It’s about time we admit that Star Wars: The Last Jedi isn’t a good movie and that saying that isn’t any kind of political statement. The film is riddled with bad script decisions starting with splitting the cast up into three different plots and then having Rey, Finn, Rose and Poe, the heroes of the film, being hilariously incompetent and wrong about almost everything. Poe’s storyline alone is enough to write this off as a poorly executed film.
Now that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is heading to theaters later this month, the cast and major players are all out doing press junkets to promote it, and the one big takeaway from those interviews is that the cast of The Last Jedi didn’t even like The Last Jedi.
We had already heard that Mark Hamill didn’t care for the film, going as far as to say he pretended he was a different character because the film didn’t understand Luke Skywalker, but he’s not alone. Adam Driver forgot the name of the movie once. A New York Times article quotes Daisy Ridley as saying the entire cast was “relieved” that J. J. Abrams was returning for the last Star Wars movie and John Boyega said “Even as a normal person in the audience, I wanted to see where that story was going,” referring to the way Rian Johnson discarded everything from The Force Awakens (which also wasn’t very good) and made a Star Wars film with the central premise of “Star Wars is stupid and you’re a dumb baby if you like it.”
And of course, the exact same people who had been saying that Star Wars fans are toxic and have been attacking actors, specifically marginalized actors, over a movie, set about attacking a marginalized actor over a movie.
I really wish Boyega would stop criticizing THE LAST JEDI in every few interviews. It is less to do with whether you agree with him or even if he makes a valid point, but the unappreciative and immature hubris of voicing those opinions publicly. It's souring the press tour.
— Hodges of Horrors (@metaplexmovies) December 11, 2019
it’s poor form to speak ill publicly about anything you’ve worked on, unless you are the author of the thing.
— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) December 11, 2019
Those aren’t so bad, mild criticism even.
Oh, yeah, see, that’s the stuff people were writing articles about when it was from people who thought the Disney movie was bad.
Last Jedi wasn’t bad tho, I liked it. John Boyega was the worst part of that movie tho.
— LANGO (@Lanyagi) December 12, 2019
And actually, there’s a ton of hate directed at him now that people have intentionally misconstrued some comments he made about ignoring online criticism as being aimed at Kelly Marie Tran because they’re mad he didn’t like a movie.
But this time it’s good people harassing a person of color so it’s praxis.