Film Review: The Last Jedi

Originally published December 19, 2019

JJ Abrams had no plans for the sequel trilogy after The Force Awakens. He left Rian Johnson (and, at first, Colin Trevorrow) to figure it out for themselves. Trevorrow never got the chance and well, a lot of folks didn’t like the conclusions Johnson made.

I happen to really, really like them.

People sometimes forget that art in the process of being made is a living, breathing thing. Star Wars, as a universe and an idea, has been under construction for the last 40 years. It’s not trapped in amber or solidified. It’s subject to and benefits from change. Rian Johnson seems to get this. Each of his films interrogates its genre and its existence, finding new ways to interpret old concepts while still adoring them. Knives Out is a tried-and-true murder mystery, but it uses the genre to say something about privilege and the way we think about murder mysteries. Brick and Looper do the same with noir and time travel films, respectively. So it is with The Last Jedi and Star Wars.

The most refreshing scene in The Last Jedi is Holdo’s kamikaze maneuver. We see the look of resignation and determination in Laura Dern’s eyes. In another scene, Luke’s lightsaber snaps as it’s pulled apart by two equal and opposite forces. Holdo makes the jump…and the sound drops out.

For a series so defined by its sound, it’s telling the best moment in its most iconoclastic installment is marked by its complete absence. Even in a sequence with one of the best lightsaber duels in the entire franchise, a single silent act stands out.

Even the weakest part of the film brings the real world into Star Wars. Sure, the film isn’t subtle with its critiques of war profiteering and the subplot runs a little long, but Star Wars is a franchise that got a great movie out of the question “why did the Death Star have that one loophole?” Questioning who profits off the eternal war and why is much more worthy of exploration. It took someone such as Rian Johnson to pull it off.

I remember walking out of The Last Jedi, wondering if it was similar to walking out of the original Star Wars in 1977. While The Last Jedi is nowhere near as life- or industry-changing, but it felt like a much-needed breath of fresh air in the franchise. It still feels that way.

Bring on Rian’s trilogy. Please.

Final score: 8.3/10