Review of "Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi"
​By C. Randall Nicholson

I wanted to love "The Force Awakens". For nearly a decade prior to 2012 I had resigned myself to the fact that Episodes VII-IX of Star Wars would never exist, and now that they were going to it was the most exciting thing ever. And my crush loved it and I wanted to be on the same page as her. But my feelings were mixed almost from the very beginning when Poe Dameron's jarring quip indicated that this would be more like "Guardians of the Galaxy" than Star Wars. And by the end, when virtually every element of "A New Hope" had been rehashed, they were more mixed than ever. They movie was too different yet too much of the same.

Many people criticized the porgs as an attempt to sell toys. I figure, so what? If Lucasfilm wants to make toys and people want to buy the toys that they make, I don't see a problem. But I was kind of surprised that they didn't actually contribute anything to the plot. The Ewoks were crucial to the plot. The porgs just kind of flapped around and chirped.

BB-8 comes to the rescue a couple times by shooting casino chips at people and piloting a walker. And here I came to realize that he's at least as ridiculous as Jar Jar Binks.

Some fans that were upset about Snoke being killed off so quickly and Rey's parents being revealed (allegedly) as nobodies who sold her for drinking money. I thought these were both great trope-subverting twists. Darth Vader was Luke's father, Han Solo was Kylo's father, so having some famous and important character as Rey's parent would be less than original.