STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is A New Hope for the Franchise (NON-SPOILER REVIEW)

Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill star as Rey, and Luke Skywalker in Rian Johnson's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

What I disliked so intensely about “The Force Awakens” was that it seemed to miss the point of Star Wars.  It looked like a Star Wars movie, but it struck me as rather soulless and empty, and the abiding feeling I had as Rey held out Anakin’s lightsaber to Grumpy Old Man Luke, and we irised out to the end credits, was, tragically, “meh.” 

I remember shrugging a lot.  I remember writing several articles and various Facebook rants about why they’d gotten it wrong.  So much so that it also sparked some writing from me, on my blog, about the deeper themes in Lucas’s Star Wars trilogies.  JJ Abrams is a Star Wars fan, but he’s the kind of fan I dislike.  He obviously is no fan of the prequels and thus discounts all the wonderful ideas buried beneath the clumsy, stilted storytelling of those films. 

But wait, you say.  I’m supposed to be reviewing “The Last Jedi.”  Well, you’re right.  And the reason I’ve spent my first two paragraphs on setup is so you understand that I’m a hard sell for Disney Star Wars.  Hopefully that adds the necessary weight when I say that I absolutely loved Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. 

It isn’t a perfect film.  Some of the dialogue, particularly in the opening scenes with Domhnall Gleason’s General Hux and his bridge crew, is so tin-eared it would make even George Lucas cringe.  BB-8 is still a cartoon drawing of all the worst things about R2-D2.  But Rian Johnson did what JJ Abrams couldn’t do (and likely was forbidden from doing) with The Force Awakens: he surprises us.
  

Throughout the film’s 155-minute runtime, Johnson makes bold choices and leaves us constantly in fear for the safety of characters young and old.  Things happen that the audience absolutely does not expect.  And through it all, none of these choices ever rings false.  In fact, although Johnson breaks in various ways from what we by now think of as the Star Wars formula, he does so with the full understanding of the weight of those decisions.  Rian Johnson gets Star Wars.  This is a man who has watched all of Lucas’s Star Wars movies and, like me, has found something to appreciate in all of them, even the prequels; likely even Attack of the Clones, with its broken pace and confounding love story. 

Luke Skywalker tells Rey something like, “at the height of their power, the Jedi allowed a Sith Lord to take over the Republic and turn it into an Empire.  That’s their legacy.  Hubris.”  Yeah, Luke Skywalker just explained the prequels to Rey.  Everything about that pleases me.  I’ve written before about one of the broader ideas in the original six films being that the Jedi were not so wonderful, and that Anakin, as the Chosen One to restore balance, had to destroy both the Jedi and the Sith, from within.  Although Luke never says that as such, he does confess that he believes it’s time for the Jedi to end.  A surprise cameo from a beloved character – and I won’t spoil it here – leads to the understanding that failure is the greatest teacher, that the burden of all mentors is to see their students grow beyond them, and that we must let go of the past.  It’s bittersweet, it’s wrenching, and it’s absolutely dead-on. 

I echo the sentiments of my favorite entertainment journalist, Drew McWeeny, when I say that I was ready to concede that Star Wars no longer belongs to my tribe, that it’s somebody else’s now for better or for worse, and that I’d probably never really love anything new that the brand had to offer.  But Rian Johnson and “The Last Jedi” proved me wrong.  I couldn’t be happier to be so mistaken. 

For a more in-depth, SPOILER-FILLED REVIEW and other content from Sean, check out his blog HERE.