn get so close anyway? The First Order seemed pretty determined to shoot the speeders down, and succeeded...except for this one speeder that could have easily destroyed the ram, OR Rose's speeder that managed to get around and hit Finn's. It ended up being a dumb sequence. Based on playing the Battlefront 2 multiplayer map of that battle, I was thinking the speeders were going to use the red kick-up salt dust to screen the base and the fighters, to let them be more effective in the trenches. I was hoping to see some Star Wars trench warfare. Honestly, and I can't believe I'm saying this, play the Battlefront 2 game for a better battle than what we saw. Sad.

*edit* - After watching the movie a second time, I saw that they specifically showed Finn's speeder's weapons being melted off, preventing him from using them. However, I noticed something else. I am sure this is just a film error, but Rose is looking to her right when she is yelling at Finn to break off, and then when she rams her ship into Finn's, she is approaching from the right. So, unless it is a simple film mistake, Rose managed to loop around and catch up to Finn and ram him, while not being shot by the First Order, and also not bothering to just destroy the cannon with her functional weapons.

3. Was the codebreaker DJ the guy that Maz recommended to Finn and Rose or not? Based on her description, it seemed like the guy in the casino was who she meant since he was the only one with the rose lapel. So did Finn and Rose just happen to be put in jail with another expert codebreaker? That is a little too coincidental. I feel like we missed a scene, where DJ gets his jacket and fancy lapel back from the casino guy, from whom I assume DJ lost a bet. I just feel like something's missing. Also, if DJ was the codebreaker Maz was talking about, we didn't really see him be really suave and an expert gunfighter.

My hope is that DJ will be the Lando of the series. Just like how Lando betrayed everyone and was a scoundrel in Empire, he came back and did some good stuff in Return of the Jedi. I hope they do the same thing with DJ, because he could be a cool character, and his actions are very similar to Lando's. Side note - was Maz fighting against Magna Guards in the background? I feel like that union dispute was more entertaining than the whole of Finn and Rose's storyline.

4. Plasma was once again lame - Plasma was hyped up before The Force Awakens for being a badass female bad guy, something we have not seen. Unfortunately, she was incompetent, a push over, and a genuinely horrible soldier for the First Order in TFA, and in The Last Jedi...she just fought against a disgraced trooper/floor mopper that left the Order because he didn't want to fight, and lost. Pretty pathetic existence. It seems like Plasma is relegated to the Boba Fett curse. Looks cool, but actually doesn't do much and gets killed in a lame way.

Also, Hux is just getting annoying. He had more of a comedic role in this movie, and that at least matched his actions more than in TFA. He is very incompetent, and his mistakes are constantly causing The First Order thousands of lives.

5. The First Order chasing the Resistance fleet story had some major issues. In theory I liked this part of the story. It was very reminiscent of the newer series of Battlestar Galactica, where the beginning episodes the humans are trying to escape the Cylon fleet, but they keep getting followed, and they are just trying to buy time until they figure out how to get out of the situation. They did not have fuel issues, and were not just trying to run faster, they had to think of something else. In TLJ, the resistance fleet was able to run faster, and was only in trouble because they were running out of fuel. I believe it was said they were running on fumes, yet were able to completely fuel all of those transports. I guess the big ships are quite the gas guzzlers. Meanwhile, I am thinking why did the First Order not hyperspeed a little further ahead to catch up to them?

And before anyone says anything, let me remind you that Finn and Rose, and Rey and Chewbacca, were BOTH able to basically do that. They left and came back exactly where they wanted to, close to the ship they wanted to be close to. So it is possible. The First Order just didn't do that. Hubris perhaps? More likely just bad writing to leave such a hole.

6. Luke's ending and physics - So this was a pretty cool moment, and an emotional one. Luke comes back to save everyone, stall the enemy, and essentially dies because of it. But the more I think about it, the more it makes me angry and confused. For one, I don't completely understand the rules of what he did: So he force astral-projected himself to Crait. Could he affect anything, or was he a glorified hologram? It seemed like he could affect some stuff, like holding Leia's hand and giving her Han's dice, but then again Rey and Kylo held hands, but not really, so I dunno. It seems as though he wasn't really there because the lasers did nothing, and Kylo's lightsaber just passed through him. My conclusion is that he was a glorified hologram, and the stress of doing that killed him. That is a lame way of dying. If you die because of thinking too hard for a trick that could be completed by a slightly more advanced hologram, you died a lame death.

I liked the parallel and the reference to Luke's earlier line about taking his lightsaber and taking on the entire First Order. I just wished he actually did do it. I know there was a theme of not fighting whom you hate, but saving those you love (which I actually liked a lot by the way), but it felt like a chump way to go. This was Luke Skywalker, who we had an entire trilogy watching him grow and become more powerful. I wanted to see him do some amazing things on screen. I wanted to see him actually be there and survive all of those walker blasts, and then start to lay waste to the walkers. I wanted to see him use the force to bring them down one by one, and generally be a badass, before maybe finally becoming exhausted, and then toy with Kylo to stall him. This just did not feel like the send off Luke needed.

Also, while we are talking about force powers we don't know about, does Yoda have the ability as a force ghost to call down lightning? Sure seems so. And Leia apparently can use the force to protect herself in a vacuum and float around. I thought Disney said that Leia was not going to appear in Episode 9? Shouldn't that mean she dies in 8? They had ample opportunities to kill her off in this movie, but they specifically did not. They better not kill such as major character behind the scenes or in between the movies. I don't know what they will do. I guess we will have to wait and see.

7. So who is Snoke? This is a major thing that I felt we needed. The director said we would learn everything we needed to learn for the movie, which was technically correct, but his character seems to be too important to just be brushed off. I hope we find out more about him, I guess it'll have to be behind the scenes. He is a ridiculously powerful force user that is very old, and at least knew of all of the previous events that have happened in Star Wars. That is very intriguing. Did he come from a different galaxy, which explains him not really being a Sith or a Jedi? Or did he used to be a Sith or a Jedi? These seem pretty important considering his role in the universe. I was really let down by that.

8. Where are Kylo's knights that were referenced in TFA? They had a pretty major role in the first movie, and I just assumed they had other things to do during the actual events of the movie. But we found out nothing about them in this movie. Were they just other Jedi students? I would think not, as Kylo became their leader. But who are they, and where are they now? And while we are at it, where are the other students that Kylo took with him when he betrayed Luke? It seems unlikely that they turned and became knights without Luke knowing, as we were meant to think that him going to Kylo's tent was a spur-of-the-moment thing. There are just a lot of things missing from that that I feel like they were either dropped, or forgotten about.

9. The First Order's apparent disregard for their own lives. I know it is a bad guy trope that they never care about their minions, but this movie was a little ridiculous. The First Order lost WAY more troops than the Resistance, and yet we were made to feel as though they were completely winning the whole way. It may have been a way to show how strong they are, in that they can take those losses without losing a beat, but come on. At least put a single line in their mentioning the fact that the Starkiller Base was destroyed. It was a pretty major point in TFA, you think it would have been mentioned. Even something like this would have sufficed:

Officer: But sir, the Resistance was able to destroy Starkiller Base, we should not underestimate them.
Snoke: It is inconsequential. Starkiller Base fulfilled its purpose. It destroyed the Republic. That base was but a tiny fraction of our strength. The Resistance threw a pebble at the crushing waves of our might. They cannot win.

Or something better than that, I'm no movie writer. I can't believe I have to reference Battlefront 2 yet again, but in their most recent campaign DLC, the main character saw a map that referenced the First Order fleet, and how many ships they had, and showed that losing even a lot would have done nothing to them. I feel as though we needed to see that in the movie.

And while we are talking about the video game, that at least attempting to talk about the map that led to Luke. This movie didn't even mention it. That was the major plot point of TFA. So what is it and why was it made? It seems like Luke really didn't want to be found, so I doubt he would have made it. The video game mentions that it is a map to the forgotten island, and I guess Kylo Ren knew that somehow?

10. Admiral Holdo saying "godspeed". What is up with that? We already established that she believes in the force, and I don't think we have ever heard a god mentioned in Star Wars before. I am all for having multiple religions in the Star Wars universe, but this one came out of left field and felt like bad writing. The phrase "godspeed", would not be in a universe where there are no gods. Ugh.

There was another minor quibble in that I felt that Rey's parentage was a let down. It was a big character moment for Rey, and something that has driven her entire character, and they relegated it to a line that she really doesn't matter, except to Kylo. I'm not sure what I would have preferred, but that felt anti-climactic.

And lastly, would it kill you to tell Poe your plan, Holdo? Apparently so. 

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I did not want to end on all this negativity, and wanted to touch upon the very ending of the film. The Resistance is in tatters, and apparently all condensed into the Falcon, but Leia says they have everything they need to be the spark the brings down the First Order. We are then transported back to Canto Bight where the little stable boy is listening to the legends of Luke Skywalker. He then walks off to do some chores, uses the force to grab a broom, and then stops to look at the stars as the Luke Skylwalker theme swells. It's a really great moment. It got me thinking about the next movie.

The Last Jedi is the only Saga film to not have a multi-year gap in between movies. Will we see a gap in this one? Is that little boy going to become a major character, or is he just an example that hope is not dead and that its potential is everywhere, and that the Jedi may rise again? It looks like we may need to have a bit of a gap so that the Resistance can start to try and rebuild, but we will see.

But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, or at least I hope it will spurn answers to the questions I had. Hopefully I missed something and this movie is actually better than I thought. Please correct me, and have a nice day!