In 2018, a yer late, I finally sat down and watched The Last Jedi. Knowing that it already had a bad reputation among fans but somehow avoiding spoilers as to why, I was pleasantly surprised and really liked the movie. It did what I thought impossible from the Star Wars franchise and challenged my expectations. The movie broke away from some tired clichés, such as the requirement that someone has to be “born special” to be a fantasy hero, and showcased through Kylo Ren what Luke would have become had he struck the Emperor down in Return of the Jedi.
Given my enjoyment of that film, you’d think that I’d have been all over the then-upcoming The Rise of Skywalker, but to this date I haven’t seen it. The replacement of Colin Trevorrow as director with JJ Abrams, who had delivered an enjoyable but very by-the-numbers film in The Force Awakens signaled to me that Disney was overcompensating for fan backlash and was looking to deliver a “safe” final installment to the trilogy. In my experience, safe filmmaking tends to be boring filmmaking.
What I know of The Rise of Skywalker tells me that my suspicions were correct. Rey was made “special” by way of birth rather than deed, there was much pandering to fans, and the villain was an Emperor that nobody particularly wanted back.
All this preamble brings me to a big question: how has The Last Jedi held up for me? Six years after I first enjoyed it, does it still entertain? And does the fact that it breaks with tone and tradition in the middle of a trilogy hurt its place in the larger franchise?
Continue reading “The Last Jedi, Revisited”
Babbling Brooks 