- UK release: December 2017
- Director: Rian Johnson · Writer: Rian Johnson
- Studio / distributor: Lucasfilm; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Space opera / science-fiction adventure · Runtime: 152 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Daisy Ridley (The Force Awakens) as Rey; Mark Hamill (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back) as Luke Skywalker; Adam Driver (Paterson) as Kylo Ren; Carrie Fisher (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back) as Leia Organa
- IMDb: 7.0 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 90% critics / 43% audience · My rating: 7.5 / 10
Two years ago The Force Awakens reintroduced this universe by carefully, lovingly handing us the old one back: a desert orphan, a hidden map, a planet-sized weapon, a masked villain with a famous surname. It worked, and it was meant to reassure. The Last Jedi is the film that has to do something with all that careful set-up, and Rian Johnson, brought over from the small, clever Looper and Brick, has decided the most interesting thing he can do is take every expectation that first film planted and refuse to water it. The result is the most divisive Star Wars film since the prequels, and the first one in a long while that seems to have an argument on its mind.
The setup
The Resistance is in full retreat. The First Order has the survivors of the last film outnumbered and outgunned, and what follows is essentially a slow chase through space, the fleet bleeding ships and fuel while Leia and a hot-headed pilot called Poe disagree about how to save what is left. Off on a remote island, Rey has finally found Luke Skywalker, only to discover the legend is a bitter hermit who wants nothing to do with the war, the Jedi, or her. She wants training and a reason to hope; he wants to be left alone to let an old religion die. Meanwhile Kylo Ren, scarred and unstable after the events of the first film, is being pulled in directions neither his master nor his enemies expect.
The cast
Daisy Ridley carries the spiritual half of the film almost single-handed, and Rey is more interesting here than she was as the bright new hope of The Force Awakens: hungrier, lonelier, more willing to look in the wrong places for answers. Mark Hamill is the surprise. Asked to play Luke as a defeated old man who failed at the one thing he is famous for, he gives the best performance of his career in the role, all weariness and buried guilt and the odd flash of the farm boy underneath. Adam Driver, so good in the quiet of Paterson, makes Kylo Ren genuinely volatile rather than merely sulky, and the long-distance scenes he shares with Ridley are the film’s strongest stretch. Carrie Fisher’s Leia carries the weight of the whole saga in a few scenes, and a subplot for Poe and the engineer Rose never quite earns the screen time it takes.
The craft
Johnson directs like someone who has watched a great deal of cinema and wants you to notice. The film looks magnificent: a red-and-white salt planet that bleeds where the ground is scraped, a throne room lit like a furnace, a silent jump to lightspeed that is the single best image in the sequel trilogy. Steve Yedlin’s photography gives the space battles real depth, and John Williams is still finding new corners of a score he has been writing for forty years. The pacing is the weak point. At two and a half hours the central chase sags, and the detour to a casino city stops the film dead just as it should be tightening. When Johnson trusts his actors and his images over his plotting, which is often, the film is wonderful. When the machinery of a middle-chapter blockbuster takes over, it shows.
How it stacks up
Every second film in a Star Wars trilogy lives in the shadow of The Empire Strikes Back, and Johnson knows it. He reaches for the same darkness, the same idea that heroes can lose and lose badly, but where Empire deepened its myths, The Last Jedi spends much of its running time poking holes in them. Lineage does not matter, the script keeps insisting; the past should be allowed to die; the legends were only ever people. It is the most Looper thing imaginable, a film built around undercutting the very nostalgia The Force Awakens sold us, and whether that thrills or annoys you will decide how you feel about the whole enterprise. As a piece of franchise film-making it is far braver than J. J. Abrams’s careful revival, and far less interested in keeping everyone happy.
Critics versus the rest of us
The split is remarkable. Critics are around 90 per cent positive, praising the ambition, the visuals and the willingness to take the saga somewhere uncomfortable. Audience scores are sitting near 43 per cent, and the gap is real rather than manufactured: a large slice of long-time fans feel the film has thrown away set-ups they were promised and disrespected characters they grew up with. Both sides have a point. The film does break its own toys, sometimes carelessly. It also does the one thing a middle chapter should, which is leave the saga in a genuinely uncertain place. I came out the first time admiring it and faintly irritated by it. The second time, knowing the swerves were coming, I enjoyed it a great deal more.
Verdict
This is a flawed, overlong, frequently magnificent film, and that repeat-viewing jump is the heart of how I score it. On a first watch the subverted expectations land as frustration as often as surprise, and the casino detour is hard to forgive. Watch it again, with the shocks absorbed, and what remains is the boldest, best-directed and best-acted Star Wars film in decades, anchored by a Luke Skywalker who finally has something to play. It could have been tighter and braver about its own structure rather than just its mythology. But it is the rare blockbuster that wants to mean something, and it rewards the people who give it a second look. 7.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, including IMAX and 3D screenings. Coming to DVD, Blu-ray and 4K in the new year.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the divide this film opened never really closed, and it shaped the trilogy that followed. The Rise of Skywalker (2019) reversed several of Johnson’s boldest swerves and tried to please the fans this film had unsettled, which left the trilogy pulling against itself. Johnson, for his part, went off and made the warmer, wittier Knives Out (2019). Over time The Last Jedi has settled into the saga’s most argued-over entry, admired more in hindsight by people who came round to its ambitions. It now streams on Disney+ and is widely available on disc.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate violence. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Moderate violence includes gunfights, aerial dogfights between spaceships, and use of lightsabers and other hand-held weapons. Blood and injury detail is limited and brief.
Additional issues: There is occasional mild threat and infrequent mild bad language (‘ass’, ‘bastard’, ‘bloody’).
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
