Star Wars: My Definitive Ranking of Every Film

Well, The Rise of Skywalker is finally out, and with it comes some modicum of finality. The Star Wars saga has come to an end (for the third time), giving us four decades’ worth of lightsaber clashes, speeder chases, groundbreaking special effects, and bad feelings about this. We’ve had three eras (the originals, the prequels, and the sequels, with a few standalone films thrown in there). So it’s time to rank them, starting from the worst.

(Note that this list does not include the Ewok made-for-TV movies or the dreaded Holiday Special, just the feature films released in theaters. Other than The Mandalorian, which is here in sort of an honorary capacity because it’s as good as most of the films, the list does not include TV shows. That’s why you’ll see The Clone Wars movie on here, but not the actual show the movie was meant to introduce.)

All of these, plus the stand-alone films. All poster images here are owned by Lucasfilm.

This shouldn’t have to be said, but this list is totally subjective, and even my list changes over time. Even if you disagree with my reasoning, I hope you can respect the consideration that went into it. Feel free to comment with your own ranking; there’s no wrong order.

Let’s start from the bottom and work up to the top…

12. ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

Every Star Wars film has its weaknesses. For AOTC, those weaknesses are more numerous than the faceless CGI clone troopers that fight faceless CGI battle droids in the film’s final act. Or maybe it’s just a few major weaknesses that overwhelm the film. The major problem with AOTC is that the entire film—and by extension, Anakin Skywalker’s entire arc—hangs on the strength of his love story with Padmé Amidala. And nothing in Star Wars, not even Jar Jar Binks, has ever been more groan-inducing that Anakin Skywalker’s clumsy attempts to woo Padmé (except maybe her inexplicable attraction to the psychotic murderer who won’t stop telling her how much he hates sand).

Like the rest of the prequels, AOTC was written by George Lucas rather than a dedicated screenwriter, and you can tell. The dialogue throughout feels like it emerged from a freshman screenwriting class. The plot is convoluted: some random Jedi named Sifo-Dyas (who goes unexplained until an episode of The Clone Wars much later) had something to do with hiring a secret clone army; meanwhile, the Sith Lord Tyrannus (Count Dooku), hired a bounty hunter named Jango Fett as a genetic template, and C-3PO gets his head swapped with a battle droid. No Star Wars movie is high cinema (with one possible and controversial exception), but after AOTC, anything is an improvement.

11. THE CLONE WARS (2008)

You probably forgot about this one, didn’t you? It should never have been a movie. This film actually began life as several distinct episodes of the then-upcoming The Clone Wars TV show that were stitched together into a movie. So while the actual TV show that followed actually turned out to be pretty good (and remains well-beloved these days by the fans), the movie itself suffers from a serious identity crisis. Is it a movie? Is it a long pilot for TV show? Is it something in between? Nobody quite knows.

10. THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

TPM suffers from many of the same problems as AOTC, though its lack of a terrible romantic subplot elevates it above its immediate sequel. I won’t say anything about Jar Jar Binks that hasn’t already been said, except I can appreciate what George Lucas was trying to do in trying to inject some childlike levity into the film, and I apologize on behalf of all the fans for the toxic response to the character. (I was just as bad as anyone.)

The film has a few redeeming qualities: the Podrace, despite its overly-CGI’d cartoon characters, is a really fun sequence; Liam Neeson gives a standout performance as Qui-Gon Jinn (one of the many prequel actors who do their very best with the stilted lines given to them); and we got to meet Darth Maul and hear “Duel of the Fates” (still one of John Williams’s greatest tracks). Unfortunately, the film is still too much of a mixed bag to rank higher on this list.

9. REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

This is the best of the prequels, though that’s not saying much. John Williams’s score is some of his best and most haunting, and the action rarely lets up. The Order 66 montage, where the clone troopers turn on their Jedi commanders across the galaxy, is one of the franchise’s most arresting scenes. The final battle on the lava planet Mustafar is thrilling, though it frequently feels over the top. A few key performances carry the film, most notably Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine. And yet Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side (the process on which the entire plot hangs) feels a bit too sudden and the dialogue is still too stilted for me to truly love this film.

8. THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019)

I can’t figure out where to put this movie. There are parts that I really like, and parts that didn’t sit right with me. (I imagine that’s how the non-toxic The Last Jedi critics sometimes feel about that movie, which is totally fair.) I can’t figure out if it goes above or below The Force Awakens. For now TFA is one rank higher because it, for all its lack of originality, is a much cleaner, less rushed film. Maybe this one will rise, like its titular bloodline, over time. But the thing that bothered me the most was simply how TROS played it too safe, working too hard to string together a plot from a checklist of fan service pulled from the Internet’s loudest The Last Jedi haters. It’s like JJ Abrams let Reddit write the screenplay for him. (See my original review here.)

TLJ showed us the importance of leaving tired Star Wars clichés behind: we were never going to have another family lineage reveal as powerful as the “I am your father” from The Empire Strikes Back, so why continually try to imitate it? Even Abrams knew that no reveal will ever be as shocking as that one, but he tried anyway, resulting in a reveal that feels as inevitable as it is narratively weak. TROS decided that tired clichés are the way to appease the haters, making Rey the heir to yet another dynastic bloodline rather than letting her be special in her own right. Why couldn’t the Force just choose her because of her individual character rather than her lineage? I did enjoy a lot of the film, though its unwillingness to take narrative risks—and its desperation to pander to the masses—ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth. We’ll see how well it ages for me. Maybe in a year or so it’ll be higher.

7. THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

This is a good film. It’s slick, thrilling, visually striking, and full of fun characters. Rey’s introduction, several minutes without a word of dialogue, is excellent. Her accompanying musical theme is one of the franchise’s best. The chemistry between Poe and Finn is instant and engaging. In a universe where A New Hope had never come out, TFA even would be a great film. But in the universe we live in, it doesn’t contribute enough of its own to the Star Wars mythos to rank any higher on my list.

6. A NEW HOPE (1977)

What can I say about the original Star Wars film that hasn’t been said? This is the film that captured a generation and never let go. Later movies, starting with the superior-in-every-way The Empire Strikes Back, improved upon its formula, but perhaps in some sense, you can never beat the original. You can certainly never beat certain scenes. We will never be able to top the moment Luke Skywalker stares off into the sunset or replicate the climactic trench run.

5. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018)

Solo’s biggest weakness is its need to explain how every detail of the Han Solo legend came to be, apparently over the course of one crazy weekend. So it never adds anything essential to the overall saga. Taken on its own, however, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a space Western with a killer soundtrack, great action scenes, fun characters, and a lot of great little moments, like Lando dictating his memoirs. The Kessel Run sequence remains of my favorites; it’s one of those great scenes that draws enough nostalgia to “feel” like Star Wars while blazing new territory.

4. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)

This movie starts out a bit rocky and takes a while to find a cohesive narrative. Jyn Erso is never a particularly well-drawn character, and her sudden shift from apathetic criminal to true believer is never quite earned. Luckily, she’s surrounded by a cast of characters who are far more interesting than she is. If the movie had spent the first act building up those characters a bit more rather than taking us through a convoluted tour through Rebel and Imperial politics, it might be a perfect movie. But when the movie does find its footing, it’s some of the best that Star Wars has to offer. What I loved about this movie—aside from the third act, which is the best battle scene in any Star Wars film—is the film’s willingness to kill off all of its main characters. Sometimes narrative risks pay off. (TROS could learn a thing or two from Rogue One on that.)

3. THE LAST JEDI (2017)

Bear with me for a minute, please. The most polarizing Star Wars film is also the one that requires the most critical thought to enjoy—and holds the most reward for those willing to check thirty years’ worth of “here’s how I think a Star Wars movie should go” at the door. (No wonder the critics almost universally loved it; they’re not encumbered by loyalty to obscure lore—or the need for Luke Skywalker to continue to serve as a vehicle for wish fulfillment.) Some parts of the Internet like dismiss TLJ as “garbage” and “trash,” but those who deride it in such terms would do well to give it a more thoughtful watch—or at least explore a wider vocabulary. Sure, it’s not perfect. Even I don’t love the Canto Bight storyline, though if you pay attention it becomes clear that the arc is all about making Finn, previously lukewarm about his commitment to the Resistance, finally choose a side.

But so much of it is brilliant that I give the weaker parts a pass. For example, Luke’s arc, derided by haters as inconsistent with his original trilogy portrayal, is one of the most interesting arcs in the series. Those haters make the mistake of oversimplifying the hero’s journey, assuming that Luke’s growth as a young man leaves nowhere to go but up. That sounds pretty boring to me. Instead, TLJ reduces a hero to a flawed but relatable human being, giving him a redemption arc worthy of a Jedi Master—dying to hold off the entire First Order while upholding the time-honored Jedi ideal that, in the oft-ignored words of Ben Kenobi, “there are alternatives to fighting.” (Read more about my thoughts on TLJ here, here, and here.)

2.5: THE MANDALORIAN (2019)

This isn’t a movie, so according to the rules of this list it doesn’t get a number of its own. But if it were, it would be #3 here on my ranking. How great was that finale? I love that show. Music, action, visuals, characters—it captures what drew people to Star Wars in the first place. And Baby Yoda.

2. RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)

My complicated feelings toward Ewoks notwithstanding, ROTJ is a great film. The first act starts out as a slow burn, but the Sarlacc battle is one of my favorite action scenes from the original trilogy. The second act explores the dynamics between the main characters, and the third act is nearly perfect (if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief regarding the possibility of a bunch of teddy bears taking down a superior military force). After one of the series’s most emotionally charged lightsaber battles, Luke Skywalker resists the call of the dark side and realizes what his father couldn’t: that fighting isn’t the Jedi way—followed by Darth Vader’s sacrifice for his son. (Of course, once you resist temptation once, that doesn’t mean the temptation goes away for the rest of your life, making TLJ a necessary sequel to Luke’s ROTJ arc.)

1. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

This will always be the best Star Wars. The music is superb, debuting one of the most iconic leitmotifs in film score history: the Imperial March. Luke, previously little more than a whiny farm boy/audience surrogate/vessel for adolescent wish fulfillment, has to face failure for the first time. The action is better, the story is darker, the characters more compelling. The scene where Yoda lifts the X-wing out of the swamp is about far more than a frog-person using telekinesis on a spaceship; it’s about faith. The Han/Leia romance will always be the best romance in the series. The “I am your father” reveal will never be outdone. This is the film that takes A New Hope’s winning formula and runs with it, twists it, and delivers an end product that improves upon the original in a film that will probably never be topped in Star Wars canon.

'The Rise of Skywalker': The Only Review You Need to Read

SPOILER-FREE SECTION

Two years ago came The Last Jedi, an iconoclastic wedge of a movie that split the fandom violently in half. Some, like me, praised it for the way it upended tired Star Wars tropes—like the its suggestion that you don’t have to be from some famous space wizard family to be special, to name just one example. Anyone, from a desert scavenger to a humble broom boy, can have a spark of greatness in them.

Others didn’t like it as much. They felt cheated that it didn’t immediately answer questions raised by The Force Awakens. They had lots of other issues as well—some legitimate and some… less so. I’ve written at length about how I consider much of TLJ’s criticism to be unfounded, but you can read about that here and here, if you really want. (It should be noted that the majority of critics, people paid to think critically about movies without being beholden to obscure lore or personal head-canon, agree with me.) However, I won’t discuss that here, except where it pertains to the new movie.

And that brings us to The Rise of Skywalker. It’s How The Last Jedi Should Have Ended: The Movie, created in a clear attempt to win back the fans who felt alienated by TLJ—for better and for worse. If the franchise were a cheating spouse, TROS would be the extravagant gift with a note begging for you to forgive them. (They’ll even sleep on the couch.)

First, let me make it clear that I did enjoy TROS. I can appreciate a good movie and still be conscious of its faults. There was a lot to like, even a few parts I loved. John Williams is at the top of his game (and even gets a well-deserved cameo!). Finn, Rey, and Poe finally get to be together, and their group dynamic is a lot of fun. The movie moves along at a breakneck pace, so you’re never bored. (Or at least, I wasn’t.) Both Rey and Kylo Ren’s arcs are well done and conclude in logical places (though Rey’s arc does diminish her TLJ arc, where she learned to “let the past die” and look forward). There are a few scenes that were perfectly executed—but those include heavy spoilers, so I’ll discuss them below. The action was great, and the visuals, particularly in the finale locales, were haunting.

I simply felt that the movie’s desperation to walk back the so-called “damage” done by TLJ was a bit transparent, even cowardly—it’s almost like JJ Abrams and company made a list of the loudest TLJ complaints and did everything short of declaring the last movie non-canon to check each box. There’s no need to pander, Disney. When you try to please everyone, you risk making a compromised product.

Well, let’s dive into spoilers, shall we?

SPOILERS AFTER THE IMAGE

So you didn’t like the way Luke carelessly tossed aside his lightsaber in TLJ? Don’t worry, he catches it this time (as a Force ghost, no less) and reminds Rey that a Jedi’s weapon is to be treated with respect. Angry that Kylo Ren smashed his helmet as a symbolic rejection of the past? It’s all right; he has it repaired right off the bat. Still mad that Snoke was killed off without a laboriously explained backstory? Take a deep breath; TROS gives you the Cliff’s Notes version. You hated Rose for interfering with Finn’s fruitless self-sacrifice at the Battle of Crait? Fear not, this time she stands dutifully by and lets him go down with the ship. (She’s also mostly sidelined, just to be safe.) Bugged that Admiral Holdo’s lightspeed-ramming maneuver “broke” the established laws of space combat? Good news—they make a point to explain that it won’t work again.

And of course, were you frustrated that Kylo Ren revealed that Rey’s parents were nobodies?

Well, the glass is half full for you, because actually they chose to be nobodies to protect her, and she was actually the descendant of a famous space wizard family after all. She’s the granddaughter of Palpatine (presumably, Palpatine had a kid before he got all crinkly).

I was irritated by that, I’ll be honest. I really like the idea that you don’t need to be a Skywalker or a Kenobi or a Palpatine or whatever. That’s something that annoyed me about the old Expanded Universe (now Legends), the pre-Disney books and comics where Luke, Leia, and Han always seemed to be the ones who had to save the galaxy again.

However, Rey’s choice at the end to be Skywalker rather than a Palpatine felt like a compromise between those who feel like I do and those who want her to be someone famous. She’s still from a famous space wizard family—but at least she gets to choose which one.

I’m all right with that. If we have to appease the people who really needed her to be related someone (ANYONE!), I’m glad that, to paraphrase a famous non-space wizard, “it is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our [heritage].”

STRAY SPOILERY THOUGHTS

• I thought Kylo Ren’s arc was very well handled—especially the scene where his memory of Han Solo appears to him, mimicking the scene where Kylo killed him, except with different results.

• My wife and I laughed when he strode toward Rey, soaking wet like an emo Mr. Darcy, though.

• The part where Luke lifted the X-wing was pure fan service, but it got me. I may have teared up a little. (However, I know for a fact that the door of Luke’s hut in TLJ was made from a wing from said X-wing, but I guess we’re going to ignore that.)

• The scene where all the reinforcements show up when all hope is lost was a lot of fun, but I think I would have liked it more if I hadn’t seen it done a little better in Endgame earlier this year. And perhaps if the trailers hadn’t spoiled that for us already.

• Hux died as he lived: the butt of jokes.

• So Palpatine survived by…mysterious Sith alchemy? And the Death Star survived somewhat intact by… You know what? I’m not going to get caught up in that. It’s space magic.

• Speaking of space magic, I can hear the self-appointed guardians of Star Wars lore getting mad at the “hyperspace skipping” scene, but who says hyperspace technology hasn’t evolved? Same with Force ghosts. Who said that those who have gone beyond haven’t figured out new ways to interact with the physical world (like Luke grabbing his saber and Yoda lighting a tree on fire in the last one)?

• Anybody have a full list of all the Jedi whose voices were heard encouraging Rey? I did like that part.

• The Knights of Ren looked like pretty bad dudes, but Kylo Ren took them out pretty quickly. That part where Rey Force-teleported her saber to Kylo, though? That was cool.

• Leia’s death confused me a little bit. I guess she projected herself across the galaxy in some form to help Kylo, and either the effort of doing it or the shock of Kylo being stabbed killed her? I suppose the filmmakers would have liked to make it more clear, but I respect that they had to work with the footage they had and didn’t want to CGI more Leia again. (Other than the flashback to Leia’s training, which was fine.)

• I also wanted Threepio’s sacrifice to have more impact. Getting his memories back at the end was a bit too easy.

• Chewie got a medal! Finally.

• That same-sex kiss between two background characters at the end isn’t going to make anyone happy. LGBTQ advocates will declare it a half measure, while others… well, the conservative-looking people next to me in the theater actually let out audible cries of disgust. You can’t have it both ways, Disney. You can’t please everyone.

So that’s the end of the Skywalker Saga, then. The Disney era has had its flaws—but so did the originals, no matter how thick the nostalgia-covered lens with which we view them. And at least they’re not the prequels. It’s been a fun ride, bumps and all.

And besides—no matter how we feel about this movie, we still have Baby Yoda. And what a blessing that is.

PS: Totally random, but if regardless of how you feel about Rian Johnson, director of TLJ, you should see his latest movie Knives Out. Some people didn’t like his style—subversion of tropes—for Star Wars, but that style makes for a really entertaining murder mystery. Just putting that out there.

The Last Jedi: Looking Back

I found this old post that I never published because I was tired of beating a dead tauntaun, but here goes. Originally written December 15, 2018.

Well, it’s been a year since The Last Jedi split the fandom more violently than Admiral Holdo crashing through the Supremacy. I still love the movie, and those who didn’t are still just as angry. So I’m going to sit down with a hypothetical dissenter (who will supply many of the arguments I’ve heard parroted over the last year) and I’ll do my best to debunk their arguments with a year’s worth of reflection.

Let’s get one thing clear. There’s a difference in those who hated TLJ. There are lots of reasonable, totally-not-racist-or-sexist fans for whom the movie just didn’t land. And there are the nutjobs. It would be doing the reasonable dissenters a disservice to lump them with the idiots who sent Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, and Kelly Marie Tran death threats. However, the arguments I’m about to face will come from both contingents of TLJ detractors.

So, let’s get started.

DETRACTOR: You’re an apologist! Or worse, a shill!

I’ve stopped caring if you agree with me, but please realize that art is subjective. It’s difficult for some to wrap their minds around the forbidden notion that an intelligent person can like TLJ, but it can be done.

DETRACTOR: It disrespected the franchise!

Definitively an opinion. If you were hoping for a slavish buffet of fan service or a dutiful bullet-point list of answers to your questions, then sure, maybe.

DETRACTOR: It was so full of plot holes and lazy writing!

Please tell me about plot holes, Mr. Random-Internet-Guy-Who-Thought-Batman-v.-Superman-was-a-“Modern-Masterpiece.” A plot development that wasn’t fully explained is not necessarily a plot hole or lazy writing. And a character action you didn’t agree with isn’t necessarily poor characterization. Keep that in mind when we talk about Luke in a couple paragraphs.

DETRACTOR: Leia flying in space was stupid.

It was a Force pull. No different than Luke Force pulling his lightsaber in the cave on Hoth, except she was pulling on a much larger object—the Raddus—so it makes sense that she would move toward it instead of vice versa.

DETRACTOR: Okay, sure, but it looked stupid.

It could have been filmed in another way, yes. I’ll give you that. But that’s it—there’s precedent for people surviving in space in Star Wars—watch Rebels, for instance.

DETRACTOR: The hyperspace ramming scene didn’t make sense in the context of Star Wars. Why not just ram a few X-Wings into the Death Star next time?

It’s clearly a one-in-a-million maneuver. It’s about timing—jump to hyperspace too soon and you miss your target; jump to hyperspace too late and you crash into your target at sublight speed. Simple enough.

DETRACTOR: TLJ ruined Luke Skywalker. Luke defeated Vader and then spared his life. He’s a great warrior. Why would he refuse to fight?

Well, no. He could have defeated Vader, but he realized how he was straying close to the dark side and stopped. In TLJ’s climax, Luke’s fight—or lack of one—is the truest expression of Jedi ideals. Don’t believe me? To quote Yoda: “To Obi-Wan you listen!”

Remember when Obi-Wan said, “There are alternatives to fighting”? Or when Yoda himself said, “Wars not make one great” and “A Jedi uses the Force for defense, never for attack”? Or Mace Windu: “We’re keepers of the peace, not soldiers.”

When the Jedi gave into the their martial urges and became warriors, leading soldiers in the Clone Wars, they lost sight of who they were, and it led to their destruction.

DETRACTOR: Luke still died for nothing, though.

If by “for nothing” you mean “by holding off the entire First Order so the Resistance could escape—all while maintaining a fiendishly difficult Force trick and upholding the Jedi’s ancient pacifist spirit”—then sure, I guess.

DETRACTOR: So why would he regress, then? Why would he become a jaded, nephew-murdering creep?

You think that once a weakness is conquered, it stays conquered forever, never rearing its ugly head again? It’s refreshing to see a hero struggling with something real—the resurgence of weaknesses of youth, which he must conquer anew. I’m sorry if Luke Skywalker is no longer a pristine vessel for vicarious wish-fulfillment, but his trajectory in TLJ feels real to me. I’ll take a flawed hero over an overpowered bada** any day.

Character development doesn’t have to always be in an upward direction. Don’t confuse it with leveling up—you can develop a character without just making him more and more powerful.

And let’s not forget that he didn‘t kill Ben—he only thought about it for the briefest of moments. Who among us hasn’t nurtured ill-advised impulses from deep within our darker natures—Luke just had the misfortune of being caught while doing it at the worst moment.

DETRACTOR: So he refused to kill an evil mass murderer like Darth Vader, but he could kill an unarmed child?

First, Ben was an adult in his 20s, not a child. Second, Luke saw in Ben a repeat of all the horrors committed by Darth Vader and the Emperor, destroying all he’d ever built. And for just an instant, he was tempted to stop it before it started. It’s like the old question: would you kill baby Hitler, if you knew what he’d grow up to be?

DETRACTOR: Okay, but you have to admit the alien breastmilk scene was unnecessary.

Maybe. It served the dual role of trying to scare Rey off while showing that Luke had returned to his roots—remember the blue milk from Tatooine?

DETRACTOR: And Rey? She didn’t get any character development. She’s just a Mary Sue.

It was a said day for conscientious discourse the day the Internet discovered the term “Mary Sue”—and a happy day for angry misogynists who could now use it as a catch-all for any female character they didn’t like. As I said earlier, don’t confuse leveling up with character development. Her development is all about learning to let go of the past (her need to return to Jakku, to know who her parents were, to belong) and face the future. I don’t really need to see her Jedi training—we’ve seen that before. So she’s a prodigy who has a lot of innate skills without having to go through some kind of Rocky montage to learn them. So what? It’s not like she blew up the Death Star on her first try, then had like a week tops of training with Yoda, and somehow emerged as a powerful Jedi, right?

DETRACTOR: What about the jokes? Those were stupid.

They didn’t all land, it’s true. Mostly I’m talking about visual gags with BB-8, whom the filmmmakers turned into a ninja. Those were unnecessary.

DETRACTOR: And the Canto Bight storyline?

It had some pacing and tone issues, but overall it was a necessary part of Finn’s arc. Remember, he was never 100% committed to the resistance after The Force Awakens. We assume he should be a Rebel by the end of the movie, because that’s how Han Solo was presented, but when TLJ begins, he’s mostly just interested in finding Rey safe. Then he sets off on this adventure with Rose and DJ as the angel and devil on his shoulder, respectively—one telling him to dedicate himself to a cause, and the other telling him not to join. Sure, their attempt to save the Resistance went awry, but that storyline brought Finn’s arc to a good place.

“You were always scum,” sneers Phasma.

“Rebel scum,” replies Finn. That’s the moment when he finally chooses a side.

DETRACTOR: Okay, but what about the bombs in space/slow-speed space chase? Rian Johnson clearly has no idea how space works.

So, sound in space, explosions in space, starfighters making sharp turns despite having nothing but forward thrusters, spaceship engines being on the whole time despite Newton’s Third Law, and ubiquitous artificial gravity don’t bother you—but you’re drawing the line at bombs in space?

DETRACTOR: If the movie really were good, you wouldn’t have to put so much thought into defending it.

So you’re saying you’d rather have your cinematic experience free of thinking? People like you are the reason they made five Transformers movies, five Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and eleventy billion Fast & Furious movies.

DETRACTOR: ... [mutters incoherently about SJWs ruining Star Wars]

TLJ brought Star Wars where it needed to be: out of the tropes it’s been mired in for years and into the heart of a new generation of fans. I just wish the old generation would calm down about something that was—and always has been—made for the young and young at heart.

DETRACTOR: Fire Kathleen Kennedy! Star Wars is dead! Ruin Johnson destroyed my childhood!

Sigh.

Read my previous posts on the topic here:

“The Last Jedi: The Only Review You Need to Read”

“In Further Defense of the Last Jedi”

Solo: A Spoiler-Free Review

What a time to be a Star Wars fan, right? 

Or at least, it should be. We’re getting a new movie every year, but it’s making us a little entitled. Which leads me to a quick point I need to make to give some context to my review. If you'd rather just read the review, skip down to the big header down below that says "REVIEW."

Solo arrives in theaters in a rather tumultuous time in Star Wars fandom. There’s a chunk of the fans who watched The Last Jedi and immediately burned with an irrational hatred so fierce that, instead of moving on with their lives, have made it their life goal to sabotage Disney’s efforts and, by extension, the moviegoing experiences of the rest of the fans. Declaring that Disney ruined their childhoods (as though a childhood is such a fragile thing that a single movie can ruin it), they see themselves as a ragtag force of rebels trying to restore the glorious age of pre-Disney Star Wars filmmaking, or something. (The fact that the era they’re pining for included Jar Jar Binks, Darth Vader screaming “Nooooooo!” and the entirety of Attack of the Clones should tell you a thing or two.) 

In the weeks before Solo was even out, they managed to review-bomb the movie, saturating it with one-star reviews full of hatred that would make Emperor Palpatine proud. As I’m writing this, the audience score continues to tumble. The funny thing is, half the negative reviews are from people who clearly haven’t even seen the movie are are just fulfilling their self-appointed mission to be cinematic wet blankets. 

