I always enjoy these, and Daisy Ridley as Rae is terrific. ( )

I'm very conflicted about this film. On the one hand, I applaud Johnson's clear desire to do something new and different in the Star Wars saga, to build on the oh-so-safe rehash film that Force Awakens was with a film that is unexpected and goes in innovative directions. On the other hand, I feel that if you're taking a big risk like that, you should stick the landing better on the easy stuff.

By easy stuff, I mean nonsense like the pointless B-story on the casino planet that adds nothing to the story and feels very much like someone last minute remembered they had to give some characters something to do. I mean not building your entire film around a passive, super-slow spaceship chase if your other main storyline is an equally passive back and forth between an unwilling mentor and a stubborn mentee, leaving the film cutting back and forth almost entirely without building momentum. I mean making a film entertaining and successful enough, that your ambitious themes and innovations won't all be completely retconned and ignored in the next installment.

I see what Johnson tried to do, and while I understand it might thrill some fans and gall others, to me the direction is less important than the quality of the storytelling getting there. Still, Leia gets to be awesome, and compared to "Rise of Skywalker", it is (as frankly are most films) an absolute masterpiece. And I do appreciate it trying. With a bit more script polishing and perhaps some harsher editing, "Last Jedi" could have been rather good. With a great continuation building upon it, it could also have been retroactively made something quite special. With the giant Disney machinery behind it, it's kind of unforgivable, though, that it got neither. ( )

It's a movie setting up the next one. Rey has found Luke and wants him to teach her; Finn is trying to find a place in the world and Poe is being a hothead. Meanwhile Kylo is having problems with his choices. It's a complicated explosive film with interesting moments and made me jump and gasp more than a few times. A powerful last movie for Carrie Fisher. ( )

I was nervous about going to see this in the theater because, wow, two and a half hours. But my vet told me that my cat was probably on the mend and that I should cut back on force feeding her and see what her food consumption was like, so 1) I wanted to celebrate a little and 2) I needed to get out of the house and stop obsessing about her eating and litter box usage. I even made an event of it and bought myself popcorn and a drink, which I never do.

I still haven't seen Rogue One, and the last time I saw The Force Awakens was when it came out in 2016. I was a little rusty on what had previously happened. For example, I can't for the life of me remember why Finn had all those water (?) things attached to him, although the "leaking" scene was hilarious.

I feel approximately the same about this movie as I did The Force Awakens. Although it made for a nice time at the movie theater and didn't feel nearly as long as I feared it would, I didn't love it the way a lot of Star Wars fans I know did. Again, I seem to like the fandom output more than the original stuff that inspired it.

On the plus side, this didn't feel quite as weighed down by nostalgia as the first movie. On the minus side, it's a very long movie considering how little really happens. The main thing that kept it from feeling so long, I think, was that I enjoyed the characters a bit more this time around. I was nervous about what was going to happen with Rey, I was charmed by Rose, everyone loves Finn, and I worried that Poe was going to manage to get himself kicked out of the Resistance for insubordination. Cranky Luke was kind of fun, and I liked Leia better without Han around (I'm sorry!).

I can't remember how The Force Awakens did in this department, but I definitely noticed that The Last Jedi made an effort to have a significant number of female extras and minor characters. Very nice. And since I love animals, whether they're fictional ones or not, I also enjoyed all the new creatures. My favorites, I think, were the crystal fox things and the Porgs (Ship Porg is best Porg).

I don't plan to buy it or anything, but I'm glad I saw it. Now I need to sit down and watch Rogue One sometime. The main reason I've put that one off is because the few things I read about it made it sound like death and sadness. (Technically The Last Jedi had death and sadness too, but it also had downright goofy bits, like the Porgs and BB-8 literally using its head to fix things, so it balanced out.)

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

Rebels run away from the evil space empire.

Good. I could have done with a lot less Poe-as-Bernie-or-Bust and a lot more Rey and Luke. Meanwhile, Chewie, Phasma and the Porgs are barely in the movie, and R2 only has a tiny cameo. ( )