I saw The Last Jedi opening weekend, but I
held off for a while on writing my review.
While I was at the theater, I was so deep in it that my brain couldn’t
fully process everything I was taking in at the time – I was just along for the
ride. Having seen it, I wanted to take
some time to organize my thoughts on it.
After all, the review I wrote of Rogue One found it just the tiniest bit
less than awesome, an estimation I soon realized was way off the mark, and I
didn’t want to do the same with The Last
Jedi. Premise spoilers.
The
Resistance and the First Order are locked in a struggle, with the evil space
Nazis pursuing our heroes across space with a heretofore-unmatched ability to
track their movements. While Finn and
new friend Rose embark on a mission to interfere with the First Order’s
tracking, Poe anxiously waits back with the fleet, uneasy under the guidance of
Vice Admiral Holdo. Meanwhile, Rey has
found Luke Skywalker in the hopes of recruiting him to help the Resistance, but
he’s still haunted by the ghosts of his past mistakes, and the last thing he
wants to be confronted with is another young person with scary-strong Force
powers.
I’ll cop
to the movie’s flaws. There’s some stuff
that just plain just doesn’t track with The
Force Awakens, which stands out more because this film takes places pretty
much immediately after that one. The
whole Canto Bight sequence feels tacked-on, there are instances of characters
being willfully dumb for the sake of the plot, and while the concept of that scene with Leia is cool (if you’ve
seen it, you know the one I mean,) the execution looks shockingly cheap for a Star Wars movie. I freely admit to all of that.
But I’m
still pretty sure I love it. This is a
wild film that takes some bold steps, not always successfully, but it also
feels much more like its own movie compared to The Force Awakens, which is in many ways a well-made nostalgia
trip. We get more of all the characters
from the first movie and the addition of cool new ones like Rose and Holdo
(side note: this movie has four major female characters in it,
which is unprecedented for a Star Wars
film, and although Kelly Marie Tran isn’t the franchise’s first actress of
color, she’s the first to be cast in a significant human role.) I particularly appreciate getting more of a
sense of who Poe is, and Rey’s dynamic with Luke is terrific.
The film
still leans into the nostalgia feels, of course, and it has some very
well-earned squee moments. But it’s also
very much about a new generation and new people taking up the fight. It’s about honoring the past and learning
from its mistakes as well as taking heart from its victories, and it’s about
using that knowledge to move forward and forge one’s own path. I’m excited to see where the series goes from
here.
Warnings
Sci-fi
violence, some drinking, and thematic elements.
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