I have thoughts about The Last Jedi and you have to read them now.

I recently rewatched The Last Jedi for the first time since it came out, which also means it’s the first time I’ve seen it since being subjected to, uh…
7 years? Of the internet having opinions on it. And while I certainly had some issues with it after my first viewing, I simply could not understand the vitriol this movie generated, or just how insanely disproportinate the reaction was to a bunch of extremely minor issues (a lot of which I honestly don’t think are issues at all, but we’ll get there).

Just to preface this, I don’t really think I’m what you’d describe as a major Star Wars fan. I’ve seen most of the movies and enjoy some of them quite a lot, I’ve seen some of the shows and enjoyed them a fair bit less (except for Andor, which is maybe my favorite Star Wars media period now?). That being said, after rewatching Last Jedi I’m starting to wonder if it might actually be my favorite Star Wars movie, so I thought I’d compile some of my thoughts into a post here – I’d call it a review, but like most of what I write it’s more of an unorganized mess of random thoughts that I let spill out onto the page wherever they might fall.

To start, I want to talk about a few of the criticisms that I don’t really think hold up:

• “You can’t drop bombs in space, there’s no gravity!”
  Okay, look. I’m no scientist, but I think people are massively overcomplicating this scene for no good reason. For those who don’t know/don’t remember the scene, right at the start of the movie there’s a sequence where one of the rebel bomber ships tries to attack a First Order ship, using a huge array of bombs with a drop-out panel that, when activated, causes them all to fall out the bottom of the ship.

  

  I have no idea if Star Wars media has ever described how artificial gravity works exactly (who am I kidding it’s Star Wars of course they have), but either way, the ship absolutely does have artificial gravity, since the activation switch falls during this sequence. Once it’s hit, the panels keeping the bombs in place are removed, and gravity takes over, dragging the bombs down and out of the ship’s artificial gravity. Then, because there’s no air or gravity to act on them in the vacuum of space, the bombs will keep moving in that same direction with that same momentum, leading them straight into the enemy ship. The lack of gravity in space isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
  …I really don’t like doing the pedantic science nerd schtick, but sometimes you kinda have to I think.

• “Why did Luke throw the lightsaber away? This movie doesn’t understand what makes Star Wars special!”
  This is maybe a subjective case but I love that they did this, and I think it’s one of the most meaningful moments in Luke’s entire character arc, as well as being a good response to how overly reverent the previous movie was to the lightsaber. So much of Star Wars culture now feels extremely hollow to me, with how people focus way more on specific references than on the actual meaning of all those elements (See also, the way that Disney treats stormtroopers as the defacto mascots of Star Wars, without putting any real thought into who they were modeled after).
  The Force Awakens looks at the saber and asks, “Isn’t this thing so cool and important? It’s an Elegant Weapon from a More Civilized Age™ ¹ , remember?” Last Jedi, on the other hand, asks, “What exactly makes a weapon elegant, and why is a weapon so important to a more civilized age?”

¹ As much as I respect the A More Civilized Age podcast (though I don’t listen very often) I’m afraid I have to curse them for picking an admittedly great name that makes this joke not really play as well. how dare they