"...let the past die. Kill it, if you have to..."
- Kylo Ren
Buckle in for a long read, because there's so much to say about
The Last Jedi. For a bulleted review covering the main points in shorter fashion, see my companion review
"The Last Jedi: the good, the bad, the controversial, and the outright absurd."
The Last Jedi starts cold-open in a battle. The fragile Resistance is right on the edge of the First Order's blade, and like a threatened animal, the Resistance is fighting back with reckless ferocity. These introductory moments paint a sharp and uncompromising picture of the cost of these small victories, demonstrating the fearless devotion of the individuals that make up the Resistance, carefully humanizing each sacrifice. One particular vignette portrays a young female pilot giving her life to drop her load of explosives on an especially lethal First Order ship, rather than using those precious moments to save herself. Multiple times we are introduced to various faces, only to see them blown away later.
The Last Jedi may very well have been titled
The Resistance for all its focus on the Resistance fighters.
One of the things that immediately comes to mind regarding
The Last Jedi,
is the cinematography. Luke's island sanctuary Ahch-To, an Avalon of
sorts, is ethereal and haunting, beautiful in its serenity and
unassuming presence on a seemingly endless ocean. While half of the
movie takes place in the vast darkness of space, Ahch-To dreamily paints
the screen with lush greenery and continuously rolling fog spilling
across the screen. Like Yoda's final sanctuary Degobah, Ahch-To is
remote and mysterious, suited for strange creatures and people who want
to disappear. Everything about the setting feels cold and mysterious, yet somehow peaceful and unaffected by the problems of the universe. The very look of Ahch-To sets a tone of wonder and
solemnity, appropriate for the refuge of a retired warrior.
The Last Jedi, unfortunately, makes several pitfalls in multiple areas that are difficult to overlook, and the same aspects that resonate as strengths in one moment, make dizzying turns into weaknesses the very next moment. For example, the misty setting of Ahch-To seems a natural and tranquil monastery for Luke with its severance from the rest of the galaxy, but then we find the island populated by alien nuns, sea cows, and marketing bait called Porgs. One moment,
The Last Jedi raises
the use of CGI to the highest artistic levels; in particular a soundless moment
involving one vessel using light-speed to harpoon its opponent ship, but elsewhere, characters make a preposterous escape on goat-creatures in a sequence so clearly green-screened, it feels cut and pasted from
The Hobbit movies. Rey's "cave sequence" uses carefully
and delicately constructed imaging to give the moment maximum impact
without distracting visuals, artfully choosing a minimalist approach to
this pensive moment. She emerges from this jarring experience back into the world of alien nuns and Porgs. The final battle features on a mineral planet where the white surface of the earth stirs red when disturbed, giving a unique and enjoyable visual effect, but
there are these CGI crystal foxes running around, distracting from the
greater conflict. The opening battle features a band of ships that blow each other up because they nonsensically fly too close together, setting up one pilot's emotional personal sacrifice, right on the heels of Poe prank-calling General Hux.
The Last Jedi serves up a variety of moments that reach movie greatness, which are then flippantly shot down by its tonal inconsistency.
One of the biggest issues for
The Last Jedi is that it splits its focus among so many characters, that the potency of any one character is seriously diluted. None of the characters we met in the previous installment really do anything new or surprising here. Poe gets more screen time, but behaves exactly as you'd expect him to after his brief scenes in
The Force Awakens. He's cocky, reckless, and willing to pay any price for victory. Despite his loyalty, he tends towards rashness, which hinders his ability to be a key leader in the Resistance. Ultimately however, Poe will always whip his head around at the right moment and come up with a plan, mostly saving the day and proving that he's at least got his heart in the right place. But... it never really dawns on him how many people in this story end up dead because of him (the initial battle, his unnecessary mutiny that ultimately set them up for betrayal, etc.).
Vox sums up Poe as "shooting at
anything he doesn’t like. He can’t see past his next move. And so,
between defying orders, mutinying, and leaking highly sensitive
information, he almost single-handedly gets the entire Resistance wiped
out...He’s a blight, a danger to himself and the entire crew."
