A Star Wars that seeks love and deserves it
Film has all of the box-checking elements required for global success, while catering to even the fussiest fans
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
K (out of 4) Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Kelly Marie Tran, Domhnall Gleeson, Laura Dern, Benicio del Toro, Lupita Nyong’o and Anthony Daniels. Opens Friday (with Thursday night previews) at GTA theatres. 152 minutes. PG
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a movie that really wants us to love it, even more so than its crowd-pleasing predecessor, The Force Awakens.
Rian Johnson’s muscular contribution to the enduring space-fantasy franchise is filled with plotquickening images of outstretched arms and hands that beckon and entreat.
There are more jokes than before, sometimes at risk to the drama — imagine kidding about the solemn exhortation, “May the Force be with you.”
Returning figures both vintage and recent will gladden the hearts of even the fussiest of Star Wars fanatics.
These include Mark Hamill’s Jedi stalwart Luke Skywalker, who finally rejoins the main stage 34 years after Return of the Jedi, and the late Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia (now Resistance-leading Gen. Leia Organa), whose presence seemed in doubt following her untimely death last Christmas. (She’d already filmed most of her now-poignant scenes; the judicious use of CGI helps close any gaps.)
Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron are back as Resistance fighters, along with their mechanical and animal sidekicks, more heroic than ever in their continuing battle against the intergalactic menace called the First Order.
New characters, sure to be fast fan favourites, are played by Benicio del Toro, Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran, the latter essaying the first major role for an Asian-American woman in a Star Wars film.
All this affection deserves to be returned in kind, even if a new Star Wars film, now an annual event (last year brought the series spinoff Rogue One), is no longer the novelty it was when The Force Awakens premiered in 2015.
The Last Jedi boasts many very good performances, ones that enrich the characters and which salute writer/director Johnson’s ability to find the humanity within technology, something he proved early on with his artful time-travel thriller Looper.
With his trusty Looper cinematographer Steve Yedlin behind the lens for the film’s epic scenes, Johnson makes the multiple trials and temptations of the story worth caring about and gaping at.
He also makes the villains truly villainous, unlike most recent blockbusters, with Andy Serkis and Adam Driver upping their evil games as the First Order’s Supreme Leader Snoke and lead warrior Kylo Ren.
The many women in the cast are part and parcel of the saga, not to be trifled with. Woe to any guy, good or bad, who attempts to mansplain a situation in this movie.
It must be said that there are also a lot of box-checking elements to this new Star Wars film, a.k.a. Episode VIII, that, as with all franchises, are deemed necessary to satisfy aficionados while also appealing to a global and diverse audience. These include the addition of puffin-like birds called porgs, which should by rights be called “adorbs” and which are little more than an attempt to sell toys.
J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens borrowed heavily from the original Star Wars movie A New Hope, to the delight of most (and dismay of some) after the prequel trilogy of nearly 20 years ago controversially chose to forgo a lot of what people loved about the original trilogy.
The Last Jedi is cannier and also more catholic about its provenance. This latest chapter in the 40-year-old Star Wars saga judiciously and often cleverly lifts from the other two films in the original canon, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
It begins with John Williams’ stirring score and the familiar scenesetting scroll, which warns of how the Empire-inspired First Order is gaining the upper hand on the plucky but outnumbered Resistance, led in remote planetary exile by Fisher’s grimly determined Gen. Organa.
An air battle against an attacking First Order Dreadnought warship, featuring Isaac’s X-Wing fighter pilot Poe and his roly-poly droid sidekick BB-8, thrillingly demonstrates just how much resolve remains in the Resistance.
Cut to Jedi island enclave Ahch-To, the scene where The Force Awakens ended. Ridley’s Force-awakened Rey momentously proffers a legendary lightsaber to Hamill’s Skywalker, who is puzzled by her presence.
At this point, remaining plot description should be limited to a nowfamous exclamation by Skywalker, heard in the trailer: “This is not going to go the way you think!”
He intends this as a warning to a character. The rest of us, however, should take it as reassurance that while The Last Jedi is every bit the franchise blockbuster that studio Disney requires it to be, it’s also very much the embraceable and sustainable story we hoped it would be.