![]() ![]() The bolder and more provocative suggestions at the heart of the narrative remain just that, nothing more than implications or subtext. However, The Last Jedi ultimately lacks the courage of its convictions. There is a lot of focus on faces in The Last Jedi, shadows moving across them, eyes either focused or trying desperately to look away. Instead, Johnson offers a tighter and closer glimpse at the universe and the people who inhabit it. ![]() Johnson is not a director who feels entirely comfortable with spectacle and scale. Johnson is not a director in the vein of Lucas or Abrams. It looks at the Star Wars universe through new sets of eyes, often in a literal sense. In its best moments, it seems like The Last Jedi is lining up its arguments. The Last Jedi needs to find something interesting to say about a forty-year-old franchise. Nostalgia is not enough to sustain a franchise that will be releasing one major motion picture a year for the foreseeable future. Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens was an exercise in nostalgia that worked so well because of three factors it was a palette cleanser after the prequels, it innovated by pushing background characters to the narrative foreground, and it was released more than a decade after Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. This was essential for the success of The Last Jedi. ![]() However, there are other more ponderous moments in The Last Jedi when it seems like Johnson and his characters are asking profound questions of the franchise itself, poking at the underlying assumptions that power this box office behemoth. Some of this is inherited from the ambition of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, particularly in early scenes that emphasise the human cost of this galactic struggle. Indeed, the best moments in The Last Jedi struggle to reach beyond what audiences have come to expect from the franchise. ![]()
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