A Star Wars movie is a strange animal. It must be exciting, it must be interesting, it must have enjoyable characters, much like any other movie. But it must also be able to capture the spirit of Star Wars, to embody the ideals that helped the original trilogy rise above all others and capture the hearts and minds of millions and millions of fans.
2015’s The Force Awakens captured that spirit perfectly, better even than George Lucas’ own prequels. Part of that was no doubt because of the fact that it was essentially the same story as the 1977 original Star Wars (now known as Episode IV: A New Hope). But fans and first time viewers were willing to accept the exceedingly familiar story because it was able to inspire the same sense of wonder that the original movie did. The same exhilaration. The same affection for its motley cast of characters, who were just like us in so many ways, and yet so interesting.
If only The Last Jedi had managed to do the same.
The opening scenes of The Last Jedi are able to do something similar, harking back to the beginning of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. There are a couple of parallel story lines to keep track of: Rey on the island of Ahch-To, where she found Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode VII, and the rest of the Resistance and their fight with the First Order. The initial sequences of both are fascinating, and, as Luke warned us in the trailer, don’t go the way we think.
At this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that writer and director Rian Johnson (of Looper fame) has got this.
After the comfort and nostalgia of The Force Awakens, this chapter in the trilogy needed to break new ground and take the story in new directions – always a risk, when you’re dealing with a property like Star Wars, but a risk that would still be able to fall back on the solid foundations that JJ Abrams built last time around.
And that’s where The Last Jedi fails. And fails badly.
Because at the end of the day, the story falls right back into the most worn out of Star Wars tropes – the wise master training the young prodigy, the plucky good guys (and girls) fighting desperately against the evil enemy, the inevitable mission to sneak onto the enemy base/ship to disable the thing, etc etc.
Even that could have still worked, but for the fact that not a lot of effort seems to have been put in towards plot development. This leaves us with a number of gaping plot holes, some inexplicable decisions by characters and a lingering sense that this was a script written by a committee – it was decided that the story needed to have several elements to it, and these were then stitched together without really caring about coherence. A search engine optimised story, if you would.
The dialogue is genuinely atrocious at points, mixing the banal with the obvious, and wasting the talents of the superb cast. It is also unfortunately full of quips and one-liners that are terribly out-of-place most of the time, and which do not fit the tone of the narrative at all.
It’s clear that Disney (which owns Lucasfilm now) is trying to replicate the success of the snappy dialogue from its Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, while a certain amount of humour works well in a Star Wars movie, such as 3PO’s carping about odds, or Han's acerbic humour, the constant barrage of gags in The Last Jedi just comes across as gimmicky.
This is not too say that there isn’t anything good about the movie. The visuals are stunning, and there are some genuinely fascinating twists and turns to the story.
The movie also does remarkably well on representation, with a host of female characters and racial diversity as well, addressing one of the major problems with the older movies which just had one prominent female character per trilogy, and only one non-white human character who also didn't speak much.
But Johnson also ends up wasting these characters. He inherited a set of interesting new characters from the previous movie who we cared about deeply, because of the great arcs they had. This time around, there's no real development for any of them except maybe Poe Dameron (played by Oscar Isaac). Daisy Ridley (Rey) and John Boyega (Finn) don’t get to demonstrate any real acting chops as their characters essentially stay the same (even though the plot should have required Rey to at least have some growth), and Adam Driver reprises his angry young antagonist role as Kylo Ren, who the plot actually gave some development, but without actually helping us understand him any better.
As for the remaining characters from the old trilogy, Chewbacca is reduced to even more of a sidekick, 3PO and R2 barely figure despite being there throughout. Leia gets some interesting scenes, but is under-utilised, and given Carrie Fisher's unfortunate passing, we won't get a chance to see more of her. Mark Hamill’s Luke gets more screen time and a more interesting arc, but unfortunately the plot doesn't truly answer some questions it needed to.
At the end of the day, the movie leaves you without a lot of answers, but this lack of certainty seems less of a conscious choice and more a consequence of trying to avoid getting pulled into fan theories about Rey's origins or who exactly Supreme Leader Snoke is.
The result is a movie that has some sparks but no real fire, which is a shame for the fans and everyone, given the potential that it had.
Disney of course don’t seem to think there’s anything off with the movie, offering Johnson the chance to direct a new trilogy of Star Wars films after this trilogy ends. It’s not likely that die-hard fans will take this too well, given the way The Last Jedi played fast and loose with the spirit of the series. But at least they can take solace from the fact that JJ Abrams will be back for Episode IX.
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