If one of my biggest gripes with ‘The Force Awaken’s’ was that I felt it played things ‘too safe’ and relied too heavily on call backs and references to try and secure an older audience while encouraging a younger one. Then ‘The Last Jedi’ is a film that inverts that.

A film that challenges (or at least attempts to challenge) what the point of ANY of these movies is about. A film that gets oddly philisophical about the nature of good and evil, dogma and morals. ‘The Last Jedi’ picks up with the rebels on the run from the ‘First Order’ and Rey trying to get Luke to both come and help the rebels defeat the order, AND show her a bit more about herself, and how to unlock her own Jedi powers.

The problem? is that Lukes become dissillusioned with the Jedi, the force…all that stuff, after a particularly bad experience. He wants nothing to do with Rey or any of her business and basically wants to be left alone to live out the rest of his days on an island as a hermit.

While this is going on, Kylo Ren is getting increasingly frustrated both at his inability to capture Rey or the rebels AND by comparisons being drawn to him basically being ‘baby Darth Vader’. Via the force Kylo and Rey communicate multiple times and slowly begin to exchange base level beliefs, softening one another to the others stances.

Oh! and Finn wakes up after being gravely injured in the last film, decides enoughs enough and tries to escape, only to be stopped by a rebel named ‘Rose’…the pair find themselves in a strange and cookie B-plot adventure at a casino involving freeing an army of puppy horses and getting acquainted with a Han Solo style scoundrel with a keen eye for lockpicking.

And…Honestly? there wasnt really a whole lot I actively DISLIKED about this one. I thought the script was a nice subversion of expectations, pulling away from the formula in some regards (it bottles it towards the end, but for most of the runtime, its nice to see the Jedi and Sith get played down as just cosplaying space police/nazis)

Its because of that challenging of convention that I can totally understnad why some of the more hardcore elements of the fandom actively hated this one. But realistically, while I cant say it nails every plot thread it touches, I’ll always champion a film that tries something different with successes and failures to show for it, than one that plays it safe hoping to cost on fan appreciation.

The script heres largely punchy, seems to ACTUALLY get the tone of the original films about right in terms of mixing darker more unpleasent moments with lighter SINCERE comedy thats more than just ‘suave one liners’ and awkward fumbling (See: The MCU). They maek Old Luke and Leia feel much more in character than the previous entry, its got a solid 3 act structuring and I feel the characters get the chance to be much more fleshed out and interesting than they were in the first film.

The downsides do unfortunately stop this one though from fully crossing the line into ‘Classic’ terratory for me. The chief amongst them being that the 2nd act gets WAY too bogged down in trying to create artificial tension. It quickly devolves into people just talking in quite nicely lit rooms, and not really saying a whole lot other than how awful the first order is or how powerful Lord Snoke is.

I feel like the finn and rose B-plot at the casino gets way overplayed and seemingly only exists because the writer/director didnt really know what to do/care about Finn, so they just shoved him into a seperate story for an hour and a half before reuniting him with the rebels. Which made me feel bad for John Boyega who seemingly was INCREDIBLY enthusiastic about his involvement in these films, had a decent hand in the first one, only to find himself basically put in the broom cupboard for most of this movie with not a whole lot to do with the main story.

I also quite struggled with Carrie Fishers turn here as Leia, I get the feeling Rian Johnson didnt really know/care about Leia as a character…so she seemingly spends 90% of the movie just looking a bit sad/lost and making wisened remarks about the force and keeping faith in your actions…OR shes there to basically do the whole shrugging ‘Dont look at me!?’ comedy bit when they wanted a younger/more atheletic actor to do something more action heavy. I feel it did her a disservice really and after her appearence in the first film seemed to give her a bit more fight, here she’s kind of dull really…

That does kind of feed into the key theme of this film though, which is the idea that relics SHOULDNT be idolized and SHOULD be left in the past. The ultimate end message resolving that to ‘The past is the past, you design the future, but that doesnt mean you cant take the good from the past with you INTO that future’.

This film really tries its best to wind down luke, leia, the falcon, han, chewie…all of the old guard. I feel that was the correct thing to do and and I think it was (mostly) done successfully…again im sure there’ll be many who disagree with me. and Its a real shame that this ‘changing of the guard’ wasnt doubled down on and cemented into the next film as I feel with the right kind of investment in the new characters we could have helped establish a new generation of heroes for the kids of tomorrow to appreciate more fully.

Instead, the next film pretty much returns to revearing these characters and underplaying the new crop. Leading us to the inevitable problem of stagnation later down the line…But thats a problem for another movie.

Outside of the script? I honestly have no other faults for this thing.

The directions gorgeous and probably some of the best visual and creative direction seen since ‘Empire’ theres some phenominal lighting and colour play across the runtime, this feels like an incredible leap in quality over ‘Force Awakens’ to me.

Direction of the cast is a big step up as well, allowing the cast to loosen up a bit, get a bit more raw and emotional and allowing them much more freedom to explore the set spaces and utilize props, the deliveries come across as (mostly) more naturalistic and believable. I honestly think this is one of the most stylish attempts at making a Star wars movie in at least the last 40 odd years.

The cine is rich, sumptuous, the CG elements are prominant but not aggressive, compositional choices are frankly INSANELY good. the edit is near frame perfect with just the right cuts and transitions hitting at JUST the right time.

The performances, loosened from their shakles are rock solid, very animate and physical, with just the right level of energy and charisma put into it. again, this is the closest to capturing the energy of the first couple of films that ANY of the sequels have managed before. Other than Carrie Fisher being left a little high and dry, I had no complaints from ANY of the on screen performances.

And the soundtracks awesome…its still Star Wars, but its used well here.

I have a real soft spot for ‘The Last Jedi’ quite honestly if it was 20-30 minutes shorter, gave Leia a bit more character and lost a few of the more pointless call back moments. This would BE my favourite Star Wars film. A film that challenges the franchise in a way that it hasnt previously, I really wish Johnson had stayed on for the finale honestly…But…its the 21st century and we arnt allowed to have nice things I guess…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/star-wars-the-last-jedi/