Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Disney, 12.15) is a tip-top thing in many respects, a nicely baked, smoothly assembled serving of corporate-brand entertainment that millions upon millions of Star Wars nerds and American families are going to lap up like starving puppy dogs. It’s not a bad film, fast and fleet and well-layered and handsome to boot.
I felt it was too long, for sure (152 minutes), and a little meandering, but I found it reasonably okay. I wasn’t irritated or annoyed. I was genuinely intrigued from time to time.
But Jedi is still (and this really can’t be said often enough) a corporate-stamped, carefully calibrated Disney entertainment, made for the pudgies and the schmudgies, the passives and the 13-year-olds and the obsessives and the fatties and the hordes of middle-aged, T-shirt-wearing, sneaker-wearing bulkies and their families. And aging Empire devotees like myself.
Did I emerge from last night’s Disney lot theatre in a state of squealing falsetto flutteration? No, I didn’t, but, as I said in this morning’s post, I at least appreciated Jedi‘s attempt to deliver a middle-chapterish, plot-thickening, Empire Strikes Back-like sense of tension and gloomy atmosphere, at least in terms of Steve Yedlin‘s richly shaded cinematography, which I described this morning as “a noir palette crossed with Vermeer, and very reminiscent of Empire‘s lighting scheme.”
Yes, they shot Jedi on film. All hail those deep inky blacks.
I’ve been dreaming of another Empire-like Star Wars film for the last 37 years, and that’s a long-ass time to be wishin’ and hopin’ without result.
I disagree with an assertion by Variety‘s Peter Debruge that despite it being entertaining, The Last Jedi may be “the longest and least essential chapter in the series,” that it “extends the franchise without changing anything fundamental,” and that nerds “could skip this installment and show up for Episode IX” — which J.J. Abrams is writing now — “without experiencing the slightest confusion as to what happened in the interim.”
Okay, I don’t strongly disagree with these statements, but Jedi at least makes Mark Hamill‘s grizzled Luke Skywalker seem like a fairly cool guy again. And it does introduce two or three new animal species (fucking porgs plus some galloping, racehorse-like, camel-coated, lion-like beasties plus…you don’t want to know). And it does introduce the idea of sending a substitute “presence” to fight a crucial battle when you’d rather not do it yourself. And it does introduce the concept of an entire planet devoted to Las Vegas-styled diversions for the wealthy.
Daisy Ridley may not have known who Cary Grant was two or three years ago (she must have an inkling by now), but she’s cool and resolute as the thoroughly force-attuned Rey. I was glad she was around, although the movie strands her on for well over an hour on Skellig Michael while she verbals and fiddles around with Mark Hamill‘s grumpy, silver-bearded Luke (“I failed,” “We need you,” etc.)