Mr. Right (2015) – 4th best Star Wars movie – Part III

Mr. Right (2015) is the best Star Wars movie since The Return of the Jedi. It has no spaceships or lightsabers, but it does have a deep dive into the Force, or the Flow, by a Force master dance-killing with Force reflex and teaching how to do it. It also seems to dunk especially on the Disney Star Wards movies, which is curious as it came out before any of them.

The Chosen One

Mr. Right has even an interesting twist on the prophecy of the “Chosen One” that will bring balance to the flow. Kendrick is out of balance, she was never a regular kid, while other kids wanted to be doctors and astronauts, she was a T Rex. She is struggling to live a normal life with her out of phase personality, impulsivity, naiveté, curiosity, she feels “there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” She is out of balance. She needs the Chosen one, Mr. Right, to bring balance to the flow within her, and she does choose him.

Kendrick is not a damsel in distress, she is not smitten by him, for the first 2 minutes of shared screen time she calls him a creep and he has to prove himself date-worthy. It takes another 23 minutes until she trusts him enough to sleep with him. This is an evolving love story where the two get together at the 40 minutes mark and then evolve the relationship for another hour of great dialogue and gunfights. This is her story, she chooses him, making him the Chosen One, Mr. Right, to bring balance to the flow within her (by teaching her to catch knives and be herself, not through sex, that was not a euphemism). And just to bring the point home the movie opens and closes with the song My Type by SAINT MOTEL. It was always about choosing Mr. Right.

The Flow is strong with Mr. Right

The depth of understanding of the force, the unique heroine’s journey, Mr. Right is the best Star Wars movie since the OT (original trilogy):

· The Prequal Trilogy: Mr. Right has no Hayden Christensen being creepy and whiny, Midi-Chlorians, Jar-Jar, CGI farts, CGI poops, cringy racial stereotypes and 19 hours of council meetings. It has superior romance, action-to-exposition ratio, and taxation is not a major plot point. The Darth Maul lightsaber fight is good, well-paced, there’s actual character development, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, it’s better than Sam Rockwell dance-killing mercenaries. However, Anakin Vs Obi-Wan is 8 minutes long, stretched over 23 minutes, between two people who can’t die and don’t talk. A Jedi vs Sith, defensive vs offensive styles, and they fight the same way until the defensive guy slices 3 limbs off the offensive guy. Anakin had 1 metal arm, and Obi-Wan deliberately chopped off the other 3 with surgical accuracy, erasing the ideological difference between the Sith and Jedi. Lightsabers battles are enough to tip the scales, point Mr. Right.

· The Force Awakens: Mr. Right has better characters and humor, it an original story, and it’s plot is not a series “and then by coincidence the Flacon is there, and then Han is there, and Rey speaks Wookie, and Maz has Luke’s saber, and then Finn was a janitor on Star Killer Base and knows the weak spot, etc.” When you rewatch Mr. Right you don’t feel like it tricked you the first time.

· Rogue One: There are two force-sensitives, Chirrut and Darth Vader, and they don’t fight, already a point against Rogue One. The characters are one dimensional so it’s impossible to care about them, making the action hollow with a plot which ending is already known. Mr. Right has better characters making the action meaningful as I care if they survive. Darth Vader’s hallway scene was good but tacked on, not really a part of the movie. It does not count towards its overall value; it works in a vacuum because Darth Vader.

· The Last Jedi: Mr. Right has Action, Plot, Comedy, Acting, Editing, Directing, Pacing, Characters, Plot, Conflict, Resolution, Structure, Scenes, Dialogue, and Visuals than The Last Jedi. It’s not built around an 18 hours space chase the continuously smacks you in the face with an ill-tempered sea-bass, and the director’s head is not weirdly round.

· Solo: Generic space adventure #50,765, now with 17 double-crosses at the final showdown! Watch two hours of characters that can’t die with bad writing! If you still need a reason why Mr. Right is better, it doesn’t have L337, Han and Chewie showring together or Kermit the frog singing French while floating in a vat of piss.

· The Rise of Skywalker: That’s not a movie, Mr. Right is a movie, point Mr. Right.

The bottom line, Mr. Right is the deepest dive into the nature of the force ever put to film and it does it all almost exclusively trough “show, don’t tell”. It is a secret Star Wars movie as much as White House Down is a secret Die Hard and Ghosts of Girlfriend past is a secret batman movie (I’ll explain later). Unlike every movie since the OT, no part of Mr. Right made me want to boil my eyes in chlorin and deepthroat a lightsaber. It’s a great companion piece to the original trilogy with a genre shift, an action RomCom prequel about force-sensitive humans on earth before lightsabers and hyperdrive. Lovers of the OT that adopt this view of the movie will keep it next to the Blu Ray of Return of the Jedi.