Star Wars: Episode VIII –
The Last Jedi

Release Date: December 15th, 2017
Running Time: 152 minutes
Written & Directed by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro, Lupita Nyong'o, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Frank Oz (voice only)

SPOILER ALERT—DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SOME KEY DETAILS

There's so much to unpack in The Last Jedi that I don't know where to start. What an unholy mess. To be fair, the movie does have its kicks. It's certainly ambitious, over the top, and in many respects deviates from Star Wars tradition. It's not boring. But countless storytelling choices displayed here are downright baffling. Surprise and unpredictability are precious narrative qualities, but not if at the expense of the story making sense.

When George Lucas sold the Star Wars rights to Disney in 2012, many said they'd ruin the franchise. I defended the move at the time because the deal purportedly included Lucas's outlines for Episodes VII-IX and his longtime producer Kathleen Kennedy was to remain president of Lucasfilm; I thought Lucas had arranged the pieces for his Skywalker epic's proper completion. Alas, Disney and The Force Awakens (2015) writer-director J.J. Abrams ended up disregarding Lucas's notes and instead copied his original Star Wars film, pandering to nostalgic fans and prequel-haters. While not without positive qualities, The Force Awakens was fundamentally marred by excessive imitation, and left many unanswered questions.

So, I hoped The Last Jedi's writer-director Rian Johnson would deliver something better. But, oh boy, did he do a number. Just as Abrams undermined elements of previous Star Wars episodes while simultaneously rehashing elements from A New Hope (1977), Johnson undermines elements of The Force Awakens while rehashing elements from both The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). The Last Jedi definitely takes risks in exploring new Star Wars possibilities, earning descriptions like "rousing" and "bold". In many ways it is that. But this 8th episode has polarized audiences more than any other Star Wars movie, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes listing a Critic Rating of 91% but an Audience Rating of 44%—the lowest of any episode to date. Overall The Last Jedi tries too hard, its brashness and spectacle unable to compensate for flighty tone and narrative unreliability.

Rian Johnson dismisses foreshadowing details in The Force Awakens (TFA) and infuses The Last Jedi (TLJ) with more foreshadowing details, only to subvert those too. Minor characters introduced in TFA were implied to have substantial roles in this one. They don't. Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o) is only in one scene. Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) is also scarce. And Snoke is suddenly killed before anything more is revealed about him, rendering him largely insignificant in the series as just a shabby mock-up of the Emperor. Played by Andy Serkis via motion capture CGI, Snoke's cartoony look makes him less effective as the scary villain anyway. But his death leaves his phenomenal Force powers unexplained, and the Sith mythology abandoned.

As expected, there are many new aliens and places. In casino city Canto Bight bourgeois tourists and rich war profiteers indulge while horselike "fathiers" are exploited for gambling races in an underworld populated with child workers and a slew of nefarious characters. And Luke's oceanic island planet Ahch-To introduces a number of species; sea cow "thala-sirens", amphibious "Lanais", and birdlike "porgs". I don't know if Rian Johnson is a vegetarian or animal lover, but with so many space beasts there's a prominent animal-friendly theme. Chewbacca kills and cooks a porg only to not eat it after a group of porgs confront him, and he befriends them. The fathiers are freed from captivity by Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Finn (John Boyega). And on red salt planet Crait, a crystalline fox ("vulptex") leads the rebels to an escape route. Animal rights activists praised these components while taking exception to Luke's spearfishing, and vegans expressed disgust with his thala-siren milking. Pescatarians, however, were generally pleased.

Overt attempts at specific cause-oriented political messaging are another odd aspect to the film. Along with vegetarianism, animal abuse, weapons manufacturing, and child labour, there's mention of a "union dispute". And with several important female characters, a feminist theme emerges. This is cool for equality reasons, and timely given recent mainstream attention on sexual assault with the Me Too and Time's Up movements (although I'm not sure if TLJ passes the Bechdel Test). But it feels pretentious as conspicuous catering to current cultural trends. And often the women perish; Paige Tico (Veronica Ngo) dies immediately, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) sacrifices herself, and Rose ends up comatose after saving Finn. Why introduce so many female characters only to violently eradicate them?

