Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Take a deep breath, strap on your galactic seatbelts and engage thrusters, it’s time for the latest Star Wars instalment and this one’s a doozy. The future of the rebel forces hangs in the balance, the powers of evil are closing in and Kylo Ren and Rey tread the tightrope between the light and the dark. Think you know where the story’s going? Think again.
Much less of a throw-back nostalgia trip than The Force Awakens, this film strikes out to forge new territory and proves its mettle as one of the most intimate and daring instalments of the franchise. The film can be summed up in Luke Skywalker’s own words “this is not going to go the way you think it is.”
Rey’s training with Luke goes far beyond the master/student training montage you expect and plays with the moral dimensions of each character in very interesting ways. Carrie Fisher is superb as ever and knowing that this was her last appearance in a Star Wars film ever, filled her scenes with the bittersweet. She is, however, given one of the movie’s most pivotal and jaw-dropping moments, so whilst this is the last we'll see of Leia, her storyline is still satisfying.
This is the most artsy and unashamedly stylised Star Wars film to date and is almost offensively aware of its swish and sublime black, white and red all over colour-scheme. The Last Jedi languishes in its aesthetic like a toasty poncho and stills of certain scenes are so vibrant they could be mistaken for a Fauvist painting or a pulp sci fi poster.
It's also not afraid to take more risks than its predecessors, both cinematically and topically, from Finn deconstructing capitalism in a casino to breath-taking moments of pure silence during space battles before the sound reaches the viewer. It’s the funkiest Star Wars to date, featuring an shiny metal storm trooper (affectionately named “chrome dome” by Finn) and more adorable alien species than ever before. You can look forward to meeting Porgs, Vorptex and Fathiers, who are exactly as cute and smushy as they sound. The world-building also deserves kudos: from the crimson soil and blood red salt crystals of Crait, to Canto Bight, the casino world belonging to the galaxy’s most rich and corrupt. But, more than anything, it’s a relief to not have to suffer through J.J. Abram’s fetish for lens flares any more.
It’s hard not to feel that every Star Wars episode is just the same film re-made, re-vamped and re-hashed, so perhaps it’s appropriate that I’m also recycling a criticism that has already been made over and over before. This blockbuster has many notable exceptions to the rule, but generally the film is laced with déjà vu the film is laced with déjà vu the film is laced with déjà vu. I think this frustration comes from wanting progression from a series (of which this film does try to stretch the mould a little) but if you think of all Star Wars films as being basically just one film that riff off one another and echo plots and motifs then you’ll be more or less satisfied.
Let’s talk through the film’s newcomers. First off, welcome to the glamorous but uncompromising Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (brilliantly captured by Laura Dern), who, with her ensemble of pink hair and steely but compassionate leadership manages to invert most stereotypes of women in the franchise and shows a huge evolution in the series as a whole. If for nothing else, it’s worth it to see her berate Po and watch him shuffle his feet like a guilty schoolboy. Kelly Marie Tran is magnificent as Rose Tico, a timid maintenance worker turned heroine. Benicio del Toro is clearly just having a lot of fun playing DJ, an underworld codebreaker with a speech impediment that is neither caricatured nor gratuitous.
The First Order (one Snoke, one Hux, one Ren) are your run of the mill pale and queasy looking villains, the Gestapo-ish uniforms of their subordinates seem to get more ludicrous with each cinematic instalment and the CGI for Supreme Leader Snoke is thoroughly underwhelming. Predictable as they are, their overblown “I will destroy them all mahahahahah” corny vibe is enjoyable as hell, and the film made the smart move of owning its cheese, rather artfully shrugging it off with some great in-jokes about how “pasty” Domhnall Gleeson’s character is.
As part two of a trilogy, you can’t help but compare it to Empire Strikes Back (Attack of the Clones just doesn’t count). Whilst nothing can replace the rush of seeing the epic and imaginative rush of Episode V for the first time, this does a lot to step out of the shadow of its predecessors and thrusts its three-pronged red lightsabre up the arse of predictability.
8/10
