The core theme of the ongoing Star Wars narrative has always been one of balance – an equilibrium between light and dark, life and death. Balance is also the key to making a great Star Wars movie, with the directors of each new episode standing or falling on their ability to walk a tightrope between spectacle and substance, seriousness and absurdity – keeping both the fans and the first-timers happy.
In this eighth episode in the official Star Wars saga, writer-director Rian Johnson (who made his name with such adventurous features as Brick and Looper) proves himself the master of the balancing act, keeping the warring forces of this intergalactic franchise in near-perfect harmony. Just as the film’s sound designers understand the tactical use of silence, so Johnson instinctively knows when to internalise or externalise the film’s multiple explosions – conjuring vast attack ships on fire and tiny individuals in torment with equal ease.
Picking up where JJ Abrams’s The Force Awakens left off, The Last Jedi puts distance between Daisy Ridley’s Rey and John Boyega’s Finn, sending the latter chasing across the galaxy while the former searches for her true self on the remote island where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) lurks.
“Who are you?” Luke asks “Rey from Nowhere”. “Why are you here?” It’s one of several questions that Johnson tantalisingly dangles, teasing out answers over The Last Jedi’s record-breaking running time (this is the longest Star Wars movie to date), which only occasionally slips into bagginess. Is Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren “a new Vader” or just “a child in a mask”? Can the decimated Resistance really be “the spark that will light the fire” that will burn the First Order down? And is there more to Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron than just “jumping into an X-wing and blowing something up”?
Armed with all the samurai-style sabre battles and eye-popping dogfights (both in dark space and on bright land) that a Star Wars fan could hope for, Johnson’s increasingly crowd-pleasing adventure packs its heftiest punch by respecting the narrative arcs of its disparate characters. Whereas certain previous instalments suffered from George Lucas’s drama-free formula of having two-dimensional ciphers explain the plot to each other, Johnson adheres to the maxim that “action is character”, nowhere more so than in the introduction of Kelly Marie Tran’s winning Rose Tico – already a firm fan favourite who turns out to be much more than a mere maintenance engineer for the Resistance.
A recurrent motif of hands reaching across great divides becomes a defining image, with allies and enemies bound by strange ties, and cowardice and heroism easily confused. No wonder Rey finds herself gazing at her own image in a Wellesian hall of mirrors in one of the film’s most strikingly surreal sequences.
There are some quibbles – a visit to a space casino seems distractingly diversionary, and a few minor elements are a little on-the-nose. But as the third act approaches, the crescendo of air-punching interludes accelerates, eliciting gasps, cheers and OMG whoops from an audience whom Johnson treats with respect, affection, and evident admiration.
