The Force is strong with this one
(This
review contains TRAILER SPOILERS ONLY)
A new Star Wars movie will always be met with high expectations,
especially when said movie is an episodic film meant to follow the Original
Trilogy. Especially after the divisive Force
Awakens (a movie I personally still love even after multiple rewatches),
people were wondering if Disney had it in them to do something new with the Star Wars license or if they were just
gonna be parroting the classic movies until the end of time. Rogue One looked like a step in the
right direction with its darker tone and war movie genre, so the big question
was whether or not The Last Jedi will
deliver on its promise of turning everything on its head.
While I’m certain this is going to be
another extremely divisive Star Wars movie
(at least while it’s fresh in people’s minds) with how stunning some of the
twists and turns are, overall I found it to easily rank up there with the best
of the saga.
Picking up right where Force Awakens left off, the First Order
is in hot pursuit of the Resistance. Fuel is running low, and Hux has devised a
way to track our heroes even through hyperspace. Leia is left disabled, leaving
the untrustworthy Admiral Holdo in charge. Out of options, Poe sends Finn, BB-8
and new character Rose Tico on a secret mission to find a way onto Snoke’s Star
Destroyer and disable the tracking device.
Meanwhile, Rey finally meets Luke
Skywalker himself on his mysterious Jedi island, but it turns out that he isn’t
so keen on the Jedi anymore, and she’s being tempted by Kylo Ren and the Dark
Side more than ever.
The scenes with Luke and Rey on the
island are one of the film’s biggest highlights. There’s a bunch of fun little
goodies left around for lore junkies, but the real standout is Mark Hamill’s
return as Luke Skywalker. This is easily his best performance as the character
in his 30 years of playing him, turning Luke into an isolated hermit with no
love for the order he worked so hard to join, while still retaining plenty of
that adventurous spirit that made him so likeable in the first place.
Most, if not all the other returning
characters are put to great use here as well. Leia is given plenty more to do
than she had in Force Awakens, and
this movie gives Carrie Fisher a great, albeit unintentional, send-off. Finn
continues his arc from the first movie as he continues to struggle with whether
he should fight the First Order or flee from them. Poe also has a personality
and arc beyond “he good at flying” this time, as he starts to let his want to
decimate the First Order cloud his judgement. General Hux also has plenty more
to do, and is given a lot of funny moments interacting with Kylo. And last but
not least, BB-8 fans need not fear, as the droid has a lot of great little bits
in the movie that left my theater laughing every time.
But easily the true heroes of the
movie come in the form of Daisy Ridley as Rey and especially Adam Driver as
Kylo Ren. Starting with Rey, here I think she’ll start to appeal more to those
who weren’t so invested in her in Force
Awakens. Here Rey is much more conflicted by whether she should stick to
the Light Side or follow the path to the Dark Side, as well as continuing to
ask the big question: Who were her parents? Daisy Ridley continues to make Rey
incredibly likable and easy to root for, even when her journey reaches some of its
darkest stages.
But while Hamill and Ridley are both
incredible in their own right, it is Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren who steals the show
every time he’s onscreen. Easily the most complex and intriguing character to
come out of Force Awakens, director
Rian Johnson clearly knew he had a powerhouse of a character on his hands and
put him to incredible use. Kylo’s journey through this movie has left him as
easily one of my Top 3 favourite Star
Wars characters ever, and that’s saying a lot. While I can’t say much about
where his character goes because a lot of it ends up in spoiler territory, I
will say that Kylo fans coming in from Force
Awakens will not leave disappointed.
Another superstar of the movie was the
visual designers. The new planets and creatures introduced here are all
spectacular. The salt planet Crait is simply spectacular to watch, especially
when all the red sand is flying everywhere. Even better are all the new animals
and creatures that they use. Of course the porgs are what everyone have been
talking about since they’ve been advertised everywhere, but they don’t take
over the movie like, say, the Despicable
Me minions do. They only have a few minutes of screentime overall and are
used entirely as fun comic relief that breaks up the more dramatic parts of the
movie. Overall I found them tons of fun to be around and timed perfectly, not
breaking up tense scenes and instead popping up every now and then for a quick
laugh.
That’s not to say the movie is
perfect, because I do have a few significant nitpicks. My biggest issue with the
movie are the new characters, because I felt they could’ve been handled a bit
better. The biggest new character is Rose Tico, played by film newcomer Kelly
Marie Tran. She isn’t a bad character by any means, but I felt they could’ve
given her a little more to do overall. She sort of just tags along with Finn
and BB-8 on their adventure, mostly serving as a person for Finn to talk to
instead of actively contributing to the overall plot. Again, don’t get me
wrong, she has a lot of moments to shine and it’s nice to see another person of
colour being represented as a main character in a Star Wars movie, but I felt they could’ve given her a few more
scenes where she put her mechanic skills to use.
There’s also Laura Dern’s Admiral
Holdo, who serves as Poe’s biggest obstacle on his journey. Again, her biggest
weakness is that she isn’t given enough to do. She has less than 10 minutes of
screentime overall spread out over the course of the movie, and most of it is
spent watching her mess with Poe by not telling him why she’s being so
secretive. It feels like a bit of a waste overall.
And lastly we have Benicio del Toro’s
character, who enters the movie, does a few small things, and then leaves the
movie. He doesn’t contribute anything that couldn’t have been attributed to
Rose or even BB-8, and even worse is that his character ends up feeling pretty
darn annoying by the time you’re done with him. So that’s not great.
And finally, I know it’s been said in
basically every other review, but that’s because they’re right: Finn’s subplot
could’ve been done a lot better. Again, it isn’t bad, but when compared to Rey
and Luke on the island it leaves a lot to be desired. It mostly feels like Finn
and Rose running in circles trying to find a way onto Snoke’s Star Destroyer, and
the casino planet of Canto Bight isn’t super interesting. It just looks like an
ordinary casino with aliens instead of humans. Maybe it’s just because the
island scenes and the ending are so great that it pales in comparison, but I feel
a lot of editing and giving del Toro’s part in the story to Rose to give her
character a bigger role would go a long way.
Since I want to finish the review on a
positive note, I’ll try my best to talk about the climax without spoiling
anything. I’ll just say that a lot of the movie’s biggest surprises lie there,
and my jaw dropped several times at the directions they went in. I’ll just say
that the world of Episode IX will be a very different galaxy than the one we’ve
gotten accustomed to over the course of these last nine movies. It also helps
that the showdown on Crait is visually stunning, with the previously mentioned
red sand flying everywhere as well as the adorable crystal foxes.
I’m going to need some time to let The Last Jedi sit as well as a few
rewatches before I decide for sure where the movie will lie in my ranking of
the Star Wars movies, but I can say
for certain that it’ll be high up on the list. The movie isn’t afraid to really
change things up for the saga, and I can already see people online who are
pretty unhappy with the direction they went. But as for me, I thought that all
the changes gave the movie the franchise-changing impact that Force Awakens lacked. Like I said, the
galaxy and characters are left in a very different state at the end of the
movie than it was when it started.
The characters are all at their best
here, from Rey to Luke to especially Kylo. I can’t stress enough how good Adam
Driver is here. The production design is just plain awesome, as are the action sequences.
Even the stuff I found less impressive, like the new characters and Finn’s
subplot, I feel was only underwhelming because of just how great everything
else was.
If you aren’t afraid of a movie from a
tried and true franchise taking you down a path you weren’t expecting while
still retaining everything that made you love it in the first place, you’ll
love The Last Jedi.
FINAL SCORE
9/10
Amazing
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