JADED JEDI
A disillusioned Luke Skywalker
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (M, 152 mins) Directed by Rian Johnson ★★★★
‘‘Star Wars has been a constant companion through my moviewatching life. The first time I ever wagged school was to catch the bus from Te Awamutu to Hamilton, to sit in the moth-eaten and popcorn-reeking palace that was the old Carlton Cinema in Victoria St. I was 9 years old. And from the first crawl of that blocky yellow writing, that first view of the underbelly of an Imperial Destroyer and the teeth-rattling bass notes that scored it, I was gone. Absolutely and completely at one with the film and lost to this world for the next couple of hours.
Star Wars was the first film that made me conscious of loving the movies. And to this day that moment when the lights go down and the screen flares into life with whatever it is I’m about to see, still fills me with a sense of optimism, wonder and hope. I swear if I ever lose that feeling I’ll quit this gig.‘‘
I wrote those paragraphs almost exactly a year ago, after a screening of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. And it’ll hold up as an introduction now.
The Last Jedi picks up immediately after The Force Awakens left off two years ago. Rey (Daisy Ridley), who may or may not be a true vessel of The Force, is still hoping to convince a weary Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to come back to the fight and stand beside his sister Leia (Carrie Fisher, of course) as she takes the rebellion into the maw of the First Order. Alongside Leia a rag-tag bunch are all that is left of the resistance, fleeing as always from some hugely beweaponed and obsidian-gleaming ship commanded by a masked man in black with the voice of a hungover asthmatic and various disposable lackeys. It has been this way for 40 years now and the makers of The Last Jedi clearly aren’t about to mess too much with the formula.
To tell you more would be to spoil the film’s very few surprises. I say that not as criticism. It’s just that after The Last Jedi had finished all I could think was how right the film had been. Yes, it is a moth-eaten and over-reheated load of old rubbish dressed up in the finery of a new century’s special effects. But it is also a film you will love if you ever loved Star Wars: A New Hope.
Star Wars has become a deliciously old-fashioned serial. It is the same story endlessly retold, recast and refurbished. Yes, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is the new Darth Vader, just as Luke has become Obi Wan and Rey has become Luke and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) has become Moff Tarkin. We expect these things. But while Star Wars has endlessly recycled itself, it has also got better at what it does. Like the theatre company that puts on the same Christmas pantomime every year, Star Wars has at least got a bit more polished, spectacular and better funded. For all of these reasons and more, of course I loved The Last Jedi.
Is this a review? Not really. More a fan’s notes. An appreciation of a franchise that has accompanied so many of us so much further than we could have imagined; back when we were saving up our lunch money for a ticket and forging sick notes from our Mums, 40 years ago.
There is some flourish here, some beauty – the salt and ochre landscape that is the setting of the final battle is a stunner – but mostly, just a sense that if any Star Wars should still be that film that a 9-year-old could, and should, wag school to see, then The Last Jedi
passes that test, perfectly.