With the 155th pick in the TDOS Cabin by the Lake draft, I select...
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017):
Director: Rian Johnson
Dir. of Photography: Steve Yedlin
Writer(s): Rian Johnson
Score: John Williams
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Mark Hammil, Carrie Fisher, Laura Dern
Genre(s): Science fiction, action, adventure
Runtime: 2 hours, 32 minutes
IMDb Entry:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/?ref_=nv_sr_1
I'd be inclined to call this the second populist selection I've included on my list, but there has been a rather visceral backlash to
The Last Jedi since its release last December, for reasons that evade my comprehension a bit. Perhaps
Star Wars is too monomythic as a franchise, and too much like comfort food, for its formula to be challenged without drawing the ire of fans around the world. I share no such devotion to whatever the platonic ideal is meant to be for this particular franchise. Burn it down, I say, and
The Last Jedi certainly attempts to do so. Whatever its flaws, I think it's an absolutely magnificent film, and I consider it to be the most vital and significant
Star Wars film since 1980.
My life has been a blur since July began, so I haven't been able to commit to composing my typically lengthy write-ups. Fortunately, I've already written a substantial amount about
The Last Jedi, both here at KF.com and elsewhere. Much of that writing appears below.
My previous two picks,
Moon and
Arrival, are lovely and quiet science fiction films with very modest aims.
The Last Jedi swings the pendulum in the opposite direction. Rian Johnson was out to make some noise with this one, and I was really quite impressed with the many ways in which he subverted my expectations as a viewer. When I reflect on several viewings of the film, I’m struck by just how different it is from the rest of the
Star Wars saga. It is a very weird and very interesting movie about locating the smallest shred of hope amidst colossal human failings. People are disappointing. They’re often wrong. They make mistakes. Yet it seems all too rare that big budget films are willing to quantify those failures, and to hold their heroes to account.
The Last Jedi, on the other hand, is hell-bent on twisting a knife into the very ideas of myth-making and hero-worship.
Many viewers were legitimately expecting Luke Skywalker (now in his 60's, mind you) to be cutting down scores of stormtroopers with his newly-returned lightsaber, as if there were no other sensible direction for that character to take in the face of a rising evil. I was so delighted that Rian Johnson decided not to indulge these infantile fantasies, and instead offered the audience a Luke Skywalker chastened by fear, having receded from the galaxy in defiance of his legend. The same Luke that redeemed Vader was crushed by his inability to teach, to offer wisdom, to transcend the struggle between the light and the dark, and I love the complexity of that. I certainly find it more interesting than Luke jumping headlong into the fray once again.
For all the talk of how derivative
The Force Awakens turned out to be, a great many fans really do want
Star Wars to be exactly one thing. They want a particular itch to be scratched. They want their mac-and-cheese the way they expect it to be. Johnson resisted the temptation to serve up that comfort food, and I just adore the ballsiness of his film's insistence that we need to let the past die. Rey and Kylo Ren are the future, and
The Last Jedi absolutely sizzles whenever those two characters share the screen, either psychically or physically. Their chemistry is miles beyond any other pair of characters in any other
Star Wars film.
It's not a perfect film, of course. It tries to do a bit too much with its various plot threads, and despite its two-and-a-half hour runtime, it actually feels like some narrative glue is missing. I also thought Benicio del Toro's character was thin and superfluous, even though I enjoyed how simply he managed to reflect the same ethos that Luke Skywalker, a wisened Jedi master, had taken years to develop: “They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow.” The only solution is not to join, in other words. In
A New Hope, Han Solo doesn’t want to get involved because he’s a selfish a**hole, whereas Del Toro’s character is a conscientious objector because of the cyclical realities of the battle between “good” and “evil.” Luke understands this, as well, and seeks the death of the Jedi because something has to change if the cycle of conflict is ever to be broken.
The very notion of what makes a hero is up for debate in
The Last Jedi. Some viewers found themselves stymied by a
Star Wars movie in which the big, risk-taking, hot-shot plans didn't pay off. In fact, those plans result in failure, and the deaths of many. The sublots that are most often complained about are some of the most important moments in the film, in which the characters learn the hard way that their bravado amounts to nothing. We see their maturation and their realization that war isn't just about sauntering into the saloon like a cowboy in your "white hat" in order to fight an enemy clad in black.
Star Wars has long presented its sense of morality in the most binary way possible: “Light Side GOOD, Dark Side BAD!! And THAT is why we FIGHT!!” Johnson is more interested in complicating the reasons for these “star wars” to occur in the first place. It’s not just about thwarting an evil enemy; it’s about discovering what you stand for, and what you desire to build when it's all over.
After all, what IS the Republic? I mean, what is it, really? For example, “America” is its own idea, and has its own set of ideals, as much as it is a geographical area. So what is the Republic, other than a corrupt and decadent bureaucracy that gave rise to the evil enemy in the first place? What does it stand for? What does the Resistance wish to stand for? Grasping for hope in the dark is a major theme of
The Last Jedi. But hope for what? My hope is that JJ Abrams has a compelling answer to that question for Episode IX. Though given that Abrams used
The Force Awakens as an opportunity to do little more than re-hash the story beats of
A New Hope, I'm not terribly optimistic.
The Last Jedi, by contrast, is an exceedingly bold endeavor. So bold, indeed, that Kathleen Kennedy has actually given Rian Johnson the reigns to steer an entirely new
Star Wars trilogy, completely apart from the saga of the Skywalker clan. How refreshing! I find myself completely uninterested in any other
Star Wars related programming in the meantime. Give me Johnson's vision for this universe, gorgeous as it is. In my estimation,
The Last Jedi is head and shoulders above every other
Star Wars film from a purely visual standpoint. The screenshots below should testify to the sheer sumptuousness on display:
PM sent to
@Sluggah.
