There are not many other franchises that come to mind when thinking of a group of iconic and memorable movies than Star Wars. Fans will argue plenty over the best or worst movies, with plenty of controversy over the prequels. Nevertheless, the Star Wars franchise pushed out many high quality films over the years, the most recent being “The Last Jedi”. (Don’t worry about reading this if you haven’t yet watched it, as there are no major plot spoilers ahead.)

  “The Last Jedi” picks up after “The Force Awakens”, showing multiple character’s perspectives throughout the movie. The general plot is fairly similar to all of the other movies, with the good guys versus the bad guys. The actual story is less simple, as it seemed like a garble of stories all mashed together.

  Having another perspective is an amazing way to tell an interesting story, but how many perspectives is too much? Throughout the movie, the focus of the film switches focus to many subplots. These include many details that are vital to the story, but also some that could have been left out. These subplots show Rey’s journey of self discovery with Luke Skywalker, Finn and Rose trying to find some hacker, and the rebels trying to escape the empire like always. But did the movie as a whole need all of these?

  In reality, some of these characters’ journeys could have been shortened to make room for the good stuff. For example, there is constant contact between Rey and Kylo Ren, but some of these scenes were not necessary (Ben Swolo is a scene I did not want to see and became an instant meme). Some characters had very little impact on the story and had the same amount of screen time as the bigger characters. Switching the characters around like this made the movie feel like all the content was crowded into the movie’s two and a half hour runtime.

  Some of the characters were really interesting, while others were the opposite. For example, the main villain in the chair, Snoke, was promising. No spoilers, but he turned out boring and overall unused as a character.

  Now that the negatives are out of the way, there were plenty of good things the movie picked up on: Lightsabers. One of the coolest things in Star Wars is the Jedi signature weapon, and the fights in “The Last Jedi” definitely cut it. I love seeing fights where the camera doesn’t cut to a different angle every five seconds. Also, giant empire technology is always a plus, as the empire gets their kicks from making overly large ships and weapons.

  Overall, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” did a decent job telling their story, with plenty of effects to do so. The acting quality and coordination made the fight scenes more enjoyable to watch, while the story kept the viewers interested. This gets a 4.5/5 stars and I suggest it to anyone that likes the previous Star Wars movies.

Jordan Rust, Print Design Editor