Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Casting: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels

Rated: 8/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the eight episode in the series and second in a revived final trilogy, triggered over a million conversations on the social media in the week of its worldwide release. The media buzz notwithstanding, you would wonder how this far, far away galactic world and its inborn fights between the resistance and the Republic, its iconic Jedi connection, its good vs evil, its evil turning more evil, its good turning evil turning good only to turn evil again, is such a fanciful world drawing you in as someone more than just a spectator.

Director Rian Johnson is crafty and engaging with his newest outing and gives you so much to contend with that any kind of ennui you would normally expect from an episode so long into the number trail is happily absent. At the same time, however, there are captivating doses of nostalgia to keep the spirit of the Star Wars series alive and in delightful continuity.

This one is, perhaps, the strongest of the episodes after the Empire Strikes Back and Johnson has worked so well to marinate action with emotion that the moment the journey into the unknown begins with the signature saucer text starting to glide into outer space, you get hooked on as never before.

The story, with all its happenings to keep you in your seat, is punctuated with the right kind of subtle evil, humour, pathos and, of course, remembrances. The old timers are all there to take you into their lair, what with Leia Organa (an ode to the late Carrie Fisher), Solo, Rey, