Reviews For 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Are Out — Here's What Critics Are Saying
You want to see "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," but you don't want to get spoiled. You're anxious to know if director Rian Johnson's got the right stuff for this and a whole new trilogy, but you can't risk ruining the surprises he has in store. You're desperate to know who Rey's parents are, but you hope that a critic's praise for Daisy Ridley's performance won't accidentally give it away. In short, you're waiting for December 15th… but you gotta know if the movie is good right now.
No worries, pal — here's what critics are saying about "The Last Jedi," minus any spoilers:
Rian Johnson Brings His Best Traits To The Series
The writer-director of "The Last Jedi," Rian Johnson, frontloads the critical back story intel — who's fighting who and the like — in the opening crawl. And then he gets down to the difficult business of putting his fingerprints on a franchise that deliberately resists individual authorship.
I can't believe what writer-director Rian Johnson did: He took all of our preconceived notions of what a Star Wars movie is and evolved them. The movie is genuinely shocking at times—multiple times—but it also feels fully authentic to the Star Wars universe.
[Gizmodo]
Johnson doesn't go nearly as far as Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi in re-creating a tentpole franchise in his own image. He doesn't radically reinvent Star Wars with the looseness of his film The Brothers Bloom, or the creative rigor and conceptual daring of Brick. But he does dig into the impulses behind the new trilogy's younger characters, cracking them open and examining their psychology in a way Star Wars rarely has.
It Answers Questions — And Nostalgia Takes A Backseat
If Last Jedi is fundamentally meant as a rebirth for the Star Wars series, the way Johnson addresses fan questions is the sharp smack on the ass that's meant to prompt a baby's first wailing breath.
It sets its ambitions high and follows through. And it walks the tricky line of surprising a savvy audience while also following its franchise's familiar symmetries and tropes.
[Polygon]
The Last Jedi merits special praise for how deftly it wields the franchise's past. As the latest installment in a decades-old franchise, The Last Jedi benefits from the weight of history, but it's also wise enough not to indulge in too much schmaltzy nostalgia.
[GQ]
Mark Hamill Doesn't Skip A Beat As The Older, Wiser Luke
Hamill's return to Luke Skywalker is as complex a performance as we've ever seen in a Star Wars movie. You can feel the conflict and pain on his face in every scene.
[Gizmodo]
Hamill, who once created one of cinema's most iconic characters but would never be considered by anyone to be a great actor, gives the single best acting performance of his career.
You Won't Forget Carrie Fisher's Last Performance As Leia
Leia has rarely gotten this much to do in these movies, and here she's not only capable of extraordinary feats[…] but she's also as wry as we knew the actress to be off-camera.
[TheWrap]
Though not created as one, The Last Jedi even works as a worthy send-off for Carrie Fisher. One line in particular, in the full benefit of hindsight, reads as a metaphor for the place that the actress turned author turned irrepressible public speaker of truth found in the hearts of her fans.
[Polygon]
The Cast's Newbies And Sophomores Alike All Shine
Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) has tons more to do and we're all better for it. The same goes for General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), who is arguably the funniest character in the film, as well as Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), who is deliciously evil and confident.
[Gizmodo]
Enlivening things in the more positive way is a blaggard named DJ played with great mischief by Benecio del Toro, who sneaks and slithers around and plays all sides like an unusually active lizard.
Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is consistently confounding, a fascinating character, certainly in something like this. The dark Snoke, previously seen as a hologram, is a disgusting old bastard, hellish to behold in the flesh and ghoulishly voiced by Andy Serkis, while newbies Laura Dern, as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, and Kellie Marie Tran, as Resistance fighter Rose Tico, exude depth and purpose, beautifully written, layered characters.
[GQ UK]
With Mr. Driver — who delivers a startlingly raw performance — Mr. Johnson delivers a potent portrait of villainy that suggests evil isn't hard-wired, an inheritance or even enigmatic. Here, it is a choice — an act of self-creation in the service of annihilation.
All That Said, Some Critics Weren't As Bowled Over
Narratively, Johnson has a tendency to create digressions within digressions, not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that as long as you're skilled enough to keep multiple balls in the air, which he mostly is. The humor does at times strike notes unusual for the franchise, more often to the good than bad, and John Williams' vigorous eighth Star Wars franchise score never sounds rote or tiresomely familiar.
As it turns out, although "The Last Jedi" meets a relatively high standard for franchise filmmaking, Johnson's effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors' visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic — a process that chewed up and spat out helmers such as Colin Trevorrow, Gareth Edwards, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But Johnson was either strong enough or weak enough to adapt to such pressures, and the result is the longest and least essential chapter in the series.
[Variety]
TL;DR
Audiences will likely come away from The Last Jedi with a lot of complaints and questions. But they're at least likely to feel they're in the hands of someone who cares about the series as much as they do, someone who loves its history, but sees the wide-open future ahead of it as well.
Watch The Trailer (Again)
