A 'STAR' IS REBORN
‘LAST JEDI’ IS FIRST-RATE —
“STAR WARS” has hurtled into a whole new orbit with the saga’s eighth episode.
That’s not to say “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” will go down in history as a better movie than the franchise’s gold standard, “The Empire Strikes Back,” but director Rian Johnson has pulled off a complete rejuvenation of the saga.
The new movie truly passes the torch by making the next generation of Resistance heroes — Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Poe (Oscar Isaac) and new addition Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) — every bit as compelling as the old guard. Even more surprising, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) evolves from the whiny brat in “The Force Awakens” to a three-dimensional menace.
As moving as it is to see Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker and the late, great Carrie Fisher’s General Leia back in action, they are no longer the best characters on screen.
Moviegoers, though, will have to sit through a solid, but not spectacular, first half of the 2½-hour movie to see for themselves.
That’s about when the greatest lightsaber battle in “Star Wars”
history kick-starts one of the most exciting cinematic stretches earthlings have ever seen. Without another Death Star to blow up, Johnson is free to navigate a more original plot. The film opens with the Resistance on the losing end of a big battle sequence and fleeing from the pursuing First Order. Across the galaxy, Rey is desperate to convince Luke to pull himself out his self-imposed exile to join the battle against his former protégé, Kylo Ren. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that the hero of the original trilogy gets a lot more screen time than the 30 seconds he notched at the end of the last installment, “The Force Awakens.”
Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole — but most of his gambles pay off. It’s easy to see why Lucasfilm tapped a director who was previously best known for smaller films like “Brick” and “Looper” for a whole new trilogy.
Whereas J.J. Abrams played it relatively safe in 2015’s “The Force Awakens” with a story that paralleled the original “Star Wars” to reinvigorate fans still reeling from the disappointing prequels, “The Last Jedi” is its own bold, fresh spectacle. The handful of flaws blur out of view once the action kicks into hyper-drive.
Johnson even found a way to top the cuteness of that fanfavorite, rolling ball of a droid, BB-8. Behold the adorable penguin-like Porg — already the apex predators at the top of toyshop food chain this holiday season.
Like a true Jedi Master, the filmmaker balanced the light and the dark.
“This isn’t going to go the way you think it is,” Luke admonishes Rey in one scene.
“The Last Jedi” doesn’t, and that’s exactly why the Force is so strong in this one.