That’s not to say the movie is perfect. It definitely has its flaws. But it's important to note that I'm no Disney hater, and any criticisms I have still come a place of love. 

Okay, now the review.

REVIEW (NO SPOILERS)

Solo is fun. It’s a low-stakes, smaller-scale, safe movie. Where The Last Jedi boldly deconstructed the weary tropes that had made themselves part of the saga (and earned the ire of a lot of previously mentioned fans), Solo plays it very safe. It’s the Ant-Man of Star Wars movies. I didn’t walk away with my mind blown, but I sat in my seat for over two hours, relishing the glimpses of locales I’d never seen on screen, watching Han Solo and Chewie get into trouble, and just enjoying a diverting detour into the galaxy I love. I’ll probably see it again in theaters. 

A lot of people have wondered, “Who asked for this movie?” Do we really need a Han Solo origin story? The answer is…well, no. If you’re hungering for a checklist of the origins of each piece of the Han Solo myth, you’re in luck. Want to know how he got that blaster? Check. How he got the name "Solo"? Check. How the Falcon went from bachelor pad/cape museum to hunk of junk? Check. He even shoots first at one crucial moment.

We don’t really need to know how our favorite smuggler became the person he is when we meet him in A New Hope, but that doesn’t mean the ride isn’t enjoyable. Solo is a treat for hardcore fans, who will recognize the little references scattered here and there. There’s a lot to reward those who’ve read the books and the comics, enough to make the sometimes predictable journey worth it. Hey, they mentioned Aurra Sing! Hey, I know that outfit Beckett is wearing! Hey, is that the Imperial March playing in an in-universe Imperial recruiting ad, except in a heroic major key? Hey, is that the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark sitting in Dryden Vos’s collection? Is that a Sith holocron there, too? It’s a treasure trove of fan service, but as we learned when Darth Vader cut through a hallway full of Rebels in Rogue One, fan service done right can be a lot of fun. 

And then there’s the Kessel Run sequence, which is just a blast. I had a stupid grin across my face the entire time. It felt like Star Wars in its most pure form—thrills, humor, striking visuals, and the right dash of familiar John Williams themes. 

As far as other things I enjoyed, the new droid L3 gets of lot of really funny lines. (And one or two slightly disturbing ones.) The action scenes are very well staged. Donald Glover is spot-on as Lando (maybe a little too much, like he's doing an uncanny Billy Dee Williams impersonation). Even Alden Ehrenreich, who’s gotten a lot of flack after the trailers for not being a younger clone of Harrison Ford, channels enough of Ford’s roguish charm to convince you that he’s a younger, more naive version of the character we love.

Solo is a fun, sometimes forgettable, often thrilling tribute to the fans. It’s not likely to be anyone’s favorite movie in the saga, but it’s not going to ruin anyone’s childhood, either. 
 

PS—OKAY, HERE'S A SPOILER OR TWO

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So, Darth Maul, huh? Those who haven't been following the books and TV shows in the last few years might be surprised to see Maul alive and attached to legs. In the Clone Wars TV show, he managed to recover from an acute case of getting chopped in half, attached himself to a set of mechanical legs, and eventually took over a good chunk of the galaxy's crime syndicates. His former master, Darth Sidious, sought him and out and defeated him. Since then (this movie takes place 10 years or so before A New Hope), he's been lurking in the shadows in preparation for his time on the TV show Rebels, where his story picks up again. But Maul's appearance aside, the thing I found most surprising was that they're setting up a sequel. 

So that's something. 

A Leap from the Lion's Head

Originally posted June 29, 2015.

At the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana (played by Harrison Ford) and his father (played by Sean Connery) have reached the ancient hiding place of the Holy Grail just in time to be captured by the Nazis. In order to motivate Indy to retrieve the Grail (which bestows mystical healing powers to those who drink of it), the head Nazi baddie shoots Indy’s father. Realizing he has no choice but to brave the three devices of lethal cunning that bar the way to the Grail, Indiana Jones sets out into the booby-trapped temple. He gets through the first two challenges and reaches the third. It appears to be an impassable chasm, yawning menacingly in Indy’s path. 

“Impossible,” he mutters to himself. “Nobody can jump this.” 

He recalls the cryptic instructions his father gave him for passing this obstacle: Only with a leap from the lion’s head (which is carved near the brink where he stands) can he prove his worth.  

Indiana gazes uncertainly at the gap between himself and the far end of the chasm. Outside of the temple, his wounded father gasps with what may well be his dying breath, “You must believe, boy. You must believe."

Indy can shy away from the challenge, but that will cost him dearly. Only with the Grail’s power can he save his father, and only by taking a literal leap of faith can he advance.

How many of us have been at this same spot? How many of us have faced our own bottomless chasms, too terrified of failure to move forward? I know I certainly have. For years, I was poised on the edge of that abyss, doubting that God would sustain me. Specifically, I showed a distinct lack of faith that my Heavenly Father would one day allow me to find my eternal companion.

This perhaps isn’t the time and place to fully expound upon the length and breadth of my insecurities, but let’s just say that I’ve had my share of doubts that I’d ever find my mate. At the beginning, when the first of my friends started to get married, it started as a niggling little fear in the back of my mind, a whispered uncertainty that I would ever be as happy as the smiling couples whom I watched join their lives together in blissful matrimony. Later, it became a dull buzz of fear, an ambient clamor I couldn’t quite block out as more and more friends left me behind in their unhindered quests to get married. Eventually it amplified into a full-blown roar of panic in my late twenties when I realized I was among the last of any of my groups of friends to find The One. 

The doubts came. Through His authorized servants, God made the promise that I would find the right person someday, and yet I couldn't believe. God meant for some people to be happy, I reasoned, but not everyone. Some people would have the chance to meet their special someone, but that was a treat reserved only for the good-looking or the lucky. And I believed myself to be neither of those things. I longed to meet Her, The One, that special girl who would make all of my doubts flee. I know what it is to feel like half a song, a lonely melody that waiting in vain for a harmony to complete it. I know what it is to desperately miss someone I’ve never met, like being homesick for a place I’ve never been. For years, I sank into a morass of despair, watching my options shrink and my prospects dry up. My friends all got married and had kids. All the girls I’d liked and pursued found guys way better looking than me and got busy churning out children. 

I lingered for years on the edge of my own personal chasm. As the voices of people I loved quietly reassured me, “You must believe, boy,” I ignored them, unable to move forward. I saw only the depth of the gulf before me. 

And so I stood there where Indiana Jones stood, facing the same choice that lay before him: show a little faith, or never move forward.

Indiana, naturally, makes the right choice. With the admonition of his dying father ringing in his ears, Indy steps forward into nothingness . . . 

