Part Deux: Character Development and Chaos
Outside of Kylo Ren and Thanos, neither The Last Jedi nor Infinity War do much to develop their characters. Now let me get my simple defence of Infinity War out of the way first: It’s the 19th bloody film. You already know who everyone is, you’ve seen them develop for hours by this point, and now it’s time to have an all-out mega-chaotic slugfest. No. Development. Needed.
The Last Jedi, on the other hand, is the second film.
Hold your horses there, James, you just said it was part of a much wider series, and that it should respect the tone of that series. How can it be part of a wider series AND only be the second film?
Why thank you, other me. Well you see, the film is part of a wider series and therefore it should respect the tone of that wider series. However, most of its key characters are only seeing their second film. Therefore, it might be a good idea to develop them a little bit more.
But they did try and develop them by making them funnier, and you just said that it was bad because it wasn’t consistent with the character. Hypocrite!
That’s because simply changing how a character behaves isn’t character development; its character change. If we were given a reason as to why so many characters suddenly decided they wanted to channel their inner Star Lords, then all would be well. But we weren’t. So all isn’t well.
