Story
The Last Jedi has a simplistic plot. Its the same as any Star Wars movie. The bad guys (now called The First Order instead of the Empire) are trying to wipe out the last remainder of the Resistance (the good guys, led by Leia Organa, their General). Its a very much Robert Heinlein sort of idea, military science fiction, the core of pretty much every Hollywood science fiction movie. There's tons of space battles and stuff but after a while I became immune to the spectacle of it.
Emperor Snoke (leader of the First Order, Palpatine's successor) is trying to make Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) into a real Sith. He mocks him and even uses force lightning on him because he lost to a girl who's never held a lightsaber. Ouch. Ren is very upset and distraught.
Meanwhile (back at the Jedi planet) Rei tracks down Luke Skywalker and he reluctantly teaches her the ways of the Force. While she's there she discovers she has a Force connection with Ren. They have several conversations and Rei goes to meet with Ren, who's working with the First Order as a sort of would be successor to Snoke. Rei believes Ben Solo (Kylo Ren) can be swayed back to the Light side of the Force and Ren believes Rei can be turned to the Dark side. Interesting idea.
At the same time the Resistance is getting destroyed by the First Order. Finn (John Boyeega) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), a Resistance maintenance worker work on this plan to hack into the First Order's systems and stop them from tracking the Resistance's main ship, a ploy to buy the Resistance time. They go to this casino planet and Finn remarks how wonderful it is. But Rose tells him that she grew up as a poor girl in this sort of rich lifestyle town and that it was good to see it get destroyed (they had to escape a prison using these camel-like horses), destroying everything in their path.
At the end The First Order is about to destroy the Resistance. All the major players are there: Ren, Rei, Lei, Finn, Poe (Resistance pilot, quasi leader of a mutiny), and Luke. Rose ends up crashing into Finn in a ship to save him from doing a suicide mission to destroy the First Order's military mechanism that's going to destroy the First Order's base. In the process that explosion ends up destroying the First Order's weapon thing and solidifying a loving relationship that would probably happen anyways. Everything is going wrong for the Resistance when Luke shows up and walks outside among the military science fiction fanfare. "I want all guns shooting at that man!", Ren shouts to General Hux, a military lackey who thinks he's classy. Luke takes a million blaster shots and explosions but is seen walking through the smoke. Kylo Ren walks out to confront him, lightsaber at the ready.
They have a short talk. "You won't be the last jedi", Luke snaps. Ren gets upset and strikes him with his saber. The saber goes through but there's no feeling or damage. Turns out Luke was still at the Jedi planet and he was only with Ren in spirit or ghost form. Fitting for a student of Old Ben Kenobi, who also became one with the Force and used this Jedi ghost form ability. Later we see Luke disperse into the sky, becoming one with the Force, back at the Jedi planet. Rei uses Force powers to lift heavy rocks so the Resistance can escape from their tunnel base. At the end of the film a slave kid is seen sweeping the floor and looking up at a ship in the sky, his Resistance ring at the ready. There's a lot more to it but this sums it up nicely.
Characters
Emperor Snoke: Leader of the First Order, the main villain in the Universe, Kylo Ren's master.
Kylo Ren: Played by Adam Driver, Leia and Han Solo's son. He killed Han in the first movie and he isn't doing so well because of it. Moody, disturbed, but much more enlightening about the Dark side of the Force in this movie than in the Force Awakens, where he was seen as childish and lacking depth and personality, bad traits for a villain.
Rei Erso: Played by Daisy Riddley, daughter of junkers who sold her into slavery for drinking money (or so Ren told her). Her force powers become powerful super fast and in this movie she begins to discover much more about the Force through Luke, Ren, and Snoke. Is she really just a nobody slave? Her Force powers say otherwise.
Leia Organa: Carrie Fisher's last appearance on screen. She plays an intelligent Resistance General who can at times be sardonic but also caring.
Luke Skywalker: Mark Hamil's performance (and probably his last major Star Wars appearance, because his character dies) was superb. He's shown as an old Jedi hermit who just wants to die on this Jedi planet, and to not deal with anything that has to do with Sith or Jedi, or politics, even though his sister is the General of the Resistance. Oxymoron anyone?
Finn: Rei's love interest, although they don't meet or see each other until the end of the film. He finds another love interest in Rose Tico, a Resistance maintenance worker. What a player.
