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Three Mistakes in The Last Jedi [Spoilers]

John E. Price
5 min readDec 16, 2017

The Last Jedi is fantastic. It’s a brilliant course correction for the franchise that ensures it a viable future that is less likely to become boring, repetitive, and stale. But it’s not perfect. Here are the three biggest mistakes Rian Johnson made with the story, “in my opinion.”

Ah, Skywalker, missed you I have.

a) Canto Bight was awful. Thematically, the Canto Bight scenes are very important — perhaps some of the most important to realize the thematic tie of generational continuance and the re-sparking of rebellion. But in execution, it comes off as a completely unrelated side mission that unnecessarily distracts from the main Resistance plot. On top of that, it was all so contrived and ridiculous, with no dramatic tension. The fleet is already in this ridiculously undramatic race at sublight speed (which is only cinematically saved by Poe’s mutiny), but then Finn and Rose have enough time to run a whole side-mission to a different star system, including enough time to get locked up and break out of prison and trash a casino. Ok? I get the themes involved, and the war profiteers connection. But it could have been handled a lot better by streamlining the events and focusing a bit more — or expanding the scenes and making the movie another half-hour longer.

Then there’s Benicio del Toro. I love Benicio, he’s an amazing actor who has done an amazing job in some of my favorite…

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John E. Price
John E. Price

Written by John E. Price

Academic and Trekkie. I talk about the politics of culture, review nerd stuff, and golf a lot. Co-host: @podmeandering, #TopFive, @folkwise13

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