Stars Wars - The Last Jedi

Star wars, since it's inception, has always been bedevilled by both bad acting and terrible dialogue and this latest episode is no exception to the rule. How do they do it? From Mark Hamil, through to Hayden Christensen and now Daisy Ridley, Star Wars has unearthed some truly woeful, wooden actors and placed them in pivotal lead roles.  Couple that with dialogue that continues to mine the walls of banality and you understand why Star Wars has been mired in mediocrity for such a long time. This instalment, unlike the excellent Rogue One, sadly does not break from this tradition.

We pick up the action with Rey finding Luke Skywalker in his self imposed exile on a remote island and attempting to persuade him to teach her the force. In the meantime, the rebel alliance is being hunted down to extinction by Kylo Ren and General Hux. The latter of which, played by Domhnall Gleeson, is the most egregious example of both awful acting and graceless dialogue, turning his character into nothing more than a grating pantomime act and contributing significantly to the amateurish feel of the film. Combine that with the terrible CGI on Darth Snoke, who looks exactly like a fake CGI character and Daisy Ridley's obvious attempts at acting and the illusion of the film world is ruined by explicitly reminding you at every turn that you are in fact watching a film.

That being said it is not all bad, Dontari Poe's acting has somehow improved considerably and throughout there is the occasional fantastic scene (ie the ships flying across the salt plain on the poster above), but there are just too many flaws to make this anything other than a middle of the pack sci-fi, which is a shame as the Star Wars universe deserves better. The first Star Wars films got away with these obvious flaws by creating a fascinating universe that the world had never been seen before. The technology was exciting the story was a rip-roaring and the characters engaging, all of which meant you didn't look to hard at the cracks.

Now with the originality and freshness removed those cracks are gaping crevices. Star Wars doesn't help matters with its slavish devotion to making the sets and costumes look like the early 80s which just look increasingly absurd, and old fashioned. We are in the age of smartphones yet in the Star Wars universe were interstellar space flight has been mastered, X wings have screens in them that would put look a zx81 to shame? The whole point of Sci-Fi is it is supposed to be futuristic, yet StarWars is stuck in an early 80s time warp

All in all, this is not a terrible film, but nor is it particularly good, it is just another mediocre chapter in an increasingly mediocre sci-fi franchise.