The last Jedi

This review contains spoilers but I feel that it is safe to write a review since most of you have seen The Last Jedi by now. A lot has been made of the divergence between the Rotten Tomatoes rating of The Last Jedi by reviewers (91%) and by the audience (50%). The audience rating makes no sense based on other ratings and, of course, on the US box office which is $539 million so far. I think Rotten Tomatoes is being trolled by people who object to the power of their reviews and also maybe by people who are upset because this Star Wars isn't a simple remake of previous movies. To me, the fact that the writers and director of The Last Jedi are letting the story and the characters evolve makes the movie much better. Anyway, most of the cast from The Force Awakens are back, minus Han, plus Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo, and Benicio Del Toro as a mysterious, well, Benicio-Del-Toro-type.

The Last Jedi picks up at the moment that The Force Awakens ends, with Rey holding out Luke's lightsaber, hoping he will take it back. What happens next is the beginning of unhappiness for some Skywalker fans including possibly Mark Hamill himself. What we see is a bitter, old Luke Skywalker, 30 years after Return of the Jedi and, more recently, after his disastrous effort to train a new generation of Jedi including Ben Solo aka Kylo Ren. To me, this seems right and proper, and Luke training Rey is a nice juxtaposition to when Yoda trained Luke long ago.

Meanwhile, as usual, the Rebellion is in danger of being snuffed out forever. The Leia-Holdo-Po triangle is very well done as we say farewell to the General/Princess. She will be missed. I just hope they let Chewie live forever! The weakest part of the movie is the Casino-raid subplot. I know we need Finn and Rose to fall in love, but that section is a distraction from the main plot lines even though Del Toro is a joy as always.

There were definitely some things I didn't expect, like Leia still being alive at the end and Leader Snoke not. It will be interesting to see how they deal with Leia in Episode 9 since they have said they will not use CGI. I'm not too choked up at losing Snoke. He was a bore. And the one scene with no sound in Space was a shock. I love that some theatres made an announcement that this was not a technical problem.

The biggest disappointment is the too brief 2 minutes of skyping with Maz. One can only hope she will be back with a bigger role in Episode 9. And how is it possible that Po didn't meet Rey before? Finn continues to drive me crazy. What would he do without Rey and/or Rose to save his bacon?

All in all, I found The Last Jedi to be very satisfying. I am enjoying the leadership of the rebellion by a bunch of strong, capable women, Leia, Maz, Holdo, Rey, and Rose. When will the bad guys realize they need to recruit some evil women?