It was a movie with so much promise. The Force Awakens was OK to good. The characters were strong, and they got a decent story moving with a lot of potential. Then someone came along and made it about their ‘vision.’

The Last Jedi is one of the most overly self-conscious movies of all time, like it’s shouting through a megaphone: “We are going to make our Star Wars movie different to everybody else because we are so clever and non-conformist, and we will have the characters say and even scream very profound things about the lessons we want to teach you simpleton viewers.”

Still, I guess I liked the Luke/Kylo confrontation. I thought it was quite an original take on a duel situation, and it provided a decent ending. But there were a number of other things that bothered me. Here are some of them.

I Have a Bad Feeling…

Nitpick #1: So bad it deserves recognition. The Battle of D’Qar, or should I say, Annihilation of D’Qar, was pretty awful. Awful for the Resistance, awful for the bomber pilots, and most of all, awful for me. So bad, I think an award is due…

Host (The Master Codebreaker): And so, we arrive at the end of our annual Worst Design Awards ceremony. What a wonderful night it has been! However, we have a surprise for you — something very exciting still to do. Since this is the 50th — [interrupted by cheering, loud applause] — since this is the 50th WDAs, we have a very special one-off award to present: The Worst Military Vehicle Design of All Time Award! [Cheering] I’ll now hand over to our special guest presenters, Force ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Reva Sevander!

[Loud applause and cheering]

Obi-Wan: Thank you, everyone. I must say, the competition for this special award was especially fierce.

Reva: Yes it was. We are talking about the most cumbersome, clumsy, downright awful designs for military hardware in the known universe! We narrowed it down to these three final nominees:

Obi-Wan: The Armored Assault Tank — or AAT— for its abysmal contribution during the Battle of Naboo. Its cumbersome, bulbous front end combined with its incredibly slow pace and vulnerable cockpit hatch meant that even the clumsiest, most inept individual ever to grace a battlefield — no, any field — could accidentally destroy it in a series of buffoonish, farcical blunders.

Reva: The All Terrain Scout Transport — AT-ST — for its performance in the Battle of Endor! [Applause] It’s lanky, it’s hella clumsy, and it’s easily taken down by a tribe of overgrown rodents.

Obi-Wan: The MG-100 StarFortress SF-17 — Heavy Resistance Bomber — for its appearance in the Battle of D’Qar! [Applause.] The slowest and most defenceless military vehicle in existence, an exceptional example of the classic sitting duck. Swiss cheese doesn’t even come close — a TIE fighter could literally put so many holes in it that, in the end, it was actually more hole than ship.

Reva: And so…

Obi-Wan: The Worst Military Vehicle Design of All Time Award goes to [Reva opens the envelope]…

[Drum roll]…

Both: The Heavy Resistance Bomber! [Fanfare, thunderous applause]

Nitpick #2: The Cliché of the Amulet. Rose and her sister, whom Poe sent to her death, each have a half of an amulet. As far as originality goes, two characters in a story each having half of the same amulet that they would one day hope to bring together when they meet again, is at about the very bottom of the barrel. On a scale of 1 to anything, 1 being the least possible amount of originality, and any number you want being the most, this would rate at:

9^(-⁹⁹)

(In pure mathematics, this is an unimaginably tiny fraction that represents a zero followed by a decimal point, and then hundreds of millions of zeros. Then a 2.)

Nitpick #3: Ding dong. When you haven’t seen a friend for a long time and you arrive at their new home, how does that encounter normally go? “Nice place! I love the neighbourhood. How long have you been here now?” Something like that?

When Chewbacca and Rey go to see Luke, bearing in mind that Chewie hasn’t seen Luke for a long time and Rey has only been waiting outside Luke’s home while he sulks for about 30 seconds, Chewie smashes Luke’s metal door, not just down, but across his stone hovel so hard that it almost comes out the other side. The front door was about the only feature it had. Fortunately, Luke survives this potentially lethal incident because he happens to be well clear of the blast radius.

