A Definitive Review of The Last Jedi, by Someone Who Absolutely Knew What Was Going On the Whole Time

By Anna Merlan | January 4, 2018 | 4:55pm

Entertainment

This review may or may not contain spoilers. I’m not sure.

Around 19 years ago, when I was 12, I trooped down to the mall with my little friends and my mini backpack hanging precariously off my scrawny shoulders and went to see a Star Wars movie. I couldn’t tell you which one. It was one of the least defining moments of my life. On New Year’s Day 2018, I went to see my second Star Wars. In the intervening years, I’ve pretty successfully ignored everything related to the franchise, which makes me uniquely positioned to write this very authoritative review, drawn entirely from memory and written without the help of Google. I’ve got this.

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The Last Jedi begins, I think, with a cocky renegade pilot guy taking down a fleet of ships. Argonauts? Dreadnaughts? The ships were bad, anyway, and they’re blown up. Carrie Fisher, God bless her and rest her, is mad but not too mad. It looks like the villains are all English-accented here. They’re doing a sort of British Airways-meets-frosty-dominatrix look that I really appreciate.

I turn my attention for a while to a $5 bag of gummi Lifesavers—purchased grudgingly for me by a man who’s nearby, actually watching and seemingly understanding the movie—and the fact that my seat reclines all the way back. The theater is basically empty and I experiment with an extravagant variety of leg positions and flip my 3D glasses up and down. Suburban Ohio is, I decide, an amazing place to watch a movie you’re definitely paying attention to. When I emerge from this reverie, we’re meeting a bald guy with extremely bad teeth, seated on top of a throne and flanked by some red ninja fellows in a very Burning Man tableau. And here’s Adam Driver! From Girls! He has on a Darth Vader helmet (yes, I know who Darth Vader is, I’m not Amish), and when he takes it off he looks like he’s fallen asleep on top of a grill.

Suburban Ohio is, I decide, an amazing place to watch a movie you’re definitely paying attention to.

Everyone is talking a lot about the Resistance. All I can think about is Louise Mensch and her insane tweets about Steve Bannon being marked for execution. I think about Louise Mensch for a while and resist the urge to check her Twitter, which is something I really need to stop doing so frequently.

I eat so many gummi Lifesavers my head and stomach start to throb in tandem, and in the meantime a spunky young English girl in a tunic situation goes to an island, where she meets a chubby, sulky, old Luke Skywalker — again, yes, of course I generally know who that is — who’s moping around on a cliffside with his pets. I have a lot to say about the pets. I am delighted by the pets. Some of them look like rounded little hamsters with Margaret Keane eyes, and I wish to pat them. Luke Skywalker milks some enormous furry beast and it’s equal parts enchanting and disgusting. There are also local fish people in housedresses and little bonnets. I hope the round little hamsters and the fish people will make more of an appearance. I am disappointed.

Around here I fell asleep. When I wake up, I remember that a young female fighter pilot had successfully deployed some bombs against the bad guys and then died, and now her sister and another dude are trying to avenge her.

At some point, much later—perhaps I fell asleep again—the sister and her friend are in a fancy casino with a lot of aliens, who are, as it turns out, amoral arms dealers. I love the fancy alien arms dealers and their relaxed ethical code and I’d like to stay in the casino and watch them go about their day. There are animals that look like gigantic fennec foxes and the morally relaxed bourgeois aliens are watching them race and placing bets. I am delighted. I quietly hope the remainder of the movie will take place here. Instead, the two young heroes get booked for unpaid parking tickets or something and thrown into a jail cell with Benicio Del Toro, who’s making snake noises for reasons I don’t fully understand. They all escape on the backs of the delightful little race animals, because of course they do. But then Benicio Del Toro betrays them, because of course he does. A man with hair like that and eye bags like that making fucking snake noises was not to be trusted. Even I knew that. Come on. I make an exasperated noise and toy with my seat.

I love the fancy alien arms dealers and their relaxed ethical code and I’d like to stay in the casino and watch them go about their day.

Back on the island with sagging, ballooning Luke Skywalker, the British girl is experiencing some weird mind-meld situation with Adam Driver, which seems unbearable. She also blows a hole in the side of a room with her weapon. The local fishpeople in their bonnets are furious. I love watching them complain. They advance up a hill and I wistfully watch them go. Please don’t leave me here, fishwives, take me with you.

Look, the point is that the British girl thinks she can change Adam Driver, and she’s wrong. They’re going to have to fight. Oh look, they’re fighting. Elsewhere, among the good guys, there’s also some kind of mutiny situation? Where the renegade pilot guy from before starts bossing around an actress I recognize with sort of an asymmetrical purple haircut? I don’t really appreciate his tone but I can tell we’re supposed to side with him. I wonder if I could rock an asymmetrical curly purple haircut, and then I remember I tried that and lose an additional 20 minutes thinking about how awful growing out that haircut was. This line of thought proves so upsetting I fall asleep again.

Yoda’s here! I’m glad I woke up for Yoda. I’ve mainly seen him in Pepsi commercials so it’s nice to see him in his appropriate context.

I forgot to mention Chewbacca is also around. Is Chewbacca a pet? A main character? I lose an undefined amount of time making this determination before deciding Chewbacca is not a pet.

We’re approaching the end. I can tell because I’ve been told the movie is two and a half hours and that’s about my bladder’s limit and I feel like I’m about to burst. There is definitely some shooting and some additional explosions.

Oh my god there are crystal foxes! My unfailing attention was, I will admit, beginning to flag, but now I am back in this for real. I tug the sleeve of the man actually watching the movie to point out my appreciation for the crystal foxes and my conviction that they are the best part of whatever’s going on here. He gives me a curious and somewhat nonplussed look. Whatever.

We’re back to things exploding. All seems lost, and then it’s not. But things are still kind of unsettled, right? There’s no definitive victory here? Seems like they’re setting things up for another movie? My advice, as a dedicated and informed viewer of the franchise: give those fishpeople light sabers. Please.