27 December 2017

Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(Dir: Rian Johnson, 2017)

We're now nine (live-action) films into the Star Wars saga and it's become impossible not to wonder what the point is – at two thirds of the the way through this third trilogy it's very much same shit, different year. There's always another evil space wizard with an endless army who wants to control the Empire, there's resistance fighters and the same characters we can never seem to shake. Sure it's hard not to be entertained, but it's the same story done to death now, with new films arriving too frequently. And so The Last Jedi picks up where The Force Awakens left off and suffers from similar storytelling woes. For a two and a half hour film the Rebellion spend most of it in a story-bound stasis, whilst Rey's time with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is a combination of boring and laughable. After a whole film building up to his return, Skywalker's presence is incredibly anti-climatic as he's just so damn irritating now. Daisy Ridley still feels hideously miscast as Rey, only improving in the latter part of the film or whenever she is interacting with Adam Driver's Kylo Ren that is when the screen comes alive.


Driver seemed a contentious casting choice last time round, as a solid villain was ruined by seeing what/who was underneath the helmet. But by being less hidden here he gets a chance to shine and really add something to this character. Whilst John Bodega's Finn otherwise gets to have a bit more fun (again) with the more enjoyable side plot. Essentially this all still amounts to a huge so what it's no better and it's no worse than The Force Awakens. Director Rian Johnson delivers some awesome visuals whilst also managing to make certain elements extremely hokey. And the less said about that utterly stupid jump the shark moment the better. Having rewatched The Force Awakens a couple of days prior it's clear the only element that makes that film work is the entertaining return of Han Solo. Comparatively Luke Skywalker here offers zero charm and would've been better left out and just mythologised. The Last Jedi offers nothing different to either that film or last year's Rogue One, thus it's just another slice of solid entertainment that you wish would actually try and do something different, just once, please.

No comments:

Post a Comment