Star Wars: The Last Jedi (12A)

Picking up where The Force Awakens left off two years ago, this second film in the new Star Wars trilogy functions in part like a wrecking ball. Hokey mythology is debunked, iconic artefacts are tossed glibly aside and extraneous characters reintroduced in The Force Awakens are dispatched with barely a cursory mention of their demise.

Mark Hamill, greying, bearded and melancholic is like Yoda at his crankiest, a legend-scorning weirdo living in self-enforced exile on a barely habitable rock, ruing his failed attempt to train his nephew Ben Solo in the ways of the Force. It’s small wonder he’s less than thrilled to see Daisy Ridley’s Rey, who has sought him out to help her understand the force that awakened within her in the previous instalment.

Writer/director Rian Johnson introduces new characters to keep things fresh, including Rose, a maintenance operative for the Resistance who gets star-struck when she meets rogue-storm-trooper-turned-resistance-hero Finn (John Boyega). Rose’s introduction shows how these films are subtly changing the make-up of the Star Wars universe. Played by Vietnameseamerican actress Kelly Marie Tran, she’s the heart of the film the way Boyega was in The Force Awakens.

The spine of the film remains the connection between the light and dark side of the Force, respectively embodied here by Rey and the patricidal, battle-scarred Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). As talented as Johnson is, The Last

Jedi suffers by reflecting the vision of another first generation fanboy filmmaker wrestling with what Star

Wars meant to him as a child. And yet Johnson does leave it at an intriguing place. A final series of images hints at the way a new generation will eventually make Star Wars its own, and it finds a graceful way to give older fans permission to stop caring so much about it. After 40 years, I’m OK with that.

JJJ