The Last Jedi is ambitious. There's adventure, several arcs, and meta themes. It critiques power fantasies, martyrdom, and harboring the past. Still, the script is overstuffed. There's missing setup, rushed internal conflicts, confused messages, and unearned payoff. Its crowded threads create a convoluted, contrived, and contradictory plot. The acting offers layers, intensity, physicality, growth, vulnerability, and motivation. There's clumsy humor, complex characters, social commentary, spotty romance, shaky world-building, incomplete resolution, consequences, detours, fresh ideas, and heart. Rather than pander, The Last Jedi challenges its origins, but its quantity muddles its quality.
The Last Jedi has scale, spectacle, and clashing tones. The imagery adds framing, lighting, color, depth, and angles. Its music balances moods with old and new motifs. The production design sometimes heightens metaphors and sometimes feels awkward. Its cast is deep with exceptional talent, fame, fit, and diversity. The effects supply puppets, animatronics, prosthetics, stunts, makeup, and uncanny CGI. Its sound uses iconography, silence, smash cuts, risers, intimacy, symbolism, distortions, and split cuts. The editing offers cross cuts, action, inserts, wipes, bloated structure, and clunky pacing. Overall, The Last Jedi generally succeeds but comes across messy in many places.
Writing: 6/10
Direction: 7/10
Cinematography: 8/10
Acting: 8/10
Editing: 6/10
Sound: 10/10
Score/Soundtrack: 8/10
Production Design: 8/10
Casting: 10/10
Effects: 9/10
Overall Score: 8.0/10
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