The Last Jedi's Use of Narration

[Winter]

Okay, right off the bat let me just say that out of all my grips with TLJ this is one is pretty much just a personal nitpick but one thing that bugs me in TLJ is how it uses narration. TLJ has three of four narration bits where Luke, Rey and Kylo are narrating over a scene, Luke during the first "Flashback" about how Kylo turned to the dark side, then later when we get the same scene only from Kylo's POV and Rey's visit to the Dark Side cave.

Now I'm not against narration as a general rule as many films make use of the trope with the best examples I can think of being The Shawshank Redemption and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Thing of it is Narration is suppose to be used in one of two ways, to provide exposition in a way that doesn't feel unnatural and to give in sight as to what the character is thinking/feeling in this moment of the story.

Neither of which applies to the Narration bits used in TLJ as the characters are really just describing what is happening as we see it. They do talk about their thoughts/feelings on occasion but for the most part is's just them talking about what they're seeing as we see it with them and, for me, it's really detracting.

I don't know if the narration was something added after the scenes were done because test audience were confused by the scenes or if the filmmakers had them there from the start because they liked the idea but I just didn't like their inclusion. I honestly think that these moments would have worked a lot better had the characters just kept quite as the actors are more then capable of caring these scenes through just their facial acting we don't need to hear Luke say that he felt ashamed of himself when he considered killing his nephew Mark Hamill's expression says it all.

To help show what I'm talking about here is a scene from another Rian Johnson film, Looper.


youtu.be/Zo2J9YdXaw0

Funny thing of it is, Looper also includes the main character, Joe, narrating parts of the movie, providing exposition or in some cases his thoughts/feelings on the situation he finds himself in. Which is why TLJ's narration is so frustrating as the Writer/Director of the film Does know how to use Narration and when to keep things quite and just let the visuals tell the story.