. . . and alights on a hidden bridge, perfectly sculpted and fashioned to blend in with the rock of the chasm. John Williams' epic score swells, and Indiana, his faith rewarded, walks across the bridge to the final chamber where the Holy Grail awaits.

There’s still another test ahead of him—he has to choose the real Grail from amid a host of impostors—but he has made substantial progress, putting his faith into action and seeing the rewards thereof. (Does he find the Grail and save his father? If you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil the ending, but I find your lack of pop culture disturbing.)

As for me, there wasn’t ever a certain moment when everything changed, when suddenly the light flooded my mind and thrust the right path into sharp relief. It came slowly over the last year, when at some point I reached my darkest extremity and realized there was no way to go but up. Somewhere along the path, I realized that if I didn’t step blindly forward and take the leap from the lion’s head, if I never showed my faith by cheerfully going on with my life, I would simply never go forward. That was the beginning, the seed of faith from which sprang the kernel of hope.

From there came the moments when my faith was rewarded, when I stepped forward into nothingness and found myself supported by unseen forces. They were small things, like the day when I felt an unnatural surge of happiness for no reason, or the day when I came home frustrated and then found myself supported by kind, loving friends.  

That’s not to say I never have a bad day or a moment of weakness when I wonder why God is taking His sweet time leading me to my wife. I’d like to end this post by telling of the miraculous way in which I found my wife after showing my faith, the way in which I finally drank from my personal Holy Grail. But of course that’s not the end. No, there’s still more ahead for me, more trials, just like there was for Indiana Jones. But unlike before, I really do believe that this will end well. 

Yes, I still have my bad days, those times when I flirt idly with despair, but I can pull myself out because I trust God to lead me in the right direction. If you asked me for that assurance a year ago, I couldn’t have given it to you. But now I can say with a hard-won certainty that there’s someone for me, because I have received that promise from my Heavenly Father. 

I may not meet her soon, but most of the time I trust that God does have someone wonderful in store for me. I’m okay with a little waiting, because I know she is out there, probably navigating her own treacherous obstacle course in her quest to find me. And if she doesn’t mind gratuitous Indiana Jones references, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.

And so on those hard days when I wonder what a guy like me has to do to get a girl, I remember the timeless advice from the lips of Sean Connery:

You must believe, boy.

Note from three years later: I met her. :)

The Greatest Movie Scenes of All Time

I like movies. One of my favorite feelings is the one you get when you’re waiting for a hotly anticipated movie and suddenly the pre-show ads stop, the lights go dim, and the previews start. And then, a few minutes later, the previews give way to the opening titles of the movie you've been waiting so long to see. You know what I mean? It's a great feeling. 

And so of course I've compiled a list of my favorite movie scenes. There's nothing particularly inspirational about this blog post, unless you’re brought to tears by majestic dinosaurs or poetry quoted by British secret agents, which is actually a definite possibility. Feel free to express your assent or dissent in the comments.

You'll notice that most of these movies come from similar genres, with the exception of The King's Speech, which resonated on a personal level in a way that most biopics and Best Picture contenders fail to do. I won't apologize for the content of this list; while it's true that I like a lot of expensive, loud blockbusters, you won't find any Transformers or similar cinematic drivel on the list. I have some standards, after all. 

As a final explanatory note, none of these scenes would reach any kind of cinematic height without the contribution of the music. I’m a huge film score buff, and I’m always conscious of the background music to any scene. As we appreciate these awesome scenes, let's not forget the contribution of the composer. 

And now, the list . . .

"Welcome to Jurassic Park” (Jurassic Park)

I enjoyed Jurassic World, but the first movie has something all of its sequels lack: a sense of unashamed wonder at the pure majesty of the creatures of Jurassic Park. Marvel with Dr. Grant and Dr. Sadler as they gaze for the first time upon the biological spectacle wrought by scientists. I’m convinced that if I ever am permitted to see actual dinosaurs—through some miracle of God or science, perhaps—I will fall to my knees in awe and weep softly. And the Jurassic Park theme will invariably start playing in my head. 

Tennyson (Skyfall)

From a franchise whose high points usually come from cool gadgets and hot women, this scene is surprisingly poignant. M deftly describes the necessity of MI6’s role in the changing world of espionage, her eloquent speech juxtaposed against the looming approach of the bad guy. As she starts quoting Tennyson, Bond appears, the music seething with tension. Maybe I’m just a sucker for cool voiceover scenes, but this gets me every time. 

Hotel fight (Inception)

Occasionally, certain movie scenes make me laugh aloud in the theater out of the sheer awesomeness of what I’m witnessing. This was one of those scenes the first time I watched it. It’s a little lacking in emotional heft when compared to the other entries on this list, but it makes up for it in terms of visual inventiveness and overall whoa factor. 

King George’s address (The King’s Speech)

As anyone who’s spent a few minutes in my company can tell you, I have a stutter. Because of this, I felt the fear of King George and felt my excitement rising at the slow building of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as the king gained momentum in his rousing address. I felt his tension, his agony, and finally his relief at a speech well given. 

"The Hanging Tree” (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I)

James Newton Howard, the composer, deserves most of the credit for endowing this scene with an emotional punch that seizes your heartstrings and doesn’t let go until the haunting music is over. Somehow we’re made to care deeply about the faceless extras flinging themselves to their deaths.

The fall of Sauron (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

I gotta be honest; it was tough picking a single scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I made a rule for this post where I could only do one scene per film series. Runners-up for the best scene of the trilogy include the bridge of Khazad-dum sequence, Sam’s “There’s good in this world” speech, and about half the scenes in Return of the King. To anyone who’s ever struggled under the weight of a seemingly insurmountable challenge, this scene is more than just a bunch of crumbling CGI buildings. At long last, after all their toils and travails, Frodo and his companions have succeeded in their quest, and you can feel the overwhelming relief, joy, and exhaustion felt by the Fellowship. And then there’s the moment of realization when Aragorn and those outside the Black Gate realize that Frodo and Sam likely made the ultimate sacrifice. I watched this scene a few days ago while I was bored at work, and I had to stop it because I was actually tearing up and didn’t want my co-workers to think I was a pathetic weirdo with leaky eyeballs. 

The test drive (How to Train Your Dragon) 

The music in this scene soars as high as Toothless the dragon, and that’s a large part of what makes this scene so great. John Powell’s fantastic score proves a worthy complement to the scene’s action. There’s a real sense of danger as both Hiccup and Toothless plummet toward the ground below, but when they pull out of their dive at the last moment and spin headlong through a labyrinth of rock, you can’t help but cheer. 