There's more but the movie really focuses on these characters and I think the character development with them is of much more value than the introduction of some of the new characters.
Changes
There's a lot of changes in this movie that differs from the traditional Star Wars. That's one of the reasons that the movie has been shunned by some of its fanboy community.
First, there's not really many lightsaber battles, just one. That alone would be enough to offend the average fanboy. But then there's also the way that the Sith and Jedi are perceived and shown. The Force is shown as something not everybody can understand, a sort of metaphysical force field binding everything within space and time, that allows understanding, compassion, and if you're Sith inspired can lead you to ruin. Luke senses this in Rei who becomes attracted to some Dark thoughts during a training session and he couldn't calm her down to make her realize her mistake, thus creating a mini earthquake on the island Jedi Planet.
Diversity. This movie has a diverse cast, a big change to the original Star Wars films which mostly starred white guys like Hamil and his 'dad' wearing a bucket. Rose Tico is Asian, Vietnamese to be exact. And Finn is a black guy. And the main character (Rei) is a British woman. I've always liked British women and their accents. That's enough to get the base riled up. Let's face it, most Star Wars fans are white geeks who probably don't have many minorities in their friendship circle. This movie could change that. Younger viewers in the audience might realize that hey, maybe this isn't just a white boy geek thing, maybe I could find a place for myself within a new, more inclusive, and diverse fanbase. That's the hope at least.
Changes in Force powers. General Snoke reveals in a meeting with Ren and Rei that he used Dark side powers to join their minds together so that they would speak to and relate to each other. This is something very common in the Star Wars video games, especially Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. But we've never seen it to this degree in a movie. The fact that users of the Force can communicate millions of miles away (and even see each other) is a new display of Force powers upon the audience. Likewise, Luke dupes Ren into believing he was actually there fighting with him, for a while. Although we've seen Jedi ghosts in previous movies we've never seen an illusion do a lightsaber duel. So that was new too.
Dialogue, soliloquy of lasting importance over action. I would say this movie displayed a great importance of dialogue and character development over anything that happened physically. In this respect its probably the best Star Wars movie ever made. Here comes the Star Wars Police.
Favorite scenes
Kylo Ren and Rei are in a meeting with General Snoke and Snoke is torturing Rei a little bit, we can see that Ren is uncomfortable with the whole thing. He had just learned that Snoke set up their entire Force sensitive psychic link and he doesn't seem pleased about it. Rei is about to get some hurting but then Ren lifts a lightsaber using the Force and cuts Snoke in half, killing him instantly. In this moment Kylo Ren has completed his training in the Dark Side, and becomes the leader of the First Order, and the entire galaxy. Not bad for Lena Dunham's boyfriend.
What happens next is a melee in Snoke's throne room between Snoke's Sith warriors (dressed in red, using physical weapons instead of lightsabers, like in the videogames), Ren, and Rei. It's quite a great fight, very violent and the best in the movie. We see them both get overpowered by these warriors (showing that they aren't all powerful even if they're Sith and Jedi) but they help each other out and overcome them. At the end Ren says, "Join me. Together we can rule the Galaxy." Rei doesn't really answer and is quite disappointed by how things have turned out, a turning point for her in the film.
In the beginning Snoke is talking to Ren about how he got "bested by a girl who's never wielded a lightsaber." He's saying all this negative stuff and all of a sudden uses force lightning on Ren, who goes flying while he's being electrocuted. Cool, violent scene.
At the end Luke is fighting Ren in ghost form. Ren has the First Order fire on him, millions of laser shots. Luke walks out of the dust and brushes his shoulders off, the funniest moment of the movie.
Back at the Jedi planet Luke isn't feeling too great about not helping Rei. Yoda comes to him in ghost form and says, "Lose Rei, you must not." He then goes on about the Force and all this other philosophical Force stuff but the important thing I liked about it was that he said Rei and Kylo Ren would become what they were. Very important quote describing master and apprentice, important to both the Jedi and the Sith.
That's all folks. Go see this movie, it's really good. I'm actually really surprised that so many people dislike it. However, there's no pleasing everybody. I'm not usually such a Star Wars fanboy but the movie really struck a chord with me, it was quite a grand experience, especially on opening day morning.
Let the past die, kill it if you have to. Its the only way you'll become what you're meant to be. -Kylo Ren
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