Formidable moments frequently result from narratively unstable circumstances. Holdo's lightspeed flight through Snoke's Destroyer is awesome, but culminates from an irrational narrative line. Like the related issue of the slowest ever space chase—the setup is nonsensical. But Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) skidding his ship in space? Sweet. Benicio Del Toro is engaging as DJ, but again, senseless details surround the subplot wherein he's introduced in Canto Bight. Finn and Rose's plan to recruit a certain codebreaker goes immediately bad, but they're conveniently thrown in jail with a different codebreaker—DJ—who's ready for hire. And he has a key that he promptly uses to unlock their cell. Huh? Why is he there if he could've escaped at any time?

Leia's spacewalk stands out as a bizarre image in the long, densely packed movie (the longest of any Star Wars film at 2-hours-and-32-minutes), and one of the most unexpected and controversial scenes in the entire saga. Of the three main characters who've returned from the original trilogy—Luke, Leia, Han—Leia is the only one alive by this film's end. Yet, ironically, Carrie Fisher is the only actor of the three who died in real life, suddenly passing away in late 2016. Knowing it's Fisher's last performance elevates Leia's spacewalk as an unforgettable moment—for better or worse—for a legendary character who we never really saw use the Force before. And here she uses it in a monumental way—saving her own life. But it's all the more weird since Fisher died and the film is dedicated to her. How Leia's future absence will be addressed is an unwelcome question, albeit one audiences will likely excuse given Fisher's passing. But her death has to be written in now, an inevitably flimsy fate to be explained away as something that happens offscreen between movies.

Daisy Ridley continues to impress as heroine Rey. Even though written as somewhat one-dimensional here, she sustains a difficult emotional space; in perpetual teary-eyed frustration about her identity, Luke's refusal to train her, and the gloomy state of the galaxy. A compelling yet ultimately unsatisfying piece in Rey's quest for self-discovery is when she faces herself in the hall of mirrors in the void on Ahch-To. It's an obvious rehashing of Luke's vision on Dagobah facing Darth Vader, who turns out to be Luke himself, in The Empire Strikes Back. And it's a reversal of Vader telling Luke that he's his father when Kylo tells Rey her parents were drunks who sold her. This abruptly deflates clues TFA provided considering the mystery of Rey's lineage. Apparently she's not a descendant of anyone significant. Unless Kylo's lying and Rey actually is Luke or Leia's daughter. Ben Solo did, after all, take the name Kylo Ren, a collage of: sKYwalker, soLO, Rey, bEN. But Rey admits to knowing the truth in her heart, so it would be more unevenness if Episode IX were to re-evaluate Rey's origins now.

The ramifications of this run deep, reframing what we thought we knew about the Force. There's no genetic predisposition; Force sensitivity is arbitrary. And TLJ's last scene showing a slave boy using the Force confirms this. There's always been something elitist about Jedi and Skywalkers being the only Force users in the galaxy, a dynasty descended from superior, divine ancestry. We accepted it because of the allegorical value of Luke's story, that even a lowly farm boy can have a grand destiny in the stars. But the disclosure about Rey's parentage and her refusal to align with Kylo signals the end of the Skywalkers. It's Rey's story now. The Force doesn't favour any single bloodline, it's part of everything and everyone—even a child whose parents deserted her. While Rian Johnson doesn't provide adequate framework to support such a grand revelation, he's rewriting the perameters of the Star Wars cinematic universe in a big, important way.

