Movie Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

The eighth episode in the original Star Wars saga and the second in the sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi is a magnificent achievement, brilliantly combining the series' familiar elements with original ingredients and powerful plot developments.

Picking up events immediately after The Force Awakens, the resistance fighters led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are routed, and the evil forces of the First Order under the command of General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) are moving in for the final kill. Ace resistance pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac) leads a daring bombing counterattack but incurs heavy losses.

Meanwhile Force-sensitive scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) track down the legendary Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), now the last known Jedi, on a remote planet. Rey pleads with Luke to come to the rescue of the resistance. He refuses, having still not come to terms with failing to prevent his nephew Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) from turning to the dark side under Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). Rey starts to experience Force-enabled face-to-face communications with Kylo, and they try to influence each other towards opposite sides of the Force.

Leia is severely wounded in battle, and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) takes over command but immediately clashes with the hot headed Poe. With Rey and Kylo having an in-person audience with Snoke, former stormtrooper turned rebel Finn (John Boyega) and resistance maintenance worker Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) team up for a mission to secure the services of a hacker who can help the remaining resistance ships escape. Their search yields the services of the seemingly capable DJ (Benicio del Toro), but things are about to get much worse for the decimated rebel army.

After the relatively disappointing warmed-over rehash offered by The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson takes over as writer and director and delivers a spectacular boost to the franchise. The Last Jedi is best described as fearless, introducing new Force capabilities, one of the best lightsaber battles in the series within Snoke's inner sanctuary, a stunning landing pad for one essential arc, stirring acts of bravery and sacrifice, and a marvellously tense Force-enabled connection between Rey and Kylo, pregnant with possibilities.

And nothing is taken away from the action set-pieces, here delivered with a searing creativity and clarity of execution. Johnson pushes away from the familiar and finds new showdowns and genuinely thrilling battles, including Poe's bombing raid; the First Order all but annihilating the rebel fleet; a slow but existential space chase; and a finale at a previously abandoned resistance base that features several epic confrontations.

The narrative is pushed forward with Luke and Kylo both offering versions of where it all went wrong, and Luke forced to define his true legacy in unexpected but faultless fashion. Rey makes progress in coming to terms with her origins and role in the unyielding struggle between good and evil. Gradually Poe and Finn unite with Rey at the centre of the story, and now they are joined by the unlikely and disguised heroism of Rose.

The Last Jedi is not without its faults. The running time of 152 minutes is excessive, Finn and Rose's side quest to the casino planet a particular bloat culprit, and some of the multicultural preachiness is flagrant. But Johnson also introduces a mean streak of humour to combat the slow parts. The noisy robot BB-8 and the perpetually worried Porg furry creatures are deployed in just the right doses, and several other characters and creations make timely contributions.

Despite the large cast, a few performances do stand out. Adam Driver emerges as a magnetic presence, the uncertainty within him bursting out in prodigious directions. Daisy Ridley and Benicio del Toro are the other notable cast members, Ridley mixing the perilous unknowns of Rey's ancestry with grim determination, del Toro luxuriating in DJ's confidence as an enigmatic man who can code break his way out of any situation.

With John Williams contributing another iteration of cinema's most beloved music score, The Last Jedi travels at lightspeed to claim a place as one of the most satisfying entries in the legendary series.

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Movie Review: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

The first Star Wars movie in 10 years, The Force Awakens goes back to the roots of the franchise with a feel-good rollicking space adventure. The film singularly lacks originality, but features plenty of heart and unflagging amounts of energy.

About 30 years after the events of The Return Of The Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has gone into hiding. In the absence of the one remaining Jedi, the Republic flounders and comes under threat from a new evil organization called The First Order, with an army of stormtroopers commanded by dark knight Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). On the planet Jakku, the Republic's ace resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) obtains a partial map file that may contain clues to Luke's whereabouts, and hides it in a BB-8 droid. When Poe is captured by Kylo, his escape is enabled by storm trooper Finn (John Boyega), who wants to defect and join the resistance. Meanwhile BB-8 is rescued by Rey (Daisy Ridley), a resourceful scavenger on Jakku who has lost contact with her family.

Eventually Finn, Rey and BB-8 team up, steal the ancient but still capable Millennium Falcon and accidentally join forces with Han Solo (Harrison Ford), back to his smuggling ways of old, and still with his loyal friend the Wookie Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew). They try to make their way to the rebel base where General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) is trying to organize the Republic's resistance against The First Order. On a side trip to the planet Takodana, Rey meets the wise pirate Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o), and upon finding an ancient lightsaber is exposed to powerful but disturbing visions that awaken her to the strength of the Force. But The First Order has a mammoth new weapon in the shape of the Starkiller Base, and Kylo will not hesitate to unleash death and destruction on a mass scale to locate Luke and crush the resistance.

Less an evolution and more of a feel-good reboot, The Force Awakens takes few risks, but does what Star Wars does best. Director J. J. Abrams ditches all of the politics and most of the character conflicts that defined the prequel trilogy, and brings back the fun factor, humour and frequent but short action set-pieces that defined the birth of the franchise in A New Hope. The Force Awakens is fast, entertaining, funny, sharp, and sometimes hokey, and for less demanding fans, probably a perfect definition of what a Star Wars film should be.

But it is also exceptionally derivative. Almost every major element of the film is either a strong echo or a simply blatant recreation of an already-seen component from the history of the franchise. The hidden message in a robot, Rey's humble origins on a dusty planet, the familial conflicts and betrayals, the heart-breaking sacrifice, and the endless battles with stormtroopers who crumble like so much cheap tin: it's all been seen, heard and done before. The Force Awakens also hurtles to its biggest disappointment in a muddled climax that throws all sorts of action movie cliches into a hurried, almost childish mix, before settling for a most familiar, and poorly executed, final assault.

Also rather unsatisfactory is the rush towards decisive moments. Kylo's lineage is revealed quite early, while his struggles and potential limitations surface before he can properly cast an evil shadow. Meanwhile, Rey's positive abilities with the Force develop remarkably quickly, compared to Luke's much richer journey.

The good moments almost exclusively revolve around Rey. The new central heroine of the series, Daisy Ridley brings to life a bright, adventurous woman, worth investing in as the series progresses. Kylo also carries potential but Adam Driver's performance is only vaguely promising due to uneven character development in the script (co-written by Lawrence Kasdan and Abrams among others). Finn and Poe are less interesting, while BB-8 hits the perfect note as the new robot, rolling into the franchise on just the right side of cute. R2D2 and C3PO are reduced to cameos for this outing.

Neither ground-breaking nor an outright disappointment, The Force Awakens is often fun but always familiar.

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