The following article originally appeared in Juniata High School's newspaper The Arrowhead.

Warning: SPOILERS

The Star Wars movies are always greatly anticipated and greatly loved, and The Last Jedi was no exception. It had an amazing soundtrack, amazing actors, and all in all it was a very good movie. However my job here is to write a review so I shall touch on the good and the bad parts of this film. 

The movie again follows the characters of Rey, Finn and some other old and new characters. We meet Luke Skywalker in his “relaxing” retired life, we follow Leia as she leads the resistance, see Poe’s struggle to control his desire to blow stuff up, and follow the charming perspective of the newest character, Rose. The film does a great job of exploring the multiple directions the storyline could take before actually deciding what it will do. There are some scenes that seem like complete replicas of past movies, and many that bring entirely new perspectives to light. The would-be friendship between Kylo Ren and Rey enables the viewers to see that the Jedi are able to be good and evil at the same times. Rey’s attraction to the dark side at the beginning and later her ability to look past it and see the good proves that Jedi are not 100% good as some claimed to be. She learns what Luke told her from the beginning, that Jedi are too proud, and that to create a balance between good and evil she has to not think of herself as above others for her ability to use the force. The character development in this film is really amazing. Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, and even Luke have different things that they realize and learn from throughout the film. 

The only thing I didn’t love about the film was the Rey-Finn, Finn-Rose business. I don’t really see why it was necessary to turn any friendship between Rose and Finn into a romantic relationship, especially when it seemed pretty obvious that Finn had a thing for Rey. I mean he was so preoccupied during the first half of the film that he tried to desert the resistance in order to protect her! Okay, so romance sells, but I didn’t really see Finn and Rose’s relationship becoming anything more than friends until the scene where Rose saves Finn. It seemed to me that it was just la-dat-da their friends, and then KABAM now there is a love triangle. 

Overall this movie was fantastic if you’re Star Wars fan and even if you are not give it a try! The cinematic elements, the visuals and the music, are great. Fun fact, the scene in which the resistance ship goes into light-speed (if you see the movie you’ll know which one I am talking about), is one of the few times in Star Wars history that was scientifically accurate according to smithsonianmag.com.