Despite TFA's flaws, it ends superbly with Rey offering Luke his (formerly Anakin's) old lightsaber—a symbolic bridging of the trilogies. But Rian Johnson instantly undoes this when Luke casually tosses the saber over his shoulder onto a cliff. And later Rey and Kylo tear it into two pieces. This is like Johnson saying, "Forget about that old Star Wars stuff you love, and forget about what J.J. Abrams set up in TFA—we're throwing all that out." Johnson keeps referencing stuff from previous episodes only to demonstrably discard it with a "wink, nudge" brand of ironic storytelling. In the original trilogy Luke was a childhood hero to millions, but still many thought Mark Hamill a marginal actor and the performance cheesy. TLJ tends toward an irreverent portrayal of Luke as a disillusioned, cranky, wimpish hermit in self-imposed exile. He has sworn off Jedi practices, disconnected himself from the Force, and only reluctantly agrees to train Rey after she relentlessly pesters him. The skimpy training sequences partially remake young Luke's training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and partially rebuke it. In this way the Rey-Luke relationship is a microcosm of the whole film in its concurrent setting up and tearing down of tropes.

As it turns out, Luke feels responsible for creating Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). While training him, Luke discovered Ben's powerful dark side, so one night drew his lightsaber to slay the boy while he slept—but paused, changing his mind. Ben awoke, saw Luke with weapon drawn, and thought his uncle was about to kill him. Then Ben Solo became Kylo Ren and formed the Knights of Ren (who we don't find anything more about after their mentioning in TFA). Did Luke's action cause his nephew to defect to the dark side, or was Luke right and Ben was headed there anyway? A philosophical point arises here on the cause-and-effect cycle of violence, fear, and trauma, between victimizer and victimized.

The implications are massive. This is Luke Skywalker, who faced his father Darth Vader and resisted striking him down out of fear and anger despite immense pressure from the Sith. Luke's commitment to love and forgiveness was so strong that he caused the righteous part of Anakin Skywalker still living within Vader to reawaken and claim some semblance of redemption by destroying the Emperor, saving his own son and in effect the entire universe. But now Luke was going to kill a kid because he sensed darkness in him, and felt so guilty about it that he detached from the Force and banished himself from the outside world. Then who made the map to his hideout? And how did Maz have his lightsaber? It doesn't add up.

Then there's Luke's astral projection. He shows up at Crait and as far as we know at the time, he's physically there. There's no reason at this point to imagine otherwise because we've never seen anyone use the Force like this. But we'd never seen anyone float through outerspace like Leia, Force-Skype like Rey and Kylo, or command lightning from the sky like Yoda's ghost, either—so ostensibly anything goes. Luke's not a hologram; he touches things in his surroundings. He embraces and kisses Leia, hands her the Millennium Falcon's dashboard dice, then exits the base. The First Order fire all their weapons, but Luke emerges from the smoke untouched, brushing some imaginary dirt off his shoulder as if to say, "That's all you got?" This is kind of great but also laughably campy since Luke dies minutes later anyway. It's all an act, Luke's ploy to distract the enemy while his friends escape out the back door of the base. When Kylo's lightsaber goes right through Luke we see it's an illusion—Luke is actually on Ahch-To, meditating. Then he vanishes in both locations.

Earlier, Luke's X-wing is shown submerged in Ahch-To's shallow waters in what looks like foreshadowing that he'll Force-raise it out and fly to the action—a callback to Yoda raising it out of Dagobah's swamp in The Empire Strikes Back. But Rian Johnson again subverts expectations he sets up. Why doesn't Luke just go to Crait in person? In the Rey/Kylo Force-Skyping, her laser blast passes through him yet water from her environment splashes on him. Luke's image likewise appears to fluctuate in tangibility. And those dice are confusing. Luke places them in Leia's hand—so they are tactile objects. But Kylo finds them on the ground and they disappear from his hand when Luke vanishes. Leia evidently doesn't value the dice enough to not lose them, so she must know they're not real. If Luke gives the dice to Leia as a symbol of the old days, knowing they'll disappear, is he telling her to let go of the past?

