Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" Is Even Better Than We Could Have Hoped

The Force Awakens captured the old Star Wars voice. The Last Jedi finds a new one.

(NB: This is a spoiler-free review, unless you consider the film’s basic premise and descriptions of some of the relationships a spoiler. If so, leave this place.)

With the Disney-owned Lucasfilm now pumping out another Star Wars movie each year, we are at serious risk of seeing an iconic screen franchise diminished and demystified.

But that’s a problem for another year, not this one.

In 2017, writer-director Rian Johnson has justified, beyond reproach, the controversial Star Wars revival with the saga’s official eighth episode, The Last Jedi, a swirling and transporting sci-fi spectacular, immersive character drama and uproarious space comedy, all in one.

If its predecessor, J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, captured the classic Star Wars voice, The Last Jedi forges out further and finds a new one. That previous flick was a safe and satisfying re-entry; this one is a takeoff, to plains unknown. And as a middle part to a trilogy, it’s a place-setter, not a placeholder. What I’m saying is: Relax, it’s good. More than that: They’re now making Star Wars films that are potentially better than the original instalments. Well, better than Return of the Jedi, at least.

Johnson’s feature picks up immediately after The Force Awakens, with the rebel army of General Leia (the late, eternally-spunky Carrie Fisher) on the run. The nefarious First Order, led by Supreme Leader Snoke (a mo-capped Andy Serkis) and his underlings Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), follow close behind. The Resistance’s only hope is the mysterious orphan Rey (Daisy Ridley), who has discovered the legend Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) hiding out on a remote island, disillusioned by the Jedi religion and the Force (that mystical energy that exists “between” all things, and which Rey, somewhat fairly, calls the power to make things float). She tries to tempt him back to the Millennium Falcon, to reignite the spark of rebellion in the galaxy. She is surprised to find Luke’s as irascible and stubborn as, oh, say, Mark Hamill on The Last Jedi’s press tour.

(BTW, BB8 returns too, and he’s been increasingly weaponised, as a figure in the narrative and as an actual war machine. He even meets his own evil doppelgänger, letting us know what it sounds like when droids cry.)

There will be comparisons made to The Empire Strikes Back, given the master/apprentice relationship of Luke and Rey, not to mention the climactic showdown on a salt-planet that looks like a slightly more seasonal Hoth. However, The Last Jedi isn’t all doom and gloom. Far from it. This is easily the funniest Star Wars picture to date. And by that, I don’t mean the goofiest; it’s the one that lands the most jokes, plenty of them in Johnson’s distinctive, darkly comic voice. Here, Hux is turned into a snivelling caricature respected, hilariously, by no one, retroactively making Gleeson’s overamped delivery seem like a stroke of comedy genius. Hamill, though still giving a splendid and very moving performance, is cheeky and defiant. And those Porgs—the bird-like creatures roaming Luke’s island getaway—are cheerfully made the butt of many jokes. In one instance, they end up on the barbecue. 

Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along. Ridley—who has grown into her role—and Driver continue their dance from The Force Awakens, their minds tethered in a manner that allows them to speak as if they were in the same room, despite being planets apart. (Another benefit of that nebulous Force.) Their push-pull tension gives The Last Jedi its kinetic energy, and builds to a stunning climax, certain to elicit a strong response from any full theatre (and let’s face it, they’re all going to be full theatres for this one).

I did wish Johnson had spent more time on the more challenging and intriguing corners of this universe that are introduced, like how the upper crust lives off the ethically murky military-industrial complex that funds both sides of the titular star war. The lip service he pays to these ideas is just enough to convince us there’s more under the hood than some reconstituted parts from an older model. J.J. Abrams wouldn’t have dared.

Johnson is a peculiar and precise filmmaker; so idiosyncratic it wasn’t unreasonable to worry he’d be swallowed whole by the Star Wars Sarlaac. On his debut Brick, he invented a language (!) and breathed life into tired visual tropes. In the Breaking Bad episode “Ozymandias” (one of television’s finest moments), he threaded years of story into a standalone masterpiece of confrontation and culmination. I don’t want to get all Obi-Wan here, but in many ways, it feels as if he was always fated to deliver The Last Jedi, training with the budgetary equivalent of a mop rather than a Lightsaber.

It's not that Johnson flips Star Wars on its head ("hope" is uttered so many times throughout his screenplay, you’d think he was collecting royalties). Yet, I understand better now the difference between Abrams’ fan-wish fulfilment, and Johnson’s dream building.

Movies should be better than those we could imagine up on our own. Rian Johnson knows what we want to see, and shows it to us in ways we couldn’t have envisioned without him, from the blood-red dressings of Snoke’s quarters, to the gaudy furnishings of a casino-planet introduced with an audacious tracking shot. Johnson and his long-time cinematographer Steve Yedlin also provide two of the most striking images in the series to date. Without spoilers: a burst of light through deafening silence, and a confrontation with a cracked mirror. I gasped, both times. And yes, John Williams’ score again brings the tingles.

Whatever the future holds, right now is a good time to be a Star Wars fan. And though you wouldn’t think it possible, there will be more in the world after The Last Jedi than there was even before it.

4.5/5

In cinemas now. Rated M for science fiction violence.

Photo: Disney