Star Wars: The Last Jedi review

Well it’s finally here. Another year, another Star Wars movie. After what seemed like an eternity following Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens was released to extraordinary amounts of hype, fanfare and praise. It was the beginning of a new trilogy, with new characters and plot threads, a new generation of Star Wars for fans both old and new to enjoy. Now that the dust has settled and The Last Jedi has been released 2 whole years after The Force Awakens, has Disney manufactured yet another success in the endless routine assembly of yearly Star Wars movies?

In many ways, The Last Jedi succeeds as an enjoyable film. There’s the usual Star Wars shtick, including a colorful and diverse cast of aliens species, bombastic space battles and annoying characters to hate. Most of what you’ve come to expect in a Star Wars movie is still here, with a few stylistic choices and scenes that bravely soar into the series, but whether or not they stick the landing is up for debate.

The performances are solid all across the board, with Adam Driver shining as the tormented Kylo Ren, taking the frustrated angry teen routine to new heights. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega continue to provide compelling protagonists in Rey and Finn, with Oscar Isaac thankfully getting more to do this time around as the awesome Poe Dameron. No doubt Mark Hamill will stir a lot of attention as he finally returns to his role as a (speaking) Luke Skywalker, though he’s very, very different to the Luke you remember.

The set pieces and visual effects are dazzling, with a couple of moments are sure to provide quite the spectacle for fans, both in space and on the ground. Calling it now, this movie’s lightsaber fight is one of the most exciting in the whole series, reaching a perfect middle ground between the highly choreographed duels of the prequels and the more methodical and vicious clashes of the original trilogy.

It’s a good thing that the good shines so brightly because there’s things about this film that really cause it to drag. Without wading waist-deep into spoiler territory, there are a few sequences during the course of The Last Jedi that caused me to roll my eyes and wish it would just move on already. If you thought Finn was a boring character in the last movie with all all of the failed jokes and awkward dialogue, then prepare for more of the same this time around. Alongside newcomer Rose, Finn embarks on his own little adventure that ultimately serves barely any real purpose to the plot and grinds the movie to a screeching halt.

The movie has a real pacing problem, jumping from one point to another without much cohesion that makes it feel more like a series of episodes taken from a Last Jedi Netflix series that have been spliced together than a numbered Star Wars movie. If some of the fat had been trimmed away and more focus was given to the other plot threads without needlessly cutting back to the time wasting chase scenes then I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.

As it stands, The Last Jedi is an enjoyable flick with a number of dumb or needlessly pointless scenes that really make it feel bloated and uneven. No doubt everybody will love the film and leave feeling excited and hopeful for the next one, but personally I didn’t love it. I’m not at all feeling optimistic and full of wonder about the next film, whatever happens happens. At least we have a Han Solo movie to look forward to next year, because I definitely don’t feel tired and dread having a Star Wars movie every single year until I die.