Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a reunion; a trip down memory lane. Perhaps necessarily, J.J. Abrams ushered audiences dorsum to a galaxy far, far away swaddled in the comforts of familiar faces, places, and story beats, getting the ring back together and playing all the sometime hits. It's a hoot and a one-half, just after the initial bliss and nostalgia wore off, a shared sentiment seemed to settle in -- the former tricks aren't quite as magical as they used to be.

Enter Rian Johnson, a filmmaking magician if ever there was one, who takes the franchise baton handed to him by Abrams and runs completely off the tracks, not because he'south lost sight of where he'southward supposed to be going or how to get there, only because he's found entirely more interesting and unexpected routes to that destination. With Star Wars: The Last Jedi , Johnson sidesteps every predictable crush, playing against long-entrenched concepts of what to expect from a Star Wars film, and in doing so, he delivers the most electric, thematically rich, and visually innovative Star Wars since George Lucas redefined blockbuster movie theater with his 1977 original.

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Prototype via Lucasfilm

This is what Johnson does as a filmmaker. Brick was a Noir movie, Looper was a time travel movie, and The Last Jedi is a Star Wars film, just all of them simultaneously redefine those labels while proudly wearing them. Playing the genres he loves most, Johnson makes singular films. He'south like a cinematic architect, remodeling the space he's working in without undermining the fundamental structures that make it agree true.

The Concluding Jedi begins in boxing, and Johnson makes his destructive intentions known from the film'southward beginning moments. The film drops united states in the centre of a Resistance evacuation. Decimated later on the events of The Force Awakens, the rebels are on their concluding leg and hauling ass to get away from a First Society Dreadnaught. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), the fan favorite Resistance hero and consummate self "flyboy", sees an opportunity to take out one of the enemy'due south biggest weapons and stages an attack in direct opposition to General Leia's (Carrie Fisher) orders, but first he gets in some smarmy smartassing at the expense of General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson).

What will prove to be one of the most pensive Star Wars films begins with a laugh. It's a quippy, kind of goofy scene to open the film, earning large laughs out of all three packed audiences I've seen the picture with, and it toes right up to the line of genre parody. But Johnson knows exactly when to pull back, and he follows up the unorthodox humor with an absolutely stunning activity sequence that reminds united states, yeah, this is a Star Wars movie, and information technology'southward a very good one.

Staged with stunning clarity, geography, and vision, the film's showtime major ready-piece sets the standard for the level of action Johnson will evangelize throughout and puts the back "state of war" in Star Wars. These m action sequences come with a death price. The Last Jedi reminds us more than elegantly and pointedly than any Star Wars trilogy film before that resistance requires loss, and the film's beginning big action moment turns surprisingly somber every bit faceless X-Wing pilots are replaced with soldiers we quickly care most. When they sacrifice themselves for Poe'due south impulsive plan, it stings, and it's just the get-go of the film's fallout from foolhardy heroics.

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Image via Lucasfilm

The rebels take out the dreadnaught, merely their entire bombing fleet is lost in the process, and when their escape jump reveals that the Get-go Order can somehow track them through lightspeed, the stakes become even direr. Poe is demoted, a Outset Order attack claims the life of Admiral Ackbar and puts Leia in a blackout (more than on that in a minute), and Poe finds himself under the command of the inscrutable Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) as a slow-paced space-chase sends the out-gunned, under-fuelled rebellion on an escape from a pursuant they can never truly outrun.

These first scenes are a showcase for Johnson's inventive arroyo to the material, and they encapsulate the themes he wants to explore with The Final Jedi: the myth of heroism and the lessons of failure. Those themes comport through into every sequence that follows, including the (again) foolhardy plan concocted by Poe, Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), that leads to an adventure on the gambling planet Canto Bight and an sick-advised wildcat on the Resistance cruiser. Their journeying inverts the standard hero arc. Where we traditionally follow renegade heroes headfirst into sick-advised boxing ("never tell me the odds") where they salve the day, these mavericks fail. And they proceed failing until they acquire from it.

The same themes are at work in the dynamic between Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren, which unfolds on Ach-To, where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has retreated to disappear and die afterward his failure every bit a mentor led Ben Solo (Adam Driver) to the night side. This is where we selection up with our intrepid heroine Rey (Daisy Ridley); after traversing the galaxy to find Luke, she expectantly easily him his old lightsaber, demanding he return to the resistance and save the day. Luke promptly throws the lightsaber over a cliff with a sneer and insists that the Jedi must end; a definitive statement from Johnson most expectations. This is not the Luke Skywalker we knew, and later all these decades and the loss of his grooming temple, that feels correct.

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Paradigm via Lucasfilm

Despite his reservations and his insistence that the historic period of Jedi is over, Luke agrees to provide Rey with a few key lessons in the Force in guild to show her that it belongs to no ane, and it's here that we see most clearly; this is not the Luke Skywalker we all know and honey. Something in him has been cleaved and the impulse for goodness in him has not been lost, simply information technology has retreated, leaving behind the gray, withered, and angry vanquish of a once great human being. Again, Johnson strikes down the mythology of heroes. Outright, he rejects the construct of the "chosen 1," and through Luke'south interactions with Rey, and in contrast, through her insistence on doing expert despite her attraction to the Dark Side, Johnson enforces that heroism is non in the legend or the bloodline, information technology's in the doing and decision to do right.

Considering there's another chosen i, the young Kylo Ren née Ben Solo, cultivated by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) to become the next Vader. He has the bloodline, he is potent with the force, but when he murdered his father in The Force Awakens, he split his soul. He no longer clings to the legacy of his past in his quest for power. Long gone are they days when he called out to his grandfather for guidance. Now, he wants to impale the past. Not to learn from it, but to fire information technology all down. When Kylo and Rey brainstorm communicating through the Strength, sharing fourth dimension out of infinite, he is in one case again presented with the opportunity for redemption. Once over again, he's given a selection.

The connection between Kylo and Rey demonstrated one of Johnson's most exciting innovations in the globe of Star Wars. He delights in expanding the vocabulary of the Forcefulness and discovering new ways to integrate the Forcefulness into the format of his storytelling. While this might inspire Han-like growls of "That's non how the force works!" from purists, I find information technology to be a thrilling and welcome piece of world-building that's completely in line with how the Strength was explored in the original trilogy. The Strength evolved with each motion picture, new surprises around every corner; mind tricks, Force chokes, Strength ghosts, we didn't learn information technology all at once. The Strength existed as a powerful, mystical element that courted the imagination. That's why Johnson's expansions ring true. And aye, I put so-called "Infinite Leia" under that umbrella. We've been waiting for the payoff to Leia's Force sensitivity since she psychically communicated with Luke back in the OT, and it's merely and then very Leia to finally use that ability in a moment where it's truly needed so she can get dorsum to the Resistance and get back to work.

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Image via Lucasfilm

But the Strength connexion between Kylo and Rey marries story and format in a peculiarly lovely way. They believe their bond is something special, forgingStar Wars' sexiest forbidden romance and setting the phase for ane of them to plough sides. With Snoke's visions in their heads, they expect it equally much equally we do and Rey leaves the safety of Ach-To and then she can bring Ren to the Light. "This is not going to become the style you think," warns Luke. Indeed.

Johnson uses visual cues to misdirect the audience throughout The Terminal Jedi, playing with familiar sights as a sleight of paw, the best of which unfolds as Ren escorts a shackled Rey to Snoke'due south throne room -- a straight callback to the moments before Darth Vader'southward redemption in Return of the Jed i . Simply no, this does not go the way we recollect. Johnson gives u.s.a. a glorious sequence of hope when Ren kills Snoke with a single stroke and joins Rey in an exquisite boxing against the Praetorian Guard. There's and so much emotional power packed into that moment and the gorgeous, cinematic fight scene that follows. It's an instant all-timer light saber battle; elegant choreography, powerful functioning, stunning cinematography. And most of all, it'due south a charged intersection of narrative and story; a twist, an emotional payoff, and a badass, cute fight scene. Which is what makes information technology so heartbreaking when Ren does not plough, just solidifies his identify as the new Supreme Leader, a wounded man who wants to burn down information technology all down and start a new world where he's on top.