Another returning character is Finn, whose background as a stormtrooper deserter turned Resistance fighter had some of the greatest potential for further development. In
The Force Awakens, Finn was the main source of comic levity, but also managed to make an impression as a significant character. Here, Finn has neither comedic moments, nor important moments; his main function is to carry out an entirely disjointed subplot that ultimately has zero impact on the story. Eventually, as he careens towards self-sacrifice in an act that would save the small band that remains, he's hindered, and they figure out something else. Sadly, he does nothing of consequence throughout the whole
movie, criminally undercutting his character's magnetism from
The Force Awakens. The former deserter is now a shallowed version of a previously charismatic character.
On the note of splitting the focus too much between characters,
The Last Jedi introduces a few new ones, one of whom, Rose, is set up to be a major supporting character or later love interest for Finn. The main problem with Rose is that she is part of the unnecessary subplot that Finn is carrying out, and there's no chemistry between them at all. Rose delivers some of the most awkwardly placed lines in the movie, such as firmly reprimanding Finn for thinking the Monte Carlo planet is cool when there is a serving class that she was once part of. Also... Finn, Rose, and later Benicio del Toro as himself, are all involved in this same distracting subplot, lumping all the ethnic representations into the weakest part of the movie.
Rey was the protagonist of
The Force Awakens, yet the scattered focus of
The Last Jedi condenses her arc, which should have been the driving force of the story. Like her co-characters, she does nothing new here, and packs no real surprises. She's unflinchingly independent, idealistic, and hopeful-- more than Luke Skywalker ever was, which is saying something. While she might occasionally experience discouragement, she doesn't take any truly surprising turns as a character, and retains her Arthurian heroism from beginning to end, without the slightest hint of temptation towards darker means. Rey stands firmly and unshakably rooted to her high ground, even in her weakest moments. Throughout
The Last Jedi, Rey never seems in danger of doing anything remotely imperfect. Unlike her predecessor Luke, who was prone to discouragement and being schooled by Yoda on his lack of belief, Rey is the one putting her tutor in his place and eventually demonstrating that she was fine without whatever he had to offer.
Daisy Ridley plays
Rey with a natural ease, and her scenes with
Kylo Ren through Force connection are especially dynamic and creative, especially in furthering Kylo Ren's character. There's a connection between them that isn't exactly attraction in a romantic sense, but a definite likeness in their individual searches for purpose that draws them together in a uniquely emotional way. Despite these well-written and excellently acted sequences,
Rey's personal journey still feels contrived and overly convenient. Although
The Force Awakens established that
Rey's force powers were far advanced already, even without formal Jedi training, the swiftness with which she can use the Force just as confidently as a master is a little too simple. Apparently all she had to do was close her eyes and take a deep breath; a far cry from Luke's intensely physical training with master Yoda. By the time
The Last Jedi ends, Rey can use her powers easily and confidently, but one can't help feeling that it was all too easy, and that she didn't really endure trial or hardship to achieve her level.
Moving on to Luke, the name of the movie is
The Last Jedi, yet very little actual time is dedicated to this idea. When
The Force Awakens closed, Rey had found Luke on a solitary island, and one of the final images of the movie was Luke looking at Rey with ... bewilderment? Dread? Surprise? Recognition? For two years we've been wondering.
The Last Jedi reveals that Luke's expression actually meant "Oh, s--t."
Luke Skywalker's portrayal here has been polarizing to say the least. Personally I'd say that Mark Hamill is one of the strengths of
The Last Jedi; an underused strength at that, especially his delightfully candid grumpiness. Where the young Luke Skywalker began as a whiny youth who eventually stepped up to the challenge of becoming a mature Jedi knight, the old weathered Luke is supremely annoyed at having been found, therefore disrupting his perfect plan to eliminate the Jedi by simply dying. Like Han in
The Force Awakens, it's clear that Luke has been through more than we know. While traces of the young Skywalker fleetingly run across his face, this really isn't the same Luke we used to know. This Luke has no semblance of hope, no will to fight, and certainly no inclination to train a new order of Jedi, not after his extreme failures.
Hamill's return as Luke brings a somnolent gravity to
The Last Jedi; he simply doesn't get enough screen time to do justice to the size of his character or the intensity of his history. The opportunities that might have been emotionally moving are glossed over. For example, when Luke sees Chewbacca, he asks "Where's Han?" His face falls as the reality of the loss crests, but then that's that and he's back to resigned old Luke with nary a tear, a cry of frustration, or even a wistful sigh as he looks over the waves. It's not that Han's death doesn't have some continuing impact, but neither the loss of his dear friend nor the depths that his former student have fallen to seem to affect Luke. He's either too far in despair to sink any lower, or too calloused from his years of isolation to truly process the loss outside of it being further evidence of his own failure.
