Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Every­thing comes down to hope. In these trou­bled times we live in, it’s all too easy to rest on pes­simism. It’s easy to arch eye­brows and roll eyes, to close your­self off from the litany of cul­tur­al, social and polit­i­cal mal­adies in the name of self-preser­va­tion. Hope is dif­fi­cult. Hope is painful. Hope means accept­ing that humans, for all their many, many faults, are a species that sur­vives only on the notion that things can (and, with a lit­tle per­se­ver­ance, will) get bet­ter. It’s this spark which has man­aged to sus­tain life for thou­sands of years – if noth­ing else, we’re a scrap­py lot.

Every sin­gle day we’re remind­ed of own our frailty and fol­ly through a con­stant bar­rage of sto­ries about the new and dis­turb­ing ways we find in which to tear our­selves and our plan­et apart. It’s easy to lose sight of the truth which has always been such: while a glim­mer of hope sur­vives, so do we. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian John­son isn’t just sell­ing us the lat­est instal­ment of a bil­lion-dol­lar saga. He’s sell­ing us the notion that sur­viv­ing isn’t just some­thing you do – it’s some­thing you have to believe in.

I didn’t always believe in sur­vival. For a very long time, I believed in as close to noth­ing as a per­son can get. I cred­it many things with pulling me out of the hor­rif­ic depres­sion which con­sumed the major­i­ty of my youth, which made me scared and angry and sad, but most of all, feel the absence of emo­tion. The great void where you become so des­per­ate to expe­ri­ence any sort of cathar­sis, you become uncon­cerned with the path that you take to get there. In The Last Jedi, the void is phys­i­cal and metaphor­i­cal – and hope is the small­est Rey of light, defi­ant in the face of that which would see it extinguished.

Pick­ing up where The Force Awak­ens left off, we find our heroes scat­tered across the galaxy. Hav­ing found Luke Sky­walk­er (Mark Hamill) in his self-imposed exile, Rey (Daisy Rid­ley) sets about try­ing to con­vince him to return to the Rebel­lion to fin­ish what he start­ed. Fly­ing ace Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Gen­er­al Leia Organa (Car­rie Fish­er) lead an attempt to shake the grip of the nefar­i­ous First Order, while reformed Stormtroop­er Finn (John Boye­ga) wres­tles with his iden­ti­ty. All the while, Kylo Ren (Adam Dri­ver) receives the per­for­mance assess­ment of the cen­tu­ry from Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). In the director’s chair, John­son appears unfazed by the daunt­ing task of hav­ing to weave these nar­ra­tive threads into a sin­gle coher­ent tapes­try, evolv­ing the devel­op­men­tal arcs of char­ac­ters both new and old.

It helps, of course, that he is blessed with an excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed cast. Isaac is giv­en more screen time to be ter­mi­nal­ly dash­ing and well-mean­ing-to-a-fault, while Hamill’s return to the saga is treat­ed with the just the right amount of rev­er­ence. Boye­ga strikes up an unlike­ly friend­ship with spiky new­com­er Rose (Kel­ly Marie Tran) as they set off on a side mis­sion of their own. In a fran­chise that has always cel­e­brat­ed out­siders and con­nect­ed fam­i­lies, the easy chem­istry and blos­som­ing com­pan­ion­ship of this pair is par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant – as is the posi­tion­ing of Vice Admi­ral Ami­lyn Hol­do (Lau­ra Dern) as a stern peer of Leia’s. More than ever the Resis­tance feels like a fleshed-out organ­i­sa­tion in which there are no small roles. It feels like a family.

Across the uni­verse, Kylo Ren and Rey each strug­gle to find their place in the order of things. Dri­ver con­tin­ues to prove his might as the First Order’s enfant ter­ri­ble – those big brown eyes swim with a con­flict so pal­pa­ble it might as well be a blaster shot straight to the chest. Ren might have been an angsty brat in The Force Awak­ens, but in The Last Jedi he’s wrestling with some­thing much deep­er than dad­dy issues. Sim­i­lar­ly, Rey con­tin­ues her per­son­al quest, turn­ing to Jedi Mas­ter Sky­walk­er for guid­ance while striv­ing to resist Ren’s mag­net­ic pull. She sees in him what she sees in her­self: a des­per­a­tion to belong to some­thing or some­where. This con­flict is well-estab­lished with­in the Star Wars realm, and just as young Sky­walk­er looked to the bina­ry sun­set on Tatooine for his des­tiny, so do Ren and Rey.

But nos­tal­gia can only get you so far. The real suc­cess of The Last Jedi lies not in the affec­tion it clear­ly holds for George Lucas’ orig­i­nal tril­o­gy, but the way it man­ages to move the sto­ry for­ward. ​“Let the past die,” urges Ren, and he has a point. One of the crit­i­cisms lev­elled at The Force Awak­ens was that it felt too much like a great­est hits pack­age tai­lored towards an audi­ence who had grown up wield­ing plas­tic lightsabers around their back­yard. Whether you agree with that sen­ti­ment or not, it’s dif­fi­cult to lev­el the same argu­ment at The Last Jedi.

The bat­tle scenes are as thrilling as they’ve ever been, par­tic­u­lar­ly the glo­ri­ous white-and-red spec­ta­cle glimpsed in the film’s trail­er. As in Johnson’s 2012 film Loop­er, each and every set-piece here is beau­ti­ful­ly staged and nev­er super­flu­ous. Right from the open­ing scene, he puts his own stamp on pro­ceed­ings with­out it ever seem­ing like an exer­cise in van­i­ty. It’s lit­tle won­der he’s been entrust­ed with three more Star Wars films.

The Last Jedi is a lit­tle rough around the edges. There’s a sense of nar­ra­tive mis­di­rec­tion which grates slight­ly, and while not quite over­long, one or two scenes could have eas­i­ly been cut for a lean­er pace. The thing is, Star Wars has always been a bit messy, a lit­tle hokey even. If The Last Jedi were a per­son, it would be a gap-toothed child with a grin like an inter­galac­tic sun­rise – part of its charm is the unruly cowlick stick­ing up on its head.

There’s no escap­ing the twin themes of birth and death which make The Last Jedi the most emo­tion­al instal­ment in the saga to date. Some things must die in order for Star Wars to progress, and it’s accept­ing this loss and how to move for­ward from it that enable us, like the fran­chise, to grow. Case in point: the loss of Car­rie Fish­er real­ly hits home when you see her shine as Leia for one last time. But if Star Wars has taught us any­thing, it’s that death is nev­er the end. That’s what hope is all about.

John­son nails the cru­cial moments in his script, cre­at­ing a sense of slack-jawed won­der­ment not seen in this series since James Earl Jones uttered the immor­tal words: ​“I am your father.” He com­bines these with a healthy dose of inter­galac­tic weird­ness, includ­ing the Ewok-esque Porgs, which serve as a con­ve­nient mer­chan­dis­ing point and source of light slap­stick humour. One of the things that has always set Star Wars apart from sim­i­lar sci-fi block­busters is its total earnest­ness. It invites us to believe in a human strug­gle tak­ing place in a fan­tas­tic set­ting. The Last Jedi is no excep­tion, trans­port­ing us to dis­tant reach­es of a galaxy where any­thing is pos­si­ble. Where any­thing has to be possible.