Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

Let's make this quick: SW VIII is better than SW VII - SW VIII is not better than SW II, III, IV, V, VI. Yes, better than I - but worse than II, well... that's my ranking, now some reasons for this...

First of all on the plus side, we have clearly a better shaped story compared to the previous episode, despite all the critics claiming that there are too many confusing twists. I honestly start having doubts either about the average IQ of the critic community in the States or the amount of movies they've watched. Probably in your first seen movie you'll have plenty of twists... don't know, that was loooong ago - here I've seen one and that was it (no spoilers), the rest was predictable. To be fair, there's actually one supposed twist (well... light spoiler) about some change in the main villain that I was hoping not too happen, but it was there... Which brings me to the first minus left from the previous movie - I stick to my opinion that Adam Driver is a bad choice for the main villain, and moreover the character is poorly built. We can evaluate all the major villains of Star Wars: Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Snoke and even the lower ranked ones: Count Dooku, Jabba, even Boba Fett. There's a certain credibility in all these that a spoiled brat with a sword who smashes his fists into the walls when he gets angry doesn't have. The way Anakin Skywalker = Darth Vader was built in episodes I-III up to giving in to the Dark Side is way beyond what we have here. And the so much criticized wooden acting of Hayden Christensen was actually much more credible in respect to the "interior struggle" than the forced grimaces served now. Well.. Let's stop this here. What else...

We have lots of cliche, but you can expect that so let's give it a pass. The screenwriting is ok overall. What's bad is the editing, actually terrible for a movie at this budget. Example I: I understand that you don't need all the details, but we have at least one scene where you feel the need for something intermediate to figure out how the present characters got there. Example II: Carrie Fisher moved into a different dimension this year, and I suppose that some of the scenes were edited afterwards with/without a digitized Leia - that wouldn't be a problem, if you couldn't see at least once an overlapping of two characters in different shots (but well... maybe it's harder in 3D to take into account the look angle of an actor). Anyway... I could nag also about the title of the movie :) but I'd rather end this on the positive side. There is something that I think it's above what I've seen in the other Star Wars, and that's the role of Mark Hamill who never impressed me much as an actor (not that he's bad or something, but let's be fair... his career is mostly formed of voice-overs and less live). I was surprised once before in "Sushi Girl", but I thought that's an exception. The second one was here. Probably the script contributed to it, getting us to a main swordfight to remember (especially the scene just before). But enough spoilers ;) ...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 ( just to be a bit above Episode VII :P )