It seems that's what the whole movie is telling us. It's a worthy theme if framed with respect of history, to not dwell in the past but cherish its lessons. But Rian Johnson takes a more reproachful view of Star Wars history, telling us to forget about J.J. Abrams, George Lucas, and Luke Skywalker—that all we need to know is what happens in this one movie. While some feel this is disrespectful to freethinking Star Wars fans, others applaud Johnson as debunking the old myths to create new, better ones. But while TLJ overturns Star Wars lore, challenges TFA, and leaves more questions and narrative gaps, it also feels like the final episode of the trilogy in its terminating of characters and storylines. Rey's origin story is over—that's it, sorry you got your hopes up. Snoke dies—that's the end of the Sith storyline. Phasma dies, but who cares? Han Solo—already dead. And Luke dies. Maybe he'll come back as a ghost, but he's still dead. Leia lives at the end, but the character's done since Carrie Fisher died in real life. So, what's going to happen in the last episode?

Disney hired Colin Trevorrow to helm Episode IX, then fired him following story disputes. And now, incredibly, J.J. Abrams is back to write and direct, saying IX will tie all three trilogies together. But given Rian Johnson's usurping of The Force Awakens, Abrams faces an absolutely thankless task in concluding one of the most beloved stories of all time. Will he try to re-establish some of what he hinted at in TFA and undo what Johnson negated? After the startlingly plagiaristic TFA and the narratively unsound TLJ, wrapping up the Skywalker story in any satisfying way seems impossible now. The standalone films may end up being the better ones, especially if they move in more imaginative directions and stop playing it safe with backstories of the main saga. Rogue One was good for what it was, and we'll see about Solo, but I want the anthology films to explore lesser-known reaches of Star Wars' vast universe.

Star Wars used to be my favourite movie series, but it's heavily scarred after this kooky entry. I guess this is how some people felt after Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) which was criticized for choppy CGI, boring plot, and hokey dialogue—as were II and III. But at least the prequel trilogy introduced some fascinating mythology, and was stylistically consistent throughout. With its plethora of unstable details TLJ will hopefully quiet prequel-haters, as Episodes I-III are sober works compared to this poorly written jumble. Nonetheless, Disney has given Rian Johnson his own new trilogy to launch after Episode IX. So, predictions about Disney's involvement have been realized: the Star Wars franchise has become a hodgepodge of discontinuity and overkill. The increasingly rapid release schedule (TLJ debuted 5 months before Solo) means Johnson wrote TLJ before TFA even finished filming.

Star Wars has always had comic relief and a lighthearted sense of adventure contrasting darker elements. But the humour is more pronounced here, seeming aimed to get laughs from the odd timing and corny delivery more than the actual jokes. It's almost self-parodying at times, like the filmmakers are saying "Don't take any of it too seriously because we certainly don't." Continually referencing and rejecting Star Wars history reiterates a storytelling outlook that undercuts what came before, giving TLJ an unneeded cheeky, metafictional air, as if to say "We know what happened in the other movies and we're gonna let you know that we know, but then we're gonna dismiss those things that happened and let you know that we know we're dismissing them." Rian Johnson is of Generation X, but TLJ exhibits the clichéd worst Millennial attitude; a smug, overbearing sense of irony and sarcasm and shrugging acceptance of cynicism and nihilism. It seems TLJ's filmmakers geared it toward such an audience, knowing that younger people are most affected by marketing and generally determine mainstream popularity.

The Last Jedi tries different things, but rather than a finely-tuned epic it comes off as a patchwork of bombastic ideas Rian Johnson thought up on a whim. Superficially, aesthetically, it's a hoot. There are awe-inspiring battles, cool-looking creatures, new sci-fi technology, and alien worlds. More female characters is a positive thing, but it's devalued by most of them dying. And the animal-friendly theme, another commentary new to the series, feels exploitative in its obviousness. Magnificent visual imagery accompanies some jaw-dropping story decisions. Holdo's lightspeed manoeuvre is thrilling. Leia's spacewalk is stunning—and as Carrie Fisher's final role before her untimely death, it's a memorable moment for the iconic actress and character. These are things we've never seen the likes of before in Star Wars, as is Luke's Force projection, and other outlandish flourishes too numerous to list. So, at a cursory glance, The Last Jedi has some entertaining, unexpected traits. But deeper analysis reveals confounding details surrounding nearly every instance of something new or intriguing, rendering it less interesting and unable to stand up to much examination.
Rating (out of 5): ★★½
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
May 4th, 2018