The Last Jedi's Villains are the Worst in the Series
I touched upon bad villains briefly when I griped about the My Little Pony movie, but luckily, the latest Star Wars movie gave me an excellent opportunity to revisit it. In fact, The Last Jedi gave us not one but three bad villain characters. What a bargain!
Now that it's been out for two weeks, I can publish this with a clear conscience. If you haven't seen the movie by now, you probably had no intention of seeing it in theaters. In other words, SPOILERS AHEAD.
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Supreme Leader Snoke
Supreme Leader Snoke was set up in The Force Awakens as a mysterious mastermind pulling the strings behind the scenes. His purposefully sparse presence in that film left the audience with questions like, "Who is he?" and, "How is he so powerful?" and the ever-important, "What's wrong with his face?" The promise that all those threads would be unraveled in future films was a good hook for the series.
And then Adam Driver kills him.
There's no big reveal about Snoke's history or motivation. There's no, "I am your father," moment. He doesn't even swing a lightsaber. To be fair, the mystery behind him remains, but the answers matter a whole lot less when he's been bisected. What a waste.
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Captain Phasma
To the ten or so moviegoers who have read the comics related to her, Captain Phasma of the First Order is a fleshed-out character with a rich history. To everyone else, she's that extra shiny stormtrooper that gets thrown in a trash compactor in The Force Awakens.
Gwendoline Christie gets about the same amount of screen time in The Last Jedi as in the previous film, and she spends the last few seconds of it getting unceremoniously killed by Finn. Granted, all we saw was Phasma plummeting into the fiery innards of a heavily damaged ship. People come back from that, right?
What's especially frustrating about this character is that she's supposed to be a peerless warrior. In the Captain Phasma comics, she's a ruthless badass who mercilessly kills her targets and even murders her own troops to cover up her failure.
But in the films, her only purpose is to be Finn's nemesis. In fact, she shows an unreasonable amount of hatred for John Boyega. When Finn defeats her, we're not cheering because the good guy triumphed over a particularly dangerous bad guy. We're just happy that Finn stuck it to his former supervisor at his old work place, which is a fantasy most of us can relate to.
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General Hux
Aside from Matt the radar technician, General Armitage Hux has the most on-screen time out of everyone else on Team Dark Side. Because of this, he actually feels more like a character than a plot device. He shows his ruthless ambition when he almost assassinates Kylo Ren after his fight with Rey, and he's positively seething with disgust at having to serve under Ren during the attack on the Resistance's final holdout on the (fittingly) salt-coated planet of Crait.
Problem is, he sucks at his job. But somehow not enough to get him killed.
The film opens with Hux falling for Poe Dameron's prank call, ultimately leading to the loss of a First Order Dreadnought. More poor tactical decisions followed after that, including the one that led to the most boring space chase in film history. Why not just hyperspace a few ships ahead of the Resistance convoy and cut them off?
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Other than Kylo Ren, the First Order is full of inept, useless villains that we're somehow expected to take seriously. It's hard to feel like anything is at stake when most of the antagonists are either throwaway characters or comic relief. It feels even worse when the good guys lose to them.
If I wanted to see two opposing teams make poor plays against each other, I'd be watching college football.
Now that it's been out for two weeks, I can publish this with a clear conscience. If you haven't seen the movie by now, you probably had no intention of seeing it in theaters. In other words, SPOILERS AHEAD.
------
Supreme Leader Snoke
 |
| He's not even on the poster. |
And then Adam Driver kills him.
There's no big reveal about Snoke's history or motivation. There's no, "I am your father," moment. He doesn't even swing a lightsaber. To be fair, the mystery behind him remains, but the answers matter a whole lot less when he's been bisected. What a waste.
------
Captain Phasma
To the ten or so moviegoers who have read the comics related to her, Captain Phasma of the First Order is a fleshed-out character with a rich history. To everyone else, she's that extra shiny stormtrooper that gets thrown in a trash compactor in The Force Awakens.
Gwendoline Christie gets about the same amount of screen time in The Last Jedi as in the previous film, and she spends the last few seconds of it getting unceremoniously killed by Finn. Granted, all we saw was Phasma plummeting into the fiery innards of a heavily damaged ship. People come back from that, right?
 |
| Let's get a famous and attractive actress for the role and completely cover her face. |
What's especially frustrating about this character is that she's supposed to be a peerless warrior. In the Captain Phasma comics, she's a ruthless badass who mercilessly kills her targets and even murders her own troops to cover up her failure.
But in the films, her only purpose is to be Finn's nemesis. In fact, she shows an unreasonable amount of hatred for John Boyega. When Finn defeats her, we're not cheering because the good guy triumphed over a particularly dangerous bad guy. We're just happy that Finn stuck it to his former supervisor at his old work place, which is a fantasy most of us can relate to.
------
General Hux
Aside from Matt the radar technician, General Armitage Hux has the most on-screen time out of everyone else on Team Dark Side. Because of this, he actually feels more like a character than a plot device. He shows his ruthless ambition when he almost assassinates Kylo Ren after his fight with Rey, and he's positively seething with disgust at having to serve under Ren during the attack on the Resistance's final holdout on the (fittingly) salt-coated planet of Crait.
 |
| From Nazi stand-in to comic relief. |
Problem is, he sucks at his job. But somehow not enough to get him killed.
The film opens with Hux falling for Poe Dameron's prank call, ultimately leading to the loss of a First Order Dreadnought. More poor tactical decisions followed after that, including the one that led to the most boring space chase in film history. Why not just hyperspace a few ships ahead of the Resistance convoy and cut them off?
------
Other than Kylo Ren, the First Order is full of inept, useless villains that we're somehow expected to take seriously. It's hard to feel like anything is at stake when most of the antagonists are either throwaway characters or comic relief. It feels even worse when the good guys lose to them.
If I wanted to see two opposing teams make poor plays against each other, I'd be watching college football.
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