The Last Jedi labors to give us a Luke Skywalker that is dark and tortured ala
Logan, but invariably pads each glimpse into his true heart with ill-timed humor and forced storytelling. The rest of the time, he comes off as apathetically melancholy, plodding around his island sanctuary ignoring Rey and telling her to get off his lawn or something equally curmudgeonly. When we are given the opportunity to see his fall from heroism, these moments are so rushed and clumsily handled that they can't help but feel painfully contradictory to the original Luke Skywalker. The strongest and most intriguing themes of Luke's character, such as his inability to live up to his own legend, are casually tossed aside in favor of attention to sea cows and alien nuns.
The Last Jedi paints an unforgiving picture of a familiar story; heroes fall, and even the bravest succumb to cowardice. It's not the story we wanted or would have imagined for Luke Skywalker, and the brevity of our exposure to all that has happened to Luke between
The Return of the Jedi and
The Last Jedi cheapens the hero's journey deeply.
The Force Awakens used a few well-written lines to explain Han Solo's regression to scoundrel-hood and that was enough;
The Last Jedi tries, but doesn't entirely succeed with the less-is-more approach to exposition as regards Luke. Whether or not Luke's portrayal is agreeable to audiences, Mark Hamill does an excellent job with Luke, and might have even more so with a little more focused story.
As suspected,
Kylo Ren's murder of his father Han is a point of continual conflict for
Kylo Ren, much to the disgust of his master Snoke. Despite his insistent posturing that he is truly nonredeemable and firmly planted on the Dark Side, he's still lingering moodily in a sort of dark mediocrity where he
continually makes choices to prove his evilness, while failing to
convince the audience that these displays are anything more than futile
attempts to prove to himself that he really has no light left in him. In his turmoil of identity, he neither begins a redemption arc nor entirely usurps the position of being the arch-villain. In
The Force Awakens, his choice to murder his father seemed to be a kind of breakthrough for him in resisting the call to the light. Yet here, he is being ripped apart by that choice. So he does something else to further prove to everyone how far gone he is. And yet... it's still somehow not convincing that he is beyond saving. His choices feel impulsive rather than organic, and largely emotional rather than rational. This creates a bit of a dichotomy, because Adam Driver portrays Kylo with excellence, yet Kylo's struggle to stay on the dark side doesn't feel genuine. Maybe this gap is due to a host of unanswered questions as to how he really got there in the first place. Or maybe it's that Adam Driver portrays the inner conflict so well, that we're meant to question his true darkness. Maybe it's a combination of both. Episode IX will determine the final verdict on this particular point.
As stated earlier, Kylo Ren and Rey's force-connected conversations are one of the strengths of the movie. In these emotionally charged moments, Kylo Ren is revealed as a layered and complex character, with some unique baggage driving his flight to the Dark side.
David French notes that
"the movie accomplished what Lucas couldn’t quite pull off in the prequels. It made a convincing case for Kylo Ren’s rage... All at once, we see not only why Ren is such a conflicted, emo
Sith, we also see why Rey might have compelling reason not to trust
Luke."
That being said, this is once again a theme that is handled a little too lightly onscreen, but makes sense in the realm of contemplation. Ben (now Kylo Ren) Solo's father never thought much about his powers. His trusted uncle and mentor nearly killed him in his sleep. His new master will likely dispose of him as soon as a better apprentice comes along. There is something in Kylo Ren that feels desperate and alone, making Rey's rejection feel disproportionately personal. Ren isn't the greatest villain Star Wars has ever seen by a long shot, but is certainly on a different path than our standard big bad guys have ever been, which is certainly compelling.
As far as the other villains go, Snoke (played by the chronically under-celebrated Andy Serkis) certainly strikes a different note than the Emperor as far as character and portrayal, but more or less fills the same archetype, but with more of a Marvel super-villain flair (including a rather flamboyant wardrobe). Whatever questions were generated about him in
The Force Awakens are certainly not dealt with here, and likely won't be. General Hux, the new trilogy's answer to Tarkin, is an unintentionally self-satirizing caricature, going preposterously over the top in his every moment to convince everyone of his resoluteness to wipe out the Resistance, yet failing to do anything but deliver cliched villain lines. There is also the predicted return of Captain Phasma; a character whom the movie-makers seem determined to set up as some kind of arch-nemesis for Finn, but can't seem to make her into anything but aggressively unremarkable.
When it comes to story,
The Last Jedi could have endeavored for something more complex than a plot that is essentially about running out of gas at a bad time. This straightforward and unvaried plot is more suited to a two-part episode of the animated
Rebels than a big blockbuster movie. Yet it seems that in this endeavoring, what results is an overcrowded story lacking depth. Throughout, the movie takes itself on side-quests that ultimately amount to nothing in forwarding the plot or developing the characters. Finn and Rose send themselves on a clandestine mission to a casino planet to find a guy who will help them disable the hyperspace-tracking device, but they may or may not actually find him (it's not entirely clear), sneak onto the ship, and then not even need this entire operative because the people they are out to save have another plan anyway. Rey travels to find Luke to invite him back to the fight and learn about the Force through him. Eventually, she can't convince him to rejoin the fight, she learns very little from him, and then proves that she never needed Luke's training in the first place. Then there's this whole piece where Poe leads a mutiny against General Leia's substitute, which ends up getting most of the Resistance killed.
Where
The Force Awakens leaned hard into sentiment,
The Last Jedi strongly agrees with Kylo Ren's admonition to let the past die, maybe even actively kill it. Throughout the jumbled story vignettes,
The Last Jedi seeks to reinvent characters, expectations, lore, and the universe in which these exist, with an attitude that cheekily disregards continuity and tradition. Seemingly to support this determination to bury the past, Yoda himself appears and sets fire to the ancient Jedi texts (or at least seems to).
The Last Jedi is resolute in its irreverence of
Star Wars tradition, blithely turning icons into cowards, giving some of the greater moments to characters we don't have time to grow to care about, and hammering on points of social commentary that are simultaneously unclear and condescending (ex. Rose's aside on child servitude, the tragedy of animal abuse, etc).
Both JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson are clearly cognizant of the legacy they've
been entrusted with, but neither seem intimidated or limited by the
weight of this legacy, and have taken the stories in their own directions. To a great degree,
Star Wars needs the unfettered creative talents of new people like Johnson who are willing to take risks, but doing so in the middle of a relaunch trilogy was a mistake on Disney's part. For example, the self-satirizing humor found throughout
The Last Jedi is tonally out of place in a movie that was expected to take a darker and more contemplative approach. Even how the
Force becomes a crutch for tricky situations creates a discontinuity with the seven other movies in this story-line. Johnson's treatment of the ends left loose by Abrams is glib at best, though admittedly not always unwelcome (such as Luke's response to Rey handing him his old lightsaber). Abrams handled
The Force Awakens with
the tenderness of a caring parent preparing you for life's hard truths;
Johnson is the jerk uncle who outright says there's no Santa Claus,
so move on with your life.
If it is possible to remove the context of expectation surrounding the
movie, both from the creative and the narrative perspective,
The Last Jedi is actually a good movie; it's simply not what we expect of
Star Wars.
The National Review says of
The Last Jedi,
"It's supposed to be something more. It could have been something more. The story of Last Jedi is a story of a movie walking right up to
the brink of greatness, staring cinematic immortality in the face, and
saying, 'Nah.'"
It is mostly within this context of expectation and anticipation of greatness that
The Last Jedi can be called a disappointment. While there are definite flaws to
The Last Jedi, some of them serious ones, it tests some boundaries that we didn't know we had on
Star Wars.
Star Wars is changing drastically, and needs to in order to maintain its power as a defining franchise, but
The Last Jedi moved this point forward much too quickly in its treatment of the iconic characters and story that began it all. If this story had been told using other characters, not Luke Skywalker and General Leia Organa, the narrative flaws would still be there, but far less obvious than they are here, where they significantly alter the very backbone of the core saga. By the end,
the narrative choices made in
The Last Jedi leave the new trilogy in some tricky territory, but not entirely a lost wilderness. Episode IX has a lot of ground to cover, and
The Last Jedi doesn't set it up to be the unconventional finale as I might have hoped, but Episode IX is set up to rebuff the rule that the second installment in a trilogy is usually the strongest one. But, as Obi-Wan Kenobi once said,
"Many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
