Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 13 Audacious Moments That Have Divided Fans
Did anyone anticipate Episode VIII polarising audiences this way?
Reader advisory: this article HUGE spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
As soon as the trailer showed Luke Skywalker declaring "this is not going to go the way you think," and Kylo Ren appearing to kill his mother Leia and offer a hand in friendship to Rey, it was apparent that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was setting itself up as a bold, risky episode in the beloved space opera.
However, few anticipated writer-director Rian Johnson's film being quite so bold as it is - or as divisive as it is proving to be.
A look at The Last Jedi's Rotten Tomatoes page (while not the be-all and end-all of the matter) is a fair reflection of the divided reaction: at the time of writing, the film has the approval of 93% of critics, but only 56% of the audience.
While those of us who were blown away by The Last Jedi (this writer very much included) may be struggling to understand the rage and contempt it has attracted in some quarters, it was clearly always going to inspire strong reactions, given how hard it strives to subvert expectation.
There's an irony here. The Force Awakens was quite reasonably criticised for pandering too closely to the structure of the original Star Wars - yet most of the anger The Last Jedi has inspired is down to how far it breaks with convention.
For some, this is exactly what Star Wars needed; for others, it's a case of be careful what you wish for.
13. Poe Leading The Bombers To Their Death
2016's Rogue One went to great lengths to show the real cost of warfare in a way that no Star Wars movie before it had done; and yet, the fact that its events occurred outside of the core series may have lessened its impact somewhat.
The Last Jedi opens on a sequence which strives for a similar effect, and may well be one of the bleakest moments of the series to date.
It starts out like any other Star Wars space battle. Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron continues down his path as this trilogy's equivalent of Han Solo, as he ignores the orders of Carrie Fisher's Leia and stages a cocksure attack on a First Order Dreadnought.
However, what initially seems like a courageous one-man assault is in fact merely Poe setting the stage for a larger attack by a fleet of Resistance bombers - all of whom wind up slaughtered.
The attack may be deemed a succeess in that it results in the Dreadnought's destruction, hence Poe regards it a proud moment - even though it lessens him in the eyes of Leia, who is more concerned with the loss of Resistance lives. This apparent lack of empathy for his dead comrades casts Poe in a different, perhaps less heroic light, after The Force Awakens established him as a good-hearted eternal optimist.
Poe's devil-may-care attitude is shown to have real consequences, demonstrating that the drive to buck authority and follow your gut - a path he continues down in his later conflict with Laura Dern's Vice Admiral Holdo - are not always positive character attributes, even if past Star Wars movies have tended to lionise these qualities.