STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

In case some of you haven't heard, there's a new Star Wars movie in theaters. I figured I'd go check it out.

(Spoilers ahead)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017)

Directed by Rian Johnson 

Written by Rian Johnson

Starring Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver

First, a bit of rambling to act as more

SPOILER 

SPACE

for anyone that found themselves here accidentally (meaning, everyone here).

I'm one of "those people" when it comes to Star Wars. I discovered it at the right age and it's been with me ever since. I'm one of those people that, when I say 'Star Wars' I mean STAR WARS - the movie that came out in 1977. Not Episode IV or 'A New Hope' or anything like that.

As such, looking at it totally objectively is pretty much out the window. Plus, with the death of Carrie Fisher I had trouble not only seeing her onscreen for the last time, but wondering if they found a way to end Princess Leia's story in this film or if it would be up to Episode IX to figure out.

That said....

Looking around, this one is either one of the best Star Wars movies ever, or one of the worst movies ever made. Ah, internet....hope you never change.

My truth, as in most things, is somewhere in the middle.

"This is not going to go the way you think!" - Luke Skywalker

There's a reason they used this line a lot in the film advertising. 

Certainly, before seeing it I hadn't expected to spend so much time trying to wrap my head around what happens and what I'd think about it. I'm still processing a lot of it, so this will likely ramble around even more than I usually do.

Both Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker are trying to let go of the past. In Ren's case, he's wanting to be seen for who he is and not be defined by his parents, and when Snoke makes a comment about Vader and Ren aping him by wearing a mask, he smashes the mask and we never see it again. When Rey finally gets to talk to Luke Skywalker, he wants nothing to do with her or rebuilding the Jedi. Their time has passed.

I think Rian Johnson felt something similar, realizing that for Star Wars to continue as a viable brand, they needed to shake up the formula. He's not wrong. I stopped reading most of the tie-in novels (save for the X-Wing series) because too many of them kept the same pattern - find a previously lost Jedi or a new Force user, and also destroy whatever superweapon the Empire or other baddies have built. It was getting old.
Like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK before it, it's tonally a much darker movie than its predecessor. THE FORCE AWAKENS took a lot (some would say too much) from the original STAR WARS, but while it wasn't the Episode VII I was hoping for, I think it was the one needed. The one that reminded an audience that's been used to hearing the prequel trilogy get trashed of what it was about the originals that we loved. THE LAST JEDI, likewise, isn't the Episode VIII that I maybe wanted, but I think it's the one that needed to be made. 

THE LAST JEDI (I'm gonna be lazy and use TLJ from now on) picks up directly from the end of THE FORCE AWAKENS (still lazy - TFA from here on out), a movie that ended pretty much with a signpost pointing in the direction the sequel would take. Johnson maybe glanced at the sign, but then he took the characters off into a direction of his choosing. Some of it worked, playing against expectations in exciting ways. Some of it...just seemed like he tossed aside stuff from TFA he didn't like/wasn't interested in.



Overall, I liked what he did, particularly with Kylo and Rey. TLJ not only echoes EMPIRE, it heads in to RETURN OF THE JEDI territory with its Kylo/Rey/Snoke confrontation, but that's a lot crammed in to the two-and-a-half hour runtime and some of it didn't work for me at all. Some plot points that seem to exsist solely to get characters into place, but don't make much sense and really it's kind-of a mess. But the Kylo/Ren stuff, Luke Skywalker (and Hamill's great portrayal), the riff on "certain points of view"....the good stuff is really, really good and the bad stuff - look, I've loved Star Wars all my life and there's a lot bad stuff in all of them if you really think about it.

And for a story that is (according to Lucas) supposed to be presented thru the 'eyes' of C-3P0 and R2-D2, they certainly haven't had much to do in this trilogy so far, have they?

As I said, tho, the biggest thing throughout was wondering where it was going from here? With Episode IX back in the hands of JJ Abrams, will he keep going down Johnson's path or will he turn it towards safer ground? And how will they handle the absence of Leia? I think one sign of a good movie is that it makes you want to see what happens next and after this one, I really want to see what happens next.