![]() ![]() She’s dangeorus.Īs it turns out, there are many similarities between Rey and Ren that extends beyond their names, and the more it haunts Luke, the more resistant he becomes. Thus Rey is tempted to seek answers from the other party of this failed master and padawan relationship, just as the First Order begins closing the gap between itself and the wounded Resistance Fleet. Instead he views his guest as first a nuisance and then later as something akin to his last pupil, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Worse still, not only does Luke refuse to get back onto the Millennium Falcon, but this last of the Jedi also demurs from training Rey in his ancient religion. Unfortunately, she finds him… less than receptive. ![]() Rey (Daisy Ridley) has come to recruit Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) back into the good fight. In actuality though, it’s Ahch-To, and it is there that this movie picks up right where The Force Awakens left off. Intriguingly, however, no matter how high the stakes are raised in this intergalactic grudge match, the most compelling events are occurring on a little island that looks an awful lot like Ireland. ![]() Despite suffering a grievous blow at the end of the last movie, Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke has regrouped his armies and is unfazed as he reinstates fascist rule throughout the galaxy. After a spectacular opening battle, the rebellious and tattered Resistance, led by an unsinkable General Leia (Carrie Fisher), spends much of the film fleeing through the cosmos with the First Order nipping at their heels. ![]() Without giving too much away, The Last Jedi is largely a 152-minute chase across the stars. That alone makes this vision far less ominous than the marketing suggests. Still, most will be delighted to jump to lightspeed to find out. It also gives a needed shot of adrenaline to the numerical Star Wars films that, by the end, leaves you uncertain what is up and what is down, or what is light and what is dark. His film subverts and seduces, twists and turns, and frankly challenges us just when the audience dares to get too comfortable. Yet within all this repetition, Johnson uses his solitary writing and directing duties to massage and then manipulate our nostalgia. Hence why the First Order is even more imperial this time, striking back against Resistance forces who look increasingly like rebels Jedi and evil sorcerers alike sit in chairs while skeptically sizing up would-be apprentices and we even get an epic battle on a planet that may as well be called Salt Hoth given how powdery white those crystals look when the AT-M6 walkers stomp across the landscape like mechanized buffalo grazing during the dregs of winter. To be sure, Rian Johnson’s evocative and often exhilarating sequel continues the post-Disney mandate to remix elements that bask in the familiar. At last we have, for the first time in ages, a Star Wars movie that’s all too happy to go where we don’t expect. But for all his success, the rewards found in The Last Jedi prove even greater. And to his credit, he did just that by making a shockingly giddy reinvention of that galaxy far, far away that also played like the greatest hits of what came before. Abrams had an unenviable task two years ago when he set out to make what became The Force Awakens: reboot Star Wars without changing anything. ![]()
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