Nitpick #4: The thing Leia did. After nine years, I’ve just got past the initial shock of the incident that we shan’t mention explicitly.

Some people like to talk it over, to debate it, to dissect it, to hate it, and even [shudders] to support it. I prefer to put it out of my mind and pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t want to remember it so much that I have suppressed it to the point where I have a complete mental blank from those few moments in my life when I witnessed it, and I never want to think of it again.

A Wild Bantha Chase

Nitpick #5: The Codebreaker — Weeeoooo! The description that Maz gives about where to find the Code Breaker reminded me of something. “You will find him with a red plom bloom on his lapel, rolling on a high-stakes table.”

And then I remembered! For those who’ve seen Kung Pow, it’s a very similar method of finding a person that Ling gives Chosen One so he can find Master Pain, er, Betty: “He spends his time at the top of a waterfall, swinging a chain around.”

If you’ve seen Kung Pow, I think you will understand the problem I have in taking this plot device seriously. If you haven’t, you should watch it. Weeeoooooo!

Nitpick #6: Hey, Mr. DJ. Finn and Rose get stunned and arrested by the cops when they are right on the cusp of reaching the Master Codebreaker. What a shame. We were really longing to see how this foolish character would have joined their idiotic and utterly fruitless escapade.

According to the internet, the Master Codebreaker is introduced by the creators as a character to fit the archetype of a flawless, romanticized Star Wars hero, but is far more like a character from Johnny English.

Anyway, Rose and Finn end up in a county jail cell (for bad parking?!) with another codebreaker (who probably walked on the grass). This person actually had the ability that only Maz and one other person that we’ve ever heard of had. I mean, the ability to hack into presumably the most advanced ships that the First Order possess, with brand new tech for tracking other ships through light speed, must be pretty rare.

Finn and Rose, despite missing out on meeting the Master Codebreaker, out of all the jail cells, in all the police stations, on all the planets and moons in the entire galaxy, are put in the exact same square footage as DJ. Not the cell next door. Not even opposite. The very same one. The first thing they should have done after getting out was to go back to the casino and put all those coins inside BB-8 and that silly amulet on black.

Unlearn What You Have Learned

Nitpick #7: Let it go. After defeating the plastic Power Rangers that were guarding the previously bisected Snoke, Kylo and Rey have a very uncomfortable conversation about letting things go, and leaving things in the past, and letting old things die. In fact, Kylo screams these kinds of sentiments repeatedly. And they destroy Luke’s lightsaber. I think we just about got the point that the writers are trying to make through this subtle form of thematic messaging. But Kylo is clearly portrayed as wrong in this situation, so what are they ordering us to do as fans? Let the past go? Don’t let it go? I don’t care at this point.

Nitpick #8: Ready salted. A rebel soldier wondered what the white stuff was on the ground outside the Rebel base on Hoth, I mean Crait. So he tastes it, spits it out and says to himself: “Salt.” I remember thinking it was a good thing it wasn’t cyanide. While the camera remains on him for a few seconds, we see the actor’s embarrassment at having to deliver this very strange and unnecessary line. I think he did very well not to go as red as the — what we’re told is — crystalline rhodochrosite underneath the sodium chloride.

Is that how this character habitually explores the world around him, like a 6-month-old baby? If I had been the confused-looking soldier (Gareth Edwards) next to him, I’d have said: “Taste the red stuff as well — what’s that?” They would have great fun getting him to taste stuff later after a few beers:

“The brown stuff in the plant pot — what’s that?”

“The green furry stuff growing on this bread — what’s that?”

“The brown crystally stuff coming out of those crystal critters— what’s that?” “Not brown sugar.”

How does this salt appear? How does it fall from the sky? Who actually cares? In reality it’s just there because they wanted to make it look cool. Well, in the words of Master Yoda, “The greatest teacher, failure is.”

A Nitpicker’s Guide to ‘The Last Jedi’ was originally published in The Ugly Monster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.