It's time for Dan and Suz's Star
Wars review! No spoiler warnings
– you've had a month to see the film now, it's long beyond time we
got round to this and now it's here. If you haven't seen The
Last Jedi, I'm sure you've seen
the fans' reaction to it. Which is, to say the least, a bit divided.
There
are to camps among Star Wars fandom
when it comes to this, the eighth episode of the franchise. There are
those who, largely along the lines of the critics' response, think
it's one of the strongest in the series to date and love that it's
doing something a little different with the mythology. And then there
are those who are crying about it because it's profoundly and
unapologetically feminist in its approach to this Boy's Own
adventure. You see, The Last Jedi is
a film that directly opposes the usual narrative of Star
Wars. Fans have grown up on
stories which saw a series of old men training up young men to use
violence against violence and make grand gestures in the face of
oppression. There's a bunch of memes going around comparing Luke's
journey in A New Hope to
the radicalisation of a young Muslim, and it's funny because it's
absolutely right. The Force Awakens,
in that it was a virtual remake of the original Star Wars,
changed one major factor by making the new recruit to the Jedi way a
young woman, but otherwise it was still full of dog fights in space
and hand-to-hand battles.
The Last Jedi
makes pains to point out that disobeying orders and going on
unplanned incursions into enemy territory makes men heroes, but it
doesn't, in the main, win wars. Poe Dameron's headstrong nature is
explicitly condemned by the commanding officers of the Resistance,
both of whom are women. Finn begins this episode trying to escape the
oncoming First Order in a combination of desperation to find Rey and
simple (and quite understandable) fear. Neither Poe nor Finn is ever
portrayed as a baddie in this film, but they are openly shown to be
flawed, childishly so. Finn because he is hugely inexperienced, and
Poe because he's got bloody lucky in the past and hasn't yet got
himself killed (a possible swipe at the previous film's barely
credible rewrite which saw him come back from apparent death with
little explanation).
It's
the women who come out best throughout the movie. Carrie Fisher gets
a great final send-off which allows her to use the Force in a way
that shows yes, Leia is just as powerful as Luke and was massively
underutilised in the original trilogy. Sure, surviving in the vacuum
of space for that long strains credibility to the limit, but given
that the Force is, quite simply, magic, it really doesn't bother
either of us. Rey shows maturity when confronted with betrayal by the
two men who mean the most to her (Luke and Kylo Ren, sorry Finn), and
sticks to her principles throughout. Whether her principles are right
is still questionable, since she remains convinced of the greatness
of the Jedi, something that the film continually calls into question,
but we'll come back to that.
And
then there's Laura Dern's character, Vice Admiral Holdo, is one of
the few new additions to the main cast, and is a revelation. She's
the seeming opposite of Leia, in her modern iteration. This is
someone who we are told is a powerful commander, and then sashays in
all glammed-up with purple hair and a pretty dress. She's an
attractive older woman who doesn't apologise for her femininity and
who immediately puts the male characters in their place. It's hard to
overstate how important a character she is. Holdo is the sort of
character who is normally revealed to be a villain in a film like
this. Indeed, our expectations in this regard are deliberately played
with by writer-director Rian Johnson. We've learned to trust Poe and
Finn and to distrust women like Holdo, so we keep expecting them to
be proven right and her wrong. Instead, they go and make an almighty
hash of their unauthorised secret mission and Holdo is proven to be
an intelligent commander with compassion and humility who,
ultimately, saves a whole lot of lives.
On the
other side of the spectrum is the other new character, Rose, played
by Kelly Marie Tran. A lowly technician (read: a very important
member of a large and essential team), she has good reason to hate
people like Poe who, after all, got her sister killed in his latest
heroic mission. Yet she still sides with Poe and Finn in their
mini-mutiny. Possibly it's down to her attraction to Finn, although
as with all Finn's relationships (including Rey and Poe) it's unclear
how much is romantic and how much is just friendship; but mostly it's
down to inexperience. Indeed, it's Poe, who's experience has led to
his arrogance, who Finn and Rose look to for guidance. They all
redeem themselves, but none of them escape this initial flaw of
acting without thinking, up to the moment that Rose nearly kills
herself to stop the oncoming First Order attack on Crait and Finn
nearly fouls up everything rescuing her. Heroics vs. strategy.
The Last Jedi is
surely the most critical of Star Wars'
essential premise of all the films in the franchise, and it's not as
if George Lucas ever wrote the Jedi Order as anything other than
massively flawed. Fans have also cried out against Luke's portrayal
as an old, depressed and ineffective man who has retired from the
Jedi life and hidden out on an island on some long forgotten planet,
milking space walruses. This seems to be a strange thing to contest,
given that his two mentors both went into hiding as soon as the
Empire came to power. At least Obi-Wan tried to stay near to Luke and
keep and eye on him, but Yoda went and sat in a swamp on his own for
thirty years, becoming increasingly strange in the head. That's what
Jedi do when things get tough. The film cleverly plays with this,
though, by making it clear that yes, Luke is still pretty damned
awesome. He needs Rey to stop looking for the mythologised version of
the character and accept the imperfect man that he is. Then he can –
in the greatest scene in the film – project his astral self to
Crait and take on Kylo Ren what appears to be a display of macho
badassery but turns out to be astonishing misdirection. And finally
the phrase “more powerful than you can possibly imagine” means
something more than wandering around as a ghost for years.
Ah,
Kylo Ren. Adam Driver is almost too good for the role. The
Force Awakens had already set up
this new generation of villains as feeble wannabes with bigger guns
than their daddies – Shadows of the Empire, if you will. Space
Nazis are scary, but space neo-Nazis are scarier still. It's a
perfect update for our time, and what's most frightening is that so
many of this fanboys don't realise that they're the target of this
satire. While Domnall Gleeson is brilliant here, and we have an
unexpected and wonderful role from Adrian “Eddie Hitler”
Edmonson, it's Driver's show. It's frankly embarrassing to watch
Hayden Christensen try to play the same emotions in the prequels
after seeing Driver so convincingly portray a young man tearing
himself apart. What's so fascinating is that we genuinely don't know
which way Ren will eventually go. This is someone who constructed his
villain identity seemingly using an actual “what's your Star
Wars name?” meme, who wears a
stupid mask because his granddad needed one to help him breathe, and
is still one of the most convincingly divided characters ever seen in
the series.
Kylo's
story is the backbone of the film, with the entire Luke-Rey plotline
revolving around their relationship with him and the Resistance
plotline extending from his actions. His obsessive hatred of Luke is
about the only thing he's sure about. His and Rey's complex feelings
for one another are the most believable romantic relationship Star
Wars has given us, two hugely
powerful characters linked by their uncertainty of how to use those
powers. Ren's betrayal of Supreme Leader Snoke, lopping Snoke's head
off as he tries to push Rey to the Dark Side, is of course a direct
life from the Emperor-Vader-Luke scene at the end of Return
of the Jedi, but one that serves
to push Snoke completely out of the narrative. That's another thing
that fans are wailing about: two years of wondering who Snoke really
is and he's just killed off before we find out anything about him.
Again, missing the point: Snoke's identity is spectacularly
irrelevant. He's just a big scary baddie. (Of course, if he returns
as a Force ghost for Episode IX and gives us his eulogy we'll eat our
words.)
The
original premise of the films and indeed, the Jedi culture, is that
we need both light and dark to achieve balance. With one side intent
on winning out over each other, this balance can never be achieved.
This seemed to be lost somewhere along the way with light and dark
vying to have dominion over the other. Perhaps the only one who can
see the balance is Kylo Ren, who understands the need to cease the
fighting and work together, accepting both light and dark as part of
the same parcel and endeavour to find balance. But Ray is too
brainwashed by her interpretation of the ancient Jedi religion to see
this for what it is; an olive branch and a chance of peace.
Wars
will never end if people cant forgive or at least stop the fighting
and focus on the future.
Kylo
then takes it to the logical next level, if people cant forgive what
has passed, and want to continue the fighting, then these warring
factions need to be removed in order to make way for peace. A clean
slate is a clean slate!
One
thing that both of us have been saying for years is that the focus on
the Light Side and Dark Side is the big failing of the Jedi and the
Sith. Rey's burgeoning Force abilities see her calling on both sides,
something that initially frightens Luke as much as Kylo did, but at
least he's slowly learned his lesson and doesn't completely drive her
away. It's no wonder Kylo turned to the Dark Side – at least Snoke
is consistent in his messages – but he gets that the divide is
exactly what's led to decades of battling between successive regimes.
Suz has more sympathy for Kylo than Dan does – exterminating the
entire galactic civilisation and starting over is perhaps a bit far
to go for a new ideology – but he is essentially right. The final
scene of the film – a young slave boy at Canto Bight uses the Force
to shift his broom, looking wistfully up at the stars – is probably
intended to be inspiring and hopeful. However, Suz points out that
all it really implies is that the fighting is going to carry on for
another generation. Particularly off the back of Ray's refusal to
take Kylo up on his offer to forget the war. Indeed, it's
essentially a callback to how Darth Vader started out, something that
led to a complete collapse of galactic order and decades of war.
Star Wars has
always had some excellent location work, and The Last Jedi
is no exception. The casino city
of Canto Bight has taken some flack from critics and fans, but we
love it. It's a new environment after The Force Awakens
added to the series of desert
planets and forest planets and city planets. As well as providing us
with the always welcome hive of scum and villainy, it's a glitzy and
weird futuristic world with a lot of visual interest. It also adds
more to the overall criticism of the light/dark divide, pointing out
that there are plenty of terrible people who don't care who buys
their weapons or how they make their money, and who couldn't give a
damn who runs the Galaxy as long as they're still in their comfy
little world. Benicio del Toro's wonderfully twitchy and completely
amoral character DJ is the only major character in the film who isn't
beholden to the debate and divide between good and evil. Crait is
perhaps the most visually arresting location. Deliberately indicative
of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back,
the decision to film at the salt flats Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is a
brilliant one, utilising one of the most remarkable locations on
Earth as a backdrop for the climactic battle of the film.
As
always, there are plenty of fun creatures to enjoy – Suz's
favourites are the llama-like steeds on Canto, while Dan likes the
crystal critters on Crait. For all that The Last Jedi
finally takes things in a
somewhat different direction for the franchise, it's still very much
a Star Wars movie with
all the expected trappings. Yoda turns up (as a puppet, pleasingly)
and Chewie still gets all the best lines. It occupies the same
position in its trilogy as The Empire Strikes Back,
and like Empire, ends
in pretty crushing defeat for the heroes. Also like Empire,
it's a strong contender for the best film in the franchise. The
direction, writing and acting are all among the best we've seen in
Star Wars. The crying
fanboys are just a bonus.
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