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The following podcast contains explicit language.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead people.

Silent green is evil.

He's my sister and my daughter.

Rosberg. Rosebud.

What's in the box?

And like that, he's gone.

Hello, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic here with a Slate, spoiler special podcast on Star Wars, The Last Jedi, the exciting new installment in the Star Wars franchise. Is it number seven? Is that correct? Eight. Number eight. Star Wars number eight. I can't keep my numbers straight. So I'm joined here in the Slate studio by Sam Adams, who is Slate's browbeat editor and general culture writer extraordinaire. Hello, Sam. Hello. And by

Forrest Whitman, Slate's culture editor. Hey, Forrest. Hey, Dana. So we have a lot to talk about here.

I feel like we're taking on a heavy burden of history. The mantle, the cloak of Star Wars,

sits heavy around our shoulders. I guess I'll start with you, Sam, because you wrote the review

for this to my endless rage because Forrest and I were shut out of a screening on Monday night that I was supposed to review.

But I got a lot out of your review, and I'm really glad that you reviewed it.

And so I will start with you and ask you just for your quick thumbnail response, were your expectations fulfilled?

In general, would you send people to this movie? Yeah, it was kind of the movie critic equivalent of the chorus girl twisting her ankle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you were Ruby Keeler coming in and saving the show. I've always wanted to be Ruby Keeler, so this works out really well. But you have to marry Al Jolson now. Oh, well, you know, I mean, I knew what I was getting into. I loved it a lot.

I mean, there is, there's a stretch in the middle where I kind of lost track of the plot and was like, wait, where did Luke go again?

But, I mean, it's just, as I wrote in the review, it starts off with this very funny exchange between Poe and Hux. That's almost like a kind of two-minute like stand-up or kind of like sketch comedy routine right at the beginning in the movie. And it's just, you know, sometimes movies present you with a moment where you kind of in or out. And that was just you're either going to go with it at that point or you want. And I just went with it and kind of, you know, fell in love with that. I think it's got a great sense of humor. It has, I think,

more, you know, striking imagery than any of the movies in the series. Some of the, some of the

prequels are pretty striking visually, whatever, their narrative flaws. But I think this is,

like the kind of fight in Snoke's throne room and things like that are just, you know, you don't come out of a Star Wars movie really talking about the images and the kind of, you know, set design and the fight choreography and things.

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