Yoda lifts the X-Wing out of the swamp, The Empire Strikes Back

There are a number of scenes in the Star Wars trilogy that vie for the honor of most iconic, and you could make a pretty good case for any of them. But this one resonates because Yoda's timeless wisdom. Luke Skywalker watches incredulously as his downed starfighter is raised telekinetically by the diminutive Jedi Master, he mutters that he doesn't believe what he's witnessed. "That," Yoda intones, "is why you fail."

Final scene, Rogue One

Some of the the scenes above elicit feelings of appreciation for the grandeur of nature or the frailty of life. This last scene evoked feelings of OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWESOME. It's been years since I literally giggled with pure, unadulterated glee in the middle of a movie, but the sight of Darth Vader finally kicking the kind of butt we've been waiting him for to kick for years reduced me into a ten-year-old again. That moment when the red lightsaber cuts through the gloom! The guy trapped on the ceiling! The terror on the Rebels' faces! I have literally watched this scene dozens of times. Pair it with the emotional moments that come before it, and you pretty much have the perfect movie ending. (I say pretty much, because that CGI Princess Leia still weirds me out.)

Opening, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

It's a standard movie trope: A group of space ruffians fight a giant squid monster in the background while a tiny alien tree dances to classic Earth hits in the foreground. Actually, there's nothing about this scene that was expected, which made it so great. There's a surreality to it that comes across as incredibly charming. And how cute is Baby Groot?

My Literary Top Ten

Originally published October 23, 2014.

As a writer, I am indebted to a number of literary influences over the years. These have steered me in the right direction as I embarked on my writing adventures, shaping my formative writing years and giving me something to aspire to. Without further ado, here are the ten books that have had the most impact on me, in no particular order. Sci-fi and fantasy books are well-represented on this list, but there's plenty for everyone:

Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

This is the true, meticulously researched story of Olympian and World War II veteran Louis Zamperini. I marveled as he survived the downing of his bomber in the Pacific Ocean and the ensuing drifting at sea. I cringed at every new abuse his Japanese captors laid upon him. I thought the book was over when Louis finally came home. But I was wrong: Louis’s arc wasn’t complete until he confronted his tormentors years later and offered his forgiveness.

The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

I just don’t trust people who are my age and haven’t read Harry Potter. What other defining aspects of your late childhood and adolescence have you willfully deprived yourself of? Sure, it’s a story of good and evil that’s been told a myriad of times before, but it’s a fascinating world inhabited by charming characters whose struggles, despite their sorcerous surroundings, are grounded in the real world. The magic isn’t confined to wands and wizardry; the real magic is in the way you grow to love Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Professor Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and so many others.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

Sure, it’s a long journey, where sometimes you have to trudge through Tolkien’s cumbersome prose like Frodo and Same slogging through Mordor. But this is definitive fantasy; you can’t like any of the many derivative works—especially the film adaptations, which are some of the greatest movies ever produced by the hands of mortal men—without acknowledging that this is where it all began.

The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson

After I finished reading The Way of Kings, it occurred to me that this is how fantasy is supposed to be. Every fantasy writer should aspire to create a world that simultaneously manages to be this wholly original and yet so compellingly believable. If you’re not enough of a fantasy fan to pick up this hefty tome, just know that Brandon Sanderson knows how to do it right.

The Redwall series, Brian Jacques

My middle school writing was defined by these stories of daring heroism and dastardly villainy. Every story I wrote for years mimicked the Redwall books. Though they start getting formulaic after a while, the series offers a grand window for any young reader into the world of fantasy.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

When I read this in third grade, it was the most ambitious reading project I’d ever undertaken. But Jules Verne’s classic instilled in me a love of science fiction and fantasy—a love of worlds created by asking what if? and answering the question the only way we know how.

The Star Wars trilogy, Alan Dean Foster, Donald F. Glut, and James Kahn

George Lucas wrote the stories, but he let others handle the novelizations of the movies. You may not even know these books exist, but they do. It’s one thing to hear the clash of lightsabers in a theater, but it’s another thing entirely to hear your favorite moments described with a fresh new voice.

The Book of Mormon

Including this one a list of literary influences might seem like a cop-out, similar to including Jesus on your list of people you’d most like to meet in history. Of course, you say, rolling your eyes. The Book of Mormon hasn’t offered much in the way of writing inspiration, but it has offered me insight into my place in the eternal scheme of things, a gift no other book on this list can begin to match.

Collected works, Dave Barry

It seems a jarring change of tone to follow the Book of Mormon with an author who prides himself on his repertoire of booger jokes, but I owe a lot of laughter to Dave Barry. Many of my early attempts at humor were attempts to imitate Barry’s jokes, as well.

A Walk in the Woods and other books, Bill Bryson

I discovered Bill Bryson later than I did Dave Barry, which was probably for the best. Where Barry is as subtle as a weasel forced down your pants, Bryson’s brand of humor is more understated, woven skillfully alongside astute cultural observations.

Honorable Mentions:

Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

The High King, Lloyd Alexander

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

The Shannara series, Terry Brooks

Heir to the Empire and sequels, Timothy Zahn

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

'The Last Jedi': The Only Review You Need to Read

Originally published December 15, 2017.

Alert: Incoming spoilers. Like, your cruisers can't repel spoilers of this magnitude. Shields up!

I walked out of The Last Jedi thinking, This movie is going to be polarizing. I came home and checked Twitter, which only confirmed that suspicion. There were plenty of people saying Last was the best Star Wars movie they’d ever seen, but there were also plenty of people expressing their frustration or disappointment.

Which am I?

I loved it. Mostly.

A few flaws aside, director Rian Johnson has boldly gone where no Star Wars has gone before, to use a line that I totally made up myself for this occasion and obviously didn't steal from a less exciting sci-fi franchise. Does it falter a little along the way? Yes. Is the ride still thrilling? Of course.

So let’s talk about how the movie works best: as a brilliant subversion of The Empire Strikes Back. Remember when The Force Awakens came out and the primary criticism was that it followed the story beats of A New Hope a bit too closely? Last plays with the expectations that it would do the same with Empire. You go in thinking it’s going to go a certain way, but as a rain-sodden Luke says halfway through the movie, “This is not going to go the way you think.”

Prime example: the scene with Kylo Ren and Rey in Snoke’s throne chamber after that awesome part where they dispatched Snoke’s elite guards. Kylo reaches out to Rey, quickly establishing the parallels between this scene and the famous “I am your father” scene from Empire.

“Join me,” Kylo says. He beckons to Rey, offering to tell her the truth of her parentage. What’s he about to say? Maybe “I am your brother”? “I am your cousin”? After years of speculating on Rey’s parentage, we’re about to get a dramatic revelation.

Her parents were nobodies.

Wait, what?

