Film review : Star Wars - The Last Jedi (spoiler free)

The multi-stranded plot of The Last Jedi allows writer/director Rian Johnson to ease out the Star Wars veterans to concentrate on the next generation of the franchise, but not before a fitting farewell to Carrie Fisher, writes Alistair Harkness.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (12A) ***

Directed by Rian Johnson

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

Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm LtdDaisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm Ltd
Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm Ltd

It’s been 40 years since the original Star Wars came out, 40 years since George Lucas’s game-changing space saga caught a generation of fans – not to mention the movie industry and pop culture in general – in its all-powerful tractor beam. If you were a kid at the time, chances are you’ve stayed there willingly, enduring the dark times – the Ewok spin-off movies, the Botoxed-with-CGI Special Editions, the airless prequels – and breathing a sigh of relief when 2015’s The Force Awakens reminded us that Star Wars movies were supposed to be fun.

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That film, directed by JJ Abrams, was more of a remix than a reboot, a canny regurgitation of the first film’s plot with a new and welcome prominence for women and actors of colour in narrative-driving roles. It may have fanned the flames of nostalgia with soaring shots of the Millennium Falcon, but in the midst of all that fan service it also started reckoning with its past by subtly reducing R2-D2 and C-3PO to cameos, keeping Luke Skywalker off-screen until the final seconds and, most audaciously of all, killing off Han Solo.

It was Abrams’ way of acknowledging that formative childhood memories of Star Wars were no longer the exclusive preserve of Generation X, or if you will, Generation X-Wing.

Two years on and that mantle has passed to writer/director Rian Johnson, whose last film Looper featured a dizzying time-travel plot in which its protagonist’s past and future selves battled each other for dominance in the present. Not to get too meta about it, but something similar is going on in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Carrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / APCarrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / AP
Carrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / AP

Picking up pretty much exactly where The Force Awakens left off, the second film in the new trilogy functions in part like a wrecking ball, deliberately tearing down the past, sometimes even more ruthlessly than Abrams did. Hokey mythology is debunked, iconic artefacts are tossed glibly aside and extraneous characters groaningly reintroduced in The Force Awakens are summarily dispatched with barely a cursory mention made of their demise. There are some giddy red herrings too, with shots that feel like obvious set-ups for call-backs to classic moments from The Empire Strikes Back consigned to background texture and facetious humour undercutting the pomp of the evil First Order and the reverence for Luke Skywalker’s own exalted status in the series.

The latter is certainly useful for addressing how to reintroduce of him. Played once more by Mark Hamill, his greying, bearded, melancholic appearance at the end of The Force Awakens suggested he’d become a mystical old hermit – like Obi-Wan Kenobi without the gravitas of Alec Guinness. In truth he’s more like Yoda at his crankiest, a legend-scorning weirdo living in exile on a barely habitable rock.

Spending his days scowling, catching over-sized fish and ruing his own past hubris, specifically his failed attempt to train his nephew Ben Solo in the ways of the force (and thus helping birth Darth Vader wannabe Kylo Ren in the process), it’s small wonder that he has little time for Daisy Ridley’s Rey. She, of course, was the one who felt the force awaken last time around.

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Here she’s sought out Luke, hoping to find a teacher who can help her understand her place in the galaxy.

Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: John Wilson / Lucasfilm LtdMark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: John Wilson / Lucasfilm Ltd
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: John Wilson / Lucasfilm Ltd

Those fearing a remix of The Empire Strikes Back won’t be dissuaded by this development, nor by the splitting up of the principal players in the various narrative strands, or indeed a later battle attack by AT-AT Walkers on a salt-encrusted (but also snowbound) rebel base.

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But Johnson keeps things fresh as well, drawing new connections in weird and interesting ways and introducing a few more new characters into the mix to ensure you barely notice the casual way he’s sidelining old favourites like Chewbacca.

Among the latter are Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo – a military commander for the Resistance whose presence challenges the patriarchal assumptions of hotshot X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) – and Rose, a shy maintenance operative for the Resistance who gets a little star-struck when she meets rogue-stormtrooper-turned-Resistance-hero Finn (John Boyega). Rose’s introduction in particular once again emphasises the way these films are subtly (and not so subtly) changing the make-up of the Star Wars universe.

Played by Vietnamese-American actress Kelly Marie Tran, she’s the heart of the new film the way Boyega was in The Force Awakens and, even though the mission they embark upon feels a little surplus to requirements in an already jam-packed film, they’re more interesting to hang out with than some of the more established characters whose adventures we’ve seen in their prime.

Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm LtdDaisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm Ltd
Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: David James / Lucasfilm Ltd

Which isn’t to say Johnson hasn’t found a way to pay fitting tribute to the late Carrie Fisher, who passed away a year ago this Christmas, but whose work on the film was already finished. Her big moment in The Last Jedi at first seems in danger of being a little goofy, but it ends up being incredibly moving through the sheer force of Fisher’s star presence and the depth of feeling any self-respecting Star Wars fan can’t help but have for Princess Leia.

It’s also a moment buoyed elsewhere in the film by a destined-to-be iconic shot of Leia silhouetted against a setting sun, something that demonstrates the extent to which Johnson – like George Lucas before him – has an eye for capturing epic moments that simultaneously feel effortless and throwaway.

But not everything feels so casually brilliant. The spine of the film is the connection between the light and dark side of the Force respectively embodied by Rey and the patricidal, newly battle-scarred Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

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He’s repeatedly demeaned by his master, Supreme Leader Snoke, who scalds him for being beaten by a girl in his previous encounter with Rey and goes on to dismiss him as little more than child with a helmet, which is a bit rich given Snoke looks like Freddy Krueger stuffed inside an hourglass (he’s played by Andy Serkis, motion-captured as per usual).

It’s Kylo Ren who thus becomes obsessed with destroying the past. “That’s the only way to become what you’re meant to be,” he says, ominously.

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Alas, while the film follows through on this extremist attitude with some unexpected plot twists, those twists also feel as mechanical as Luke’s right hand. In short, they feel like try-hard attempts to deliver something, anything, that might replicate the shock-and-awe of the big reveals in The Empire Strikes Back because that’s what’s expected in the second instalment of a Star Wars trilogy.

Carrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / APCarrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / AP
Carrie Fisher as General Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi PIC: Lucasfilm / AP

As skilled as Johnson is, it’s hard to escape the notion that The Last Jedi represents another first generation fanboy filmmaker wrestling with what Star Wars meant to him as a child (a perspective we’ve already had from Abrams and will get again when he concludes the series). And yet Johnson does leave it at an intriguing place.

A final series of images not only suggests everything is in position for a new generation to make Star Wars their own, it also gives older fans permission to start gracefully ageing out of the saga. After 40 years, I’m OK with the latter.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is released tomorrow