In a testament to what a fantastic villain Kylo Ren is shaping upwards to be, information technology'southward all too easy to encounter his indicate. His Jedi mentor, the legendary Luke Skywalker betrayed him. His Supreme Leader proved weak and disappointing. And as Benicio Del Toro's slippery code-breaker constantly reminds us; the war betwixt the Light and the Night is an endless enterprise. Is at that place a role of me that want to see Rey have Ren'due south mitt and build something truly new. To" kill the past," as Kylo advises, and let the wars of an crumbling generation die out? Of grade there is. Together, they are a force all their own to behold. Wait at the mode they fight together, information technology's similar verse; their power and their pairing is an ebb and menstruum of low-cal and nighttime, a primal pull towards each other'due south ability and the cognition that they might be the one other person with whom they can be understood and truly belong. Information technology's powerful stuff.

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Image via Lucasfilm

So yes, at that place's an urge to stay in that location in that moment of unbridled kinetic, romantic, emotional payoff, merely that would exist violating the structures that make the house stand. It would enquire us to accept a man who murdered his own father, i of the well-nigh beloved characters in cinema history -- a man who killed a grade of Jedi, who'southward comfortable with genocide, to be our hero. It would need that Rey abandon her moral code along with us, allowing her friends to die on those transports. Johnson steers the motion picture in a wiser, less indulgent management. Then he drops the parents bomb.

Afterward all this buildup, who are Rey's parents? They're no one. Junk traders. Sold her for drinking money. She is not a hero because of her bloodline. She's non a hero because it was her destiny or considering she is some chosen 1. She is a hero because of her actions, because of that inextinguishable spark of hope that made her too mortiferous to alive, fifty-fifty to a creature as powerful as Snoke. She's a hero because she chooses to be and she refuses to choose anything else. Ren becomes the villain considering he lets his weakness guide him. He has a choice also, and his option breaks your middle.

Information technology's understandable why this will frustrate some viewers who spent the final two years speculating and theorizing. Only expectations do not define the quality of the movie they're applied to, and I'd fence the error lies more with Abrams, who congenital a mystery box he never had whatever intention of solving. Johnson'due south not interested in the mystery box; he doesn't care near Snoke or Rey's linneage, he cares most Kylo and Rey and the much more interesting dance betwixt lite and nighttime swirling betwixt them. He'southward interested in a cohesive thematic piece of work that builds the mythology outward rather than an infinitely inward-looking reiteration of the Skywalker saga. Johnson understands that Darth Vader's secret identity may have get i of the most indelible legacies of the original trilogy, merely it'south not why we fell in love with Star Wars. Nosotros fell in dear with heroes and adventure, and a wondrous globe that is always expanding and evolving.

He drives it home in the tertiary human activity, which pits all our heroes, reunited on the stunning red and white shores of Crait, against an utterly unhinged Ren. Johnson subverts our expectations with one last thou gesture, Luke's cocky-sacrifice. He returns to the fold and saves the mean solar day, and it might not be the g lightsaber battle betwixt master and apprentice you lot were expecting, but it that honors the path his character has taken. A man who wants to exercise no more than harm. He went to Ach-To to die, and die he does, but non before i keen pacifistic stand up against the monster he helped create. Instead of running from his failure, he learns from it, equally Yoda so wisely suggested in his delightfully kooky return. He confronts it. His fight with Ren gives the Resistance the distraction they need to escape and fight some other solar day, and Poe Dameron, having learned his lessons, is wise enough to choice up on it. Johnson gives almost every character an arc of transformation that investigates hope and what information technology ways to be a hero.

Johnson's thematic consistency keeps The Last Jedi adrift even when pacing stumbles a bit. This is a picture show with something to say. It wants to give yous more a blockbuster trip effectually the galaxy. It wants to give you promise. Through all the mythic deconstruction and narrative subversion, The Concluding Jedi is focused on kindling the spark of promise higher up all. As our heroes soar abroad in the Millenium Falcon, the remains of the Resistance tucked away on 1 small ship, the slave boys on Canto Bight are inspired by the tales of Luke Skywalker's last stand up. One of those boys, a "nobody" to be sure, grabs his broom with the Force and gets back to work. He looks at the Resistance ring Rose gave him, looks toward the stars, and tilts his broom up like a lightsaber; a hero in the making, full of hope. The Force is with him, the Force is with everyone, and that includes you.

Rating: A-

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