Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson’s film is the real deal, a bold, risky venture unafraid to tell its own story, freed from the weight of nostalgia and formula.

It’s less Star Wars as you’ve never seen it than Star Wars as you’ve never felt it.

The Force is, to me, still silly Star Wars mumbo jumbo, but Johnson finds a way to underscore it with humanity, with a classical Greek rumble of true pathos. On that front, The Last Jedi is a pure success, accessing the molten core of its drama and grappling with it in nuanced ways.

The Last Jedi tries to do a little too much in its overlong 2½ hours, yet writer/director Rian Johnson still turns in a stellar entry that owes much to George Lucas’ original films while finding a signature vibe of its own and unleashing a few welcome twists.

If The Force Awakens raised a lot of questions, The Last Jedi tackles them head-on, delivering answers that will shock and awe in equal measure. Fun, funny but with emotional heft, this is a mouth-watering set-up for Episode IX and a fitting tribute to Carrie Fisher.

Does the movie, like its predecessor, rely on familiar tropes a bit more than it should? Yes, I think it does. Is it, at a solid two-and-a-half hours, considerably longer than it needed to be? Yes, that too. But it’s still a pretty damn good movie, arguably the best the franchise has offered since Empire.

Intentions and inspiration aside, Last Jedi doesn’t add up to an “Empire Strikes Back” for this trilogy. There’s no romance, little pathos and no real punch-in-the-gut moment. Its emotionally sterile tone was set with “The Force Awakens,” and that’s proven hard to shake, new innovations and plot twists aside.

This is a genuinely excellent movie, and the hate is grossly misplaced, ill-motivated, and undeserved. It's easily the best Star Wars movie since the original and The Empire Strikes Back, and if we're being objectively honest, it's probably better than both of them. The story has wonderful, deep-cutting themes on the fallacy of bloodlines, the social role of legends, the meaning of heroism and rebellion, and the powerful instruction of failure: all very elegantly tied together in a very coherent, tautly paced package. Rian Johnson, writer and director, seems to understand Star Wars better than anyone save George Lucas itself. At the very least, when I watched this movie the first time with a gigantic grin on my face, it felt like someone had experienced Star Wars the way I had since I first fell in love with the franchise shortly before my ninth birthday. As thoughtfully detailed as it is -- a Jedi facing off against the First Order using no violence, or Force projections leaving no footprints, for example -- it's also incredibly entertaining. The opening sequence alone is one of the most thrilling moments I've ever seen in Star Wars. And not nearly enough has been said about how incredibly gorgeous this film is. It's easily the prettiest Star Wars movie ever made, with both wonderful cinematography and excellent art direction. There's well-done, prominent use of a red and white color scheme. The "blood stains" of the final battle, where technically the salt of the planet is oxidizing into crimson whenever touched, such as when a soldier is taken out and ragdolls along the ground, is a great example of how the visuals and the themes of the movie dovetail together in an extremely effective way. Just such a clever, thoughtful movie. There's a sequence that -- absurdly! -- has drawn much scorn and criticism, called the Holdo maneuver, that frankly ought to be one of the Top 100 visual moments of the 21st century movie scene. It's so incredible to behold that both times I saw the movie in theaters, when the sound cuts out in the moment, you could literally hear gasps of astonishment at what was unfolding on screen. Pure, haunting beauty. What the show Andor was for writing, The Last Jedi was in a visually mesmerizing, theme-heavy, silver screen extravaganza. The big, bombastic moments are well complemented by the little touches: "I need someone to show me my place in all this," the sisters with their medallion halves, the amoral smuggler advocating the path of neutrality, a certain cameo from an old friend from the original movies, "We are what they grow beyond -- that is the true burden of all masters." Even the much maligned Canto Bight sequence has great discourse on the purpose and meaning of rebellion, and easily one of the coolest cinematographic movements in franchise history. (As someone said on Twitter, a Star Wars movie that finally does something interesting with the camera!) The sequence is an obvious homage to a classic 1920s film that first demonstrated the possibilities of film photography. That kind of homage is precisely something that George Lucas would do, famous for his tributes to Akira Kurosawa in particular. It's but a single example of how well this movie really understands Star Wars in a way that most of its haters are incapable of acknowledging or fully comprehending, but also in a way that's utterly delightful. It made me feel like I was a nine year old kid again, being whisked away on an amazing adventure to a galaxy far, far away.

Johnson takes the baton, expecting to follow up an assumably pre-conceptualized story. He doesn't. RJ just wants to cover a lot and it's bold, audacious. But it didn't feel in the vein or style that J.J. and Kazdan established in EP8. Johnson just kind of goes off, offering some story, but mainly high-stakes calamity that's exhilarating, but wears you out by the end. He leaves nothing to look forward to, and how he resolves some 'big' characters felt half-handed / short-lived. I was intrigued by Luke's change of course, but not a fan how RJ integrated him. It felt showy and ungrounded. And then pedestaled the idea of him. I have nothing against the epic-ness this movie goes for, I wish most movies would do this. And I commend Johnson for taking it to that far. But he did it out of his own fervor of what he wanted his SW movie to be, and went overboard. A lot of the intrigue was then left sidelined or over-shown by other, less meaningful storylines. Last Jedi is having so much fun with itself, it never made us connect with the bold choices it presents. Even though its boldness sticks with you, the movie should be focussing on story and where it's going rather than impressing us with starstruck moments. And we're left with shame and consequence...

Güzel bir filmdi. Fakat bende Güç Uyanıyor’un yarattığı etkiyi yaratamadı. O filmde çok büyük bir sürpriz faktörü vardı ve filmin seyir zevkini arttırmıştı. Güç Uyanıyor kadar iyi bir film olduğunu düşünmediğim, bende büyük bir etki yaratmadığı ve bazı kısımları saçma bulmamdan dolayı iki puan düştüm. Kötü bir film olduğunu düşünmüyorum ama süper, efsane bir filmde değil.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD Star Wars Movie & Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a Box Office Hit but didn't go well for the fans of Star Wars who find Star Wars: The Last Jedi a disappointment and the worst Star Wars Movie because the ending just fell like

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]