I can see why some people would be underwhelmed, or feel the revelation is anticlimactic if you spent two years really wanting her to be the child of Han and Leia or Luke or Obi-Wan, but it’s brilliant, because it subverts your expectations and throws away the cliché that you have to be related to someone to be significant. Star Wars invented—or at least popularized—that cliché in 1980, but these days you can’t do it anymore without it feeling totally rote. So The Last Jedi dispensed with it, and it did so brilliantly.

But wait! Star Wars is all about the Skywalker family, so Rey should be a Skywalker. Well, maybe. But the franchise is also about the Skywalker legacy. The end of the movie established that the future is all about the legend of the Luke Skywalker and the legacy he left behind. Rey may not be a Skywalker by blood, but she’s the heir to the Jedi and everything inherent in the Skywalker name. I’m sure some people will still harbor a desperate need for Rey to be related to somebody—anybody!—but that’s a theme that The Last Jedi conveys brilliantly: that you don’t need to be from some magical dynastic space lineage to make a difference.

That’s not the end of the subversion of expectations. Rey ventures into a mysterious nexus of dark side energy, just like Luke did in the tree-cave on Dagobah in Empire, and we think she'll learn some mystic truth about her parentage. But guess what—instead she receives the seeds of a harder truth: that her path lies forward, not backward, and she needs to let go of her need for answers about her past (much like many fans, I imagine).

It goes on from there. The good guys don’t blow up the giant laser at the end. Vice Admiral Holdo, initially presented as a bureaucratic impediment to hotshot Poe Dameron, goes out with the audience rooting for her. (Man, that part was cool.) Benicio Del Toro’s shifty character shows he's just in it for the money and leaves, just like Han Solo, but he doesn’t have a change or heart and come back just in time to save the day. There was so much subversion going on that I was kinda expecting the Resistance to break out the tow cables and grappling hooks at the end to try to take down the First Order walkers, only to have that fail miserably.

I understand why some people might not like the departure from the norm. There are certain conventions that come with a Star Wars movie, and you might be understandably upset if the movie doesn’t deliver those things. (Remember the freakout when Rogue One eschewed the opening crawl?) The gray area between retreading old steps and striking out into uncomfortably new territory is not very wide, but I’d rather err on the side of innovation.

And killing off Snoke? Bold and exciting. He was always less compelling of a character than Kylo Ren to me (basically, he's just an Emperor wannabe in a fabulous gold bathrobe), so killing him to further Kylo’s storyline works for me. I’m sure people will be disappointed that the movie didn’t reveal that he was Darth Plagueis in disguise (this was always a terrible theory and you're silly if you believed it) or Grand Admiral Thrawn after a really bad plastic surgery job or just a bunch of porgs stacked up in a trenchcoat. But answers are often not as interesting as the mystery itself, and I’m sure the canon will reveal his backstory someday. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing more people’s ridiculous Snoke theories.

The plot wasn’t the only area where The Last Jedi tried something new. It also introduced storytelling elements you don’t see in the other Star Wars films: off-camera narration (with Rey in the cave), Rashflashbacks (the same scene in Luke’s old Jedi temple told three times, each slightly differently in a Rashomon style), slow- and fast-motion shots, and an epilogue not featuring any of the main characters.

People were annoyed that The Force Awakens played it safe, giving us a well-crafted story that we’d nevertheless seen before. Now The Last Jedi shies away from franchise conventions, and some people still aren’t happy. There’s just no pleasing everyone.

There were other things I really liked as well. Several scenes had me cheering in my seat. Kylo Ren kills Snoke via telekinetic bisection, then teams up with Rey to fight Snoke’s guards! Vice Admiral Holdo jumps a whole freaking cruiser through a Star Destroyer! Luke drops the mic when it’s revealed he’s been on the island all along! The movie gave us a lot of visually striking imagery—like the last bomber disappearing into the fiery conflagration of the First Order dreadnaught, the dramatic crimson flares of the Resistance craft as they streak toward the attacking walkers, and Luke's final sunset. The opening battle was thrilling and funny (despite the fact that everyone involved was kinda incompetent, I'll admit), and John Williams’ score delivered. (Everyone, please pray that 85-year-old Williams survives to score the last movie in the trilogy, at least.)

That’s not to say the movie was perfect. It has its share of flaws. Some of them may have been the director’s fault, and some of them are probably the results of the iron will and rapacious greed of the evil Empire Disney. They are, in no particular order:

• The biggest issue, for me: the movie was the victim of a bit of unfortunate Disneyfication, the omnipotent studio's consistent attempts to pander to kids, no matter what the property. Because of this, the movie's tone was inconsistent at times, with a few too many prequel-era goofy CGI aliens providing comic relief. Disney probably told the director he’d end up with a cinderblock tied around his neck and be left to drown in Splash Mountain unless he threw in something for the kiddos.

• BB-8’s exaggerated competence is a little ridiculous at times, as though Disney said, “Hey, can you make BB-8 a freakin’ ninja so we can sell more BB-8 toys?”

• And porgs? Disney, stop trying to merchandising happen. I'd like my porgs in smaller doses, please.

• The Canto Bight detour was simultaneously too rushed to flesh out the themes it was trying to explore and too long to mesh well with the rest of the movie, though the space horse chase on Canto Bight felt very much like something from the peak Spielberg years, suffused with childlike wonder and giddy joy. So it had its moments.

• The whole Finn/Rose storyline ends up being mostly inconsequential. (Cynical right-wingers will even probably dismiss Rose’s inclusion as a forced concession to political correctness, which is unfortunate. She’s a nice character, if a little uninteresting so far.)

• Phasma dies doing what she loved: being an underutilized character.

• Interesting, having Benicio Del Toro’s character stutter. I thought that was pretty cool, till he betrayed his new friends. Not cool. #NotAllStutterers

• There’s no scene where Darth Vader slices through a hallway full of terrified Rebels. Every movie should have at least one, because HOLY CRAP THAT WAS COOL. Remember that?

That seems like a lot, but I'm mostly being really nitpicky. So it has its flaws, and I'd cut off a hand (maybe not mine) for the chance to get in front of a Disney conference room and tell the execs to give the fans what we really want, not what's going to sell the most toys. But in the end, when Luke Skywalker arrived, reunited with his sister to the touching strains of "Luke and Leia" from the Return of the Jedi soundtrack, fought the First Order like a boss, and then become one with the Force while the ghostly twin suns of Tatooine welcomed the hero to his rest at last, the good outweighed the bad. Luke's Hero's Journey, begun while gazing into the twin sunset 40 years ago, came full circle.

That's Star Wars for me—a franchise I fell in love with as a good so hard that I've put up with even through its rough patches. If I could stick with it during the prequel era, the movies where Anakin Skywalker used his hatred of sand as a pickup line and went from a good guy to a child-killer psycho in about ten minutes, I can certainly put up with and even continue to enjoy this new era, warts and all.

Read my further defense of the movie here.