Hope and joy

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This article was published 14/12/2017 (2324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When J.J. Abrams rebooted the Star Wars franchise with The Force Awakens in 2015, reaction was mostly rapturous. Viewed with a little hindsight, that feeling looks more like relief. (As in, “Whew, it wasn’t The Phantom Menace.”)

Abrams is a good synthesizer. But Rian Johnson, brought in as writer and director for the second outing of the new trilogy, has a stubborn instinct for originality. Even handling a huge and, to some extent, predetermined pop-culture legacy like the Star Wars universe, Johnson (whose quirk-laden filmography includes Brick, The Brothers Bloom and Looper) manages to tweak expectations.

The Last Jedi combines sincerity with self-awareness, and fanboy callbacks with ranging cinematic references. The results are fun, funny, rousing and — wondrously — even a little surprising.

Like The Empire Strikes Back, the story covers that crucial midpoint in the battle between light and dark. Those First Order fascists have the ragtag rebels on the run. General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) does what she can, but the weary Resistance needs new hope.

Rey (Daisy Ridley) has sought out Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to draw him back into the fight, while pursuing a personal quest of her own.

Rebel pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) keeps up his keeno enthusiasm and impetuous energy, Isaac somehow making every “cocky flyboy” cliché feel fresh. Finn (John Boyega) ends up on a Hail Mary mission with Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a determined ship’s engineer.

Meanwhile, over on the Dark Side, Supreme Commander Snoke (really, not a scary name — or is that just me?) tests and torments his protegé, Darth Vader-wannabe Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

Driver continues his tricky mandate, which involves an almost comically mopey exploration of the “awkward adolescent” stage of villainy. Last time out, Kylo Ren had mommy and daddy issues. Now, having somehow opened up a psychic link with Rey, he’s kind of like that bad boyfriend many of us remember from our 20s. He’s possibly deep but mostly sulky and conflicted, and Rey is convinced she can change him.

Johnson manoeuvres all these subplots with fluid ease. He has a talent for mustering set-pieces that are magnificent and massive without feeling impersonal. Along with the usual action sequences— dogfights, chases, things getting blown up — Johnson pulls off some visually luscious effects, including a battle on a desert mining planet where the sands turn red with salt and a gorgeously surreal scene in which Rey encounters her shadow self in an underwater cave.

The movie is also packed with the detailed stuff of sci-fi, namely those fleeting and fascinating glimpses into whole worlds and their inhabitants, from a decadent intergalactic gambling port to Luke’s desolately beautiful island retreat. Johnson, unfortunately, continues the franchise’s penchant for cute critters with the porgs, which are sort of like guinea pigs with wings.

Movie references abound. At one point, Rey deploys an absolutely iconic Princess Leia moment to try to lure Luke back into the battle. “That was a cheap move,” Luke comments, in a meta sort of way. Along with remixing the Star Wars canon, Johnson also seems to be referencing David Lean and Akira Kurosawa, Soviet cinema and American westerns, with riffs on fast-talking screwball comedy and fatalistic film noir (mostly through a brilliant drop-in from Benicio del Toro).

This genre-jumping sometimes involves stylized dialogue and sly humour. As First Order military leader General Hux, Domhnall Gleeson seems to be taking the old war-movie convention that Nazis speak with posh British accents to its absolute — and absolutely hilarious — extreme. Hux’s uptight pomposity is punctured in the opening scene when Poe Dameron manages to drag him into in a crosstalk comedy act that could have come right out of Spaceballs.

The Last Jedi also explores serious themes. Johnson makes some interesting observations about power, going beyond the vaguely New Age notion of the Force to suggest the grit of actual politics.

Examining how change comes about, how momentum builds and dynamics shift, the script keeps punching the word “hope,” which feels obvious but also sweetly earnest, timeless but also topical. Bringing new hope to an old movie franchise, Johnson manages to reinvigorate the Resistance, in a galaxy far, far away and maybe even here in our worn-out world.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca