Star Wars: The Last Jedi

After two showings and a whole lot of introspective deliberation, I think I can say – with a shaky sort of confidence – that this film is everything it’s been built up to be and yet nothing like we expected. Now whether that’s a good thing or bad thing is harder to figure out.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi continues more or less from the tail end of The Force Awakens. After an entire movie of searching, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has finally found Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in his exile, and is doing her best to try and convince him to come back to civilization in order to help General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and the Resistance fiend off the continuing attacks of the First Order. Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his right hand man Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) are nothing if not persistent, and as the film opens up they have our band of rebels on the run with no signs of stopping their pursuit. Meanwhile, Finn (John Boyega) has paired up with newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and lovable droid BB-8 to help the Resistance in any way they can, leading half of them on a wild goose chase across the galaxy. But when things take a turn for the worst it’s only a matter of time before the Resistance’s best-laid plans come crumbling down, and with the dark side of the Force pushing back against the light, can anything this group of ragtag heroes do help to restore balance back to the galaxy, or will the titular last Jedi really be the end of an era?

Coming two years down the line from the “playing it safe” first entry of this new trilogy, The Force Awakens, and right off the heels of last year’s surprisingly good side-story, Rogue One, The Last Jedi had a lot to live up to. Director and writer Rian Johnson, a solid choice to follow in JJ Abram’s footsteps, does his best to bring us something new and something old to this galaxy far, far away, and mostly succeeds from a fanboy point of view, but when looked at as an actual movie without all of the Star Wars nostalgia to cover its tracks, there’s decidedly less than stellar results.

But first, the good.

Just like The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi uses today’s technology and storytelling to help realize everything anyone could have ever wanted in an updated version of this franchise. There’s space battles galore, alien worlds aplenty, lightsaber antics here and there, and a sense of scale that many of the other films in this saga haven’t even come close to. It’s a Star Wars film for the modern age throwing out fan service winks and nods at every corner while building upon what came before all the while giving this new trilogy a different direction and feel than any of its predecessors. Out of risk of spoiling anything, I’d say that some of the best Star Wars moments to grace the saga are found in this film, ranging from something involving the oft-used lightspeed, to some really cool interactions between characters you might not have expected, to a truly great third act that felt as epic as one would have hoped for in a film like this.

That being said, this film delivers on a lot of its promises but also strains to find any real purpose as a whole by the time the end credits roll. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of the series in all of its various forms of media, but just because it’s Star Wars doesn’t mean that it can be immune to what it really is at its core: a movie, and being a movie it needs to be critiqued like one. While the film does a lot right, especially in regards to the little things that I picked up on or understood more clearly the second time around, there’s also a lot it gets wrong from a storytelling and filmmaking standpoint that can’t be ignored.

Being a standout in the last episode, Finn is regulated to the least interesting and least important storyline of the film, his role lessened even more so by the fact that he’s paired up with a new, relatively unimportant character that seems more like she should have been introduced in the last film if at all. Couple that with the fact that Poe has way too much screen time that takes away any precious seconds Finn so rightly deserves, and you have a pretty big injustice against a character that deserves better. On top of that, almost much anything regarding Finn’s plotline in Canto Bight was cool, yet highly unnecessary and roundabout, a common thread throughout this film when the script doesn’t seem up to snuff. It felt, more often than not, that the script was trying to string along a bunch of scenes that the filmmakers wanted to have happen as opposed to finding an organic way to actually fit them into the story, a practice which ended up lessening the impact of said scenes and their overall impact on the plot as a whole. I’d love to delve deeper into some examples of this, but to do so would be to explain a whole lot of revealing plot points that would spoil the film, so just believe me when I say that after all of the cool shit happens and you get all your nerd-gasms out of the way, the actual act of being a legitimate and fine tuned movie falls by the wayside a bit, most of the first half and the entirety of the middle section of the film prime culprits of this type of execution. Add in the fact that half of the characters introduced in The Force Awakens don’t matter or literally do nothing of importance, a few legit WTF moments that even a die-hard fan like myself was confused by, and an ending that seemed more like a trilogy capper than that of a middle act, and you have an entertaining yet flawed new chapter in this saga that could have been even better had it not leaned on the crutch that is this franchise.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a roller coaster ride of emotion, frustration and awe; a film that’s as divisive as it is subversive and as successful as it is faltering. It’s a tough movie to review, one that almost forces you to “let go” of the older films and embrace the new direction the filmmakers are set on taking us regardless of the varying results. If you come into this film with no expectations you’re bound to enjoy it, but for people that consider Star Wars just as important as either eating or breathing, I can see why some are divided and annoyed with the outcome. There’s enough to like here – especially after the initial hype and expectations have died down upon a second viewing – but there’s also a handful of sore thumb moments that just simply do not work. The last three quarters of this film is absolutely brilliant, but the middle section and some questionable storytelling angles right from the get-go leave this sequel just short of greatness and is by no means the “best Star Wars film ever” as most of the mainstream critics seem to want you to believe. At the end of the day, this is a Star Wars film, and whether you’re a fan of the series or not, it’s is a pop culture event not worth missing, flaws and successes notwithstanding.

***Unlike with what I did two years ago with The Force Awakens, I’m not trying to write two separate reviews, one for my fanboy self and one as a critic, so consider this final score the middle ground between the two. If I had to separate them out, I’d give a fanboy rating of 8.5 and a critical rating of 7.5, so an 8 sounds pretty good to me!***