Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Rian Johnson came to The Last Jedi having made three well-regarded smaller films, Brick (2005), The Brothers Bloom (2008), and Looper (2012), which made him an unconventional choice to helm the eighth episode of the Skywalker saga. Lucasfilm greenlit the project as part of Disney's post-2012 acquisition strategy, rolling out a new trilogy at near-annual intervals, and Johnson was given unusual creative latitude for a franchise of this scale, with a budget north of $300 million. The film was also shaped by real-world tragedy, as Carrie Fisher completed her scenes before her death in December 2016, making this her final film appearance. It released in December 2017 to record-breaking opening numbers, though the fan response that followed was among the most polarised in blockbuster history.

This film pissed me off and ruined an entire legacy. Let’s get this out of the way early: The Last Jedi is a film that disregards everything I once held dear about the Star Wars saga. I’m all for subverting expectations, but when it comes at the cost of character assassination, I start to question what the point of the entire franchise really is. Take Luke Skywalker... please. I can’t, in good conscience, even call what Rian Johnson has done here “character development.” The Luke Skywalker we were promised, the one who stood tall in the face of impossible odds, the one who faced down Vader and Palpatine with nothing but his convictions, has been reduced to something unrecognizable. This is not the Luke Skywalker who, despite being terrified, took up arms for the Rebellion without hesitation, or the one who went into the den of the most dangerous gangster in the galaxy, knowing full well the personal risks involved. No, in The Last Jedi, Luke is a broken man hiding away, so jaded and afraid of the potential darkness in his own bloodline that he contemplates killing his own nephew. Let’s pause here for a second. The same Luke who faced down the Emperor, the same Luke who confronted his father and ultimately saw the good still within him, now suddenly tries to murder a child... a child he senses may one day go bad? Are we supposed to believe that this is the same person who rejected Palpatine's pleas to strike his father down, because he believed in redemption and refused to succumb to fear and hatred? The entire premise of Return of the Jedi was that Luke could sense the good still within Vader, and now he’s having nightmares about his nephew and deciding to kill him in his sleep. It’s a grotesque betrayal of everything Luke stood for. I get it, people evolve, they change, but this is more than an evolution; it’s a mutilation. It’s not growth, it’s regression. We’ve seen Luke fight for what’s right, for redemption, for love, and yet we’re now expected to accept that he’s become a coward, hiding on an island and stewing in self-pity. Johnson tries to justify it with the argument of failure, the notion that Luke’s failure is what makes him human. But this? This is a misfire, a monumental leap away from the principles Luke stood for. Not only is this a betrayal of Luke’s character, but it’s symptomatic of the film’s broader problems. We’re introduced to a plotline that stretches believability to breaking point, where logic and consistency take a back seat in favour of shock value and “subverting expectations” at every turn. I’m all for pushing boundaries, but there needs to be a foundation to stand on, and this film feels like it’s crumbling beneath its own weight. The Last Jedi attempts to be a commentary on legacy, on the inevitability of failure, but in doing so, it tramples all over what made the original trilogy great: hope, redemption, and the relentless fight against the darkness. It may have some visually stunning moments, sure, and the pacing, while uneven, does keep you on edge. But at the cost of eradicating the core essence of Luke Skywalker and the saga as a whole? I’m afraid this is a misfire that I’ll never forgive. In the end, what The Last Jedi fails to realise is that Luke’s legacy wasn’t about failure, it was about redemption. And I’m still struggling to figure out how I can ever see him the same way again.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2017-12-04

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