‘The Last Jedi’ is the Best Star Wars film since ‘Return of the Jedi’.
Gone are the days of the Jedi order, of a stable galactic Republic, of peace. That’s where The Last Jedi starts off; the galaxy is a chaotic mess, and the remnants of the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (played by the late Carrie Fisher), find themselves trying to outrun the powerful and menacing First Order.
It sounds like a setup for the perfect Star Wars film, with plenty of opportunity for action and spectacle, and it is; the stakes are high, but focused. There isn’t a direct galaxy-destroying threat, like a fourth Death Star, but instead the plot sets its sights on the Resistance’s attempts at running, hiding, and recovering. It’s a choice which manages to bring The Last Jedi’s wartime politics into the foreground while keeping it focused and tense, something that The Force Awakens didn’t manage, leaving its political storyline muddled and underexplored.
“It’s a choice which manages to bring The Last Jedi’s wartime politics into the foreground while keeping it focused and tense”
The familiar cast of characters all make a return, with many benefiting from the nearly 3-hour screen-time. Where Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaacs) was a sketch of the archetypical action hero in The Force Awakens, here he is further developed, and things aren’t nearly as black and white. A hotshot pilot who trusts in his ego and skills over the judgement of others, Poe is forced to confront his most destructive tendencies or face serious consequences. It’s a clever deconstruction of the role of machismo in action films, one which puts the audience in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar situation — are their beloved onscreen heroes really as great as they thought?
Over the course of the film, all of the main characters have their core beliefs or instincts challenged in one way or another, and those inner conflicts have very real consequences. With the main three heroes — Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron — split up, they each get their own subplots, though some are admittedly better than others. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in particular benefits from additional backstory. Where his childish, bratty attitude could come off as unconvincing in The Force Awakens, here it’s earned; he is a fully-realised character, if not supervillain, one with layers and complexities. The individual characters’ storylines are done competently, with each character experiencing change and growth, confronting some difficult truths along the way. It’s not high cinema, but The Last Jedi is more introspective and more ambitious than all the films of the prequel trilogy combined.
“Where his childish, bratty attitude could come off as unconvincing in The Force Awakens, here it’s earned; he is a fully-realised character, if not supervillain, one with layers and complexities.”
Moments like these are woven across the film, in the process exploring uncharted territory for the series. At points it feels like a Star Wars film, and at others it feels almost too unfamiliar — a number of jokes which don’t land don’t help even out the tone of the film. The Last Jedi can be funny, but far too often it starts to feel like Guardians of the Galaxy, leaving the film in an odd space — ‘identity crisis’ would be an apt description. By the end of the film, many of what were considered foundational aspects of the Star Wars series are thrown aside, replaced by a more nuanced, more complex, but also more uncertain version of Star Wars.
Star Wars is, at its core, a space opera. That The Last Jedi manages to stick close to its dramatic roots while almost entirely reinventing what it means to be a Star Wars film is a testament to director Rian Johnson; while not a perfect film, The Last Jedi is impressive in its ambition, and is one of the most exciting, thematically rich and complex entries in the beloved series.
