There’s an early moment during the first spectacular space battle in Star Wars: The Last Jedi when Commander Poe Dameron contacts General Hux, the third-in-command of the evil First Order.
Dameron (Oscar Issac) is trying to single-handedly destroy all the exterior cannons on the massive warship carrying Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), and he has his trusty droid, BB-8, patch him through to the bridge.
“I’m holding for General Hux,” Dameron says.
“This is General Hux,” Hux replies.
“OK," Dameron says, "I’ll keep holding.”
“This is Hux!” the general rages, looking over at his befuddled crew members. “Can he hear me? I can hear him.”
That subtle touch of levity, an ordinary back-and-forth exchange in an extraordinary situation, tells you all you need to know about The Last Jedi, and the fantastic writer-director, Rian Johnson, picked to guide the 40-year-old franchise to even greater heights.
The Last Jedi is better than The Force Awakens — much better, in every way. New characters are properly introduced. New creatures get ample screen time, but don’t detract from the serious business at the film’s core. And the months-long tease of an iconic reunion between two of the original film’s lead stars — Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher — well, I don’t want to spoil anything.
Put it this way: If you have loved Star Wars since you were a kid, and you get a tingle throughout your body whenever you hear John Williams’ iconic opening theme, you will love The Last Jedi.
But, even if you’re like me — a fan, but also a critic, someone who is willing to say that The Force Awakens was nothing more than a calculated effort to expand the fan-base without actually telling an original — there is plenty in The Last Jedi to lure you back from the Dark Side, and to make you feel like a little kid again.
A big reason why is Johnson, who previously directed Brick, Looper and three episodes of Breaking Bad. Johnson seems to thoroughly understand what drew people to this franchise to begin with, and — spoiler alert — it had nothing to do with merchandising opportunities. Star Wars has always been about the underdogs, the rejects, the forgotten space travelers on the fringe who aren’t nearly as strong individually as they are united in a cause.
Johnson’s script explores those themes in ways both bold and subtle. Dameron, as a character, is a prime example — he’s brash and reckless, but his heart is firmly in the right place. You care what happens to him, which is a big step up from The Force Awakens where Dameron seemed curiously absent from the second half of the film after a pretty solid introduction.
If Dameron is Jedi’s muscle, then newcomer Kelly Marie Tran, who plays resistance mechanic and engineer Rose Tico, is one half of its heart. Rose is a wonderful addition with a great backstory, and Tran’s performance elevates John Boyega to bring a renewed focus to his character Finn, the former stormtrooper.
The other half of the film’s heart belongs to Fisher, who died suddenly before filming was completed. Leia is crucial to Johnson’s plot, and Fisher makes the most of every scene. This is the woman who outsmarted Darth Vader so many years ago, and Fisher shows why once again. Our princess may be gone, but her last performance will never be forgotten.
Johnson also does a great job bringing needed depth to Daisy Ridley’s Rey, whose progression from resourceful scavenger in Force Awakens to a battle-hardened Jedi trainee here feels more fluid and dynamic. And kudos to Johnson for giving Andy Serkis more screen time as Supreme Leader Snoke, who is considerably more of a threat in The Last Jedi.
The two weak spots, at least for me, remain Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma.
Let’s be honest, J.J. Abrams didn’t have a clue what to do with Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) in Force Awakens, and though Johnson tries mightily, the uber-Stormtrooper character sadly will forever be a could-have-been, a reminder of a potentially iconic villain that was wasted.
Kylo Ren — the son of Han and Leia — is more problematic, given he’s now positioned to be the Big Bad in future episodes. I may be biased since I am not a fan of Adam Driver’s acting, but the character as a whole feels whiny and lacking a purpose. He comes off like the cartoony-y, mustached villain from old cliffhanger serials, the one who yells out, “Curses! Foiled again!” when his evil plot gets undone by the hero.
It doesn’t help that, as motivation, Snoke tells Ren, “You’re no Vadar. You’re just a child in a mask,” which prompts Ren to smash his black helmet in a fit of childish rage.
In every Star Wars movie, there are new and familiar creatures that often take center stage. This is another area where Johnson, as a visionary, excels. He makes the most of the Porg, a bird-like species with big, emotional eyes, that populate the island where Luke Skywalker has retreated. There are several laugh-out-loud moments between one particular Porg and Chewbacca that will thrill both kids and adults alike.
But Johnson’s true creative gift to longtime fans is to fill every frame with small details that require repeat viewings to truly absorb, and none are as awe-inspiring as Canto Bight, the casino planet that plays a pivotal role in Finn and Rose’s quest to find a codebreaker to help defeat the First Order. It’s as if Johnson took George Lucas’s Mos Eisley Cantina as a personal challenge, and his response was to create an even more vibrant alien-human world of fantastic beings, bright colors and dangers lurking at every turn.
On a sliding scale, The Last Jedi easily is the third-best Star Wars movie behind A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. This is not counting Rogue One, which as a stand-alone film, still registers, at least to me, as one of the best interplanetary-heist-thrillers ever lensed.
The more important takeaway here is that The Last Jedi firmly shows that there is still plenty of space left to explore, and lots more stories left to tell, in the Star Wars universe, and Johnson is both the perfect choice, and an inspired pick, to guide the Force for many more episodes to come.
This article appears in Dec 14-21, 2017.
