Listen to ya boy. He's not wrong.
The Last Jedi is not the movie that you are expecting. It may not even be the movie you are wanting, similarly to the middle chapter of the Original STAR WARS Trilogy, and I'd bet folding money that is going to cause it to be - at least initially - somewhat divisive. But make no mistake, writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper) has created a film that feels both familiar and daringly fresh, one with genuine uncomfortable danger and harrowing loss as well as rousing action and cracking humor. But most importantly, just below the surface of a special effects holiday blockbuster beats the heart of a message movie for our time and for all time.
Picking up immediately after The Force Awakens ended, this film will at first seem like it might be a retread of a lot of the beats of The Empire Strikes Back, with one character seeking out a Jedi master while the Resistance tries to outrun the First Order. However, from there is where this film begins to zig when you expect it to zag, and so begins a sequence of meticulously set-up and paid off story beats that are at once not what you thought was coming but also completely appropriate for the theme of the piece as well as functional within the narrative.
It's genuinely tough to settle on an MVP here, given that every one of the returning characters is tasked with even more heavy lifting than for what many of them were their introductory roles. Both Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver dive into the meat of their characters as Rey seeks training from Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren deals with the fallout of his actions in the previous movie, and this film very much fulfills on the promise of them as the vanguards a new generation of the Jedi/Sith dichotomy, and how they choose to blaze those trails. Oscar Isaac gets an arc that would feel equally at home in the new Battlestar Galactica series as it does here, and it's great fun getting to watch Poe bounce off both Laura Dern and Carrie Fisher (who is tremendous, bless her). John Boyega's Finn gets a lot of screen time with Rose (played delightfully by Kelly Marie Tran) with a second act digression that extends the film a shade long but hammers home the film's central thesis.
However, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't completely floored by Mark Hamill's return to the role that first make him famous and, arguably, made STAR WARS a phenomenon. Unlike Harrison Ford's equally-delightful return to Han Solo, Luke Skywalker is completely different from the young man we knew. Hamill and Johnson give the character both some of the better laughs (in a film that has a lot of them) and biggest dramatic punches (ditto) of the film's epic 152 minute run-time, and the performance is the best of Hamill's prolific career. You can feel that Hamill is an actor who's been champing at the bit for a part with this kind of range, and he tears into it with the fire of a young man but the skill of a seasoned pro.
There are plenty of surprises and rousing highs as well as tragic falls that I steadfastly refuse to spoil here, but suffice it to say that The Last Jedi reaffirms why we love the series. I quite liked Rogue One and really like The Force Awakens, but what makes The Last Jedi special is how it deliberately caters not to what it thinks an audience wants, but to what a story NEEDS. This film is not afraid to flip several tables and other films would have left painstakingly set for the finale of the trilogy, and while it runs slightly shaggy in the middle, it's in the service of a bold, fierce declaration about the meaning of STAR WARS going forward, as well as the needs of a modern-day Resistance.
But perhaps the biggest feather in this film's cap is the way it refocuses the galaxy far, far away on the human (and alien) characters and the cost to them. There's an action sequence early on that has a mini story of its own involving a medallion that plays like Johnson read the Green Leader fan comic and took it as a personal challenge. And this focus on more intimate stakes not only heightens the consequences of every action scene going forward, but helps the film deliver its ultimate thematic punch.
While it's easy to lose sight in the shadow cast by the Skywalkers, this isn't just a war between dynasties and aristocrats. The galaxy does not belong to one family or one Empire or even one Princess any more than the Force does, no more than STAR WARS itself belongs to one person or one generation. Just like we've seen this past year, part of being a Resistance means you are going to lose, and lose hard. Things are going to get messy and broken and burned, but we are going to get through it together by holding on to the people we love rather than dying for the things that we can't change. And that's what STAR WARS has been and can be and must be if it is to be more than a relic from 40 years ago. Because true balance cannot be won by endless clashes between the unchanging Jedi and the monolithic Sith, and that's not where the true power of this story lies.
It's in the little people that look up to the stars and dream of finding their place among them.
The Force will be with us. All of us. Always.
No comments:
Post a Comment