Rian Johnson delivers the strangest movie in the Star Wars franchise.
Last week:Megadeath Star.
This week:The Last Jeditwists and turns.
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Plus:Skywalkerhits in a few days, socheck out EWs newStar Warspodcast!
Its time to let old things die, says Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels.
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Let it all die.
HasntStar Warsdone enough to us?
There are stunning moments and terrible soliloquies, sexy interludes and romance without chemistry.
The story turns courageous and cowardly, sometimes in a single scene.
So Johnson truly authored this unified mess, full of gorgeous sequences and exhausting sincerity.
It pinnacles exquisitely in the opening scene.
Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) launches an attack on the invading First Order.
The outmatched Resistance bombers explode into deathspires.
We catch sight of one woman (Veronica Ngo) on a suicide run.
Johnson builds her micro tragicomic set piece into the macro Good-and-Evil spacefight.
She kicks a ladder, and turns a blinking red light green.
The bombs drop as her ship explodes.
She looks right at us, killing flames above, frozen space underneath.
The brief wondrous screen life of Paige Tico captures that possibility better than anything since the Mos Eisley Cantina.
It prepares you for a wholeStar Warsmovie yet unmade full of nobodies who are quite somebody.
(Lifes too short, so I will not be exploring theStar Wars Storyspin-offs in this essay series.)
Elsewhere, Skywalkers are skywalking.
Leia (Carrie Fisher) chastises Poe against cocky cockpitting.
One central weirdness ofLast Jediis how the constant takedown of franchise tropes requires building those tropes to stratospheric heights.
They are avatars for hope in the galaxy.
And the narrative purpose, initially, is to challenge the expectations of day-saving.
Luke barks, dismissive.
Im gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?
Honestly: That is not what I thought.
And she is right, it turns out.
His image really is what matters.
Hamill returns a mesmerizingly unfussy performer, giving the elder Jedi a wounded charm and savvy sorrow.
Hes an anti-prophet, a Jedi who believes it is time for the Jedi to end.
None of this resolves a central problem: Every scene on Jedi Island is pedantic past absurdity.
To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies is vanity, Luke posits.
Can you feel that?
Well, how vain it is to spend half a movie explaining your own subtext?
There is an incredible, perfect shot here.
Rey trains with her lightsaber, while Luke watches her.
Instead, we keep learning.
Even the famously expository prequels didnt spend so long excavating Force doctrine.
Its like someone built a whole Vatican to prove the Vatican is dumb.
I agree, the Jedi are weird as hell.
Cant we do something different?
His life seems too clean, somehow, so dedicated to broadcasting his ideas.
His whole existence has become a think piece, and that on-the-nose quality extends throughout the story tangle.
There are things you cannot solve by jumping in an X-wing and blowing stuff up!
Leia tells a heroic X-wing fighter whose job is blowing stuff up.
Hes talking to Finn (John Boyega), the sequel trilogy character served worst byLast Jedis diffuse plot.
The setup has promise, though.
The Resistance flies away from the First Order megafleet.
This is great fodder for tense space-submarine warfare.
Johnson is merciless in his depiction of the steady fuel breakdown.
Kylo Ren leads an attack, andalmostkills his own mother.
Instead, a couple rando TIE fighters explode the command center.
Meanwhile, Admiral Ackbar (Timothy D. Rose) fades into the void.
Toss all the old toys into a funeral pyre!
That instinct was already the best thing about the mass-murderousRevenge of the Sith.
Instead, our characters spread across the galaxy.
Reys on her island, learning a valuable lesson about not learning lessons.
Poe spendsLast Jediin an intriguing mansplaining fable, the loudmouth hotshot who keeps challenging his female commanders.
This subplots a half-measure, though.
That ones a troublemaker.
I like him, says Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), after Poe stages an actual mutiny.
Me too, Leia agrees.
Think how much sharper the point would be if one of them said: Geez, that guys anahole.
It wants to wipe the slate clean, and then it demonizes slate-wiping.
Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) reappears to burn the Jedi scrolls.
No small thing, to create the first great Yoda sequence in 37 years.
And then those damned Jedi texts reappear on the Millennium Falcon, unscorched!
Credit Johnson, though, for developingthe Kylo Ren-Rey relationship.
Driver shades his patricidal darksider with quivery strength.
He is, we discover, a man let down by every mentor hes ever had.
Luke Skywalker thought for the briefest moment of pure instinct about killing him.
Snoke only values his bloodline.
There remains the obvious possibility that his parents were awful.
So he has a distinct motto: Let the past die, he tells Rey.
Kill it, if you have to.
One possible translation of this anti-nostalgia call to action: okay, boomer.
The Rey-Kylo material brings out something new in Ridley, who had to race breathlessly throughThe Force Awakens.
That rhymes, weirdly, with what Luke is telling her.
In Johnsons twisted vision, theyre trying to fix each other.
Rey wants to pull Ben Solo out of Kylo Ren.
Kylo Ren wants to pull Rey out of this whole paradigm, man.
When they fight Snokes guardsmen, the choreography tells a story.
Theyre not just fighting.
You have no place in this story, Kylo says.
You come from nothing.
But not to me.
But Im struck by Kylos sincere admiration.
Helikesthat Rey comes from nothing.
And then they fight, and then Kylo Ren decides hed like to be a murderous Supreme Leader.
Except, like: It actuallyisa heroic act of self-sacrifice, and Luke Skywalkerdoesrescue the Resistance.
In 1977,Star Warsgave Luke a medal.
In 2017,Last Jedimakes him Space Jesus.
So this movie is an act of devotion, whatever its contradictions.
The war is just beginning, Luke says before he dies.
Is he threatening Kylo Ren or us?
Rey yells in the gunpit.
Of course she does.
Shes been cooped up all movie, trying to redeem one symbolic Skywalker or another.
Johnson films beautiful spacefights, but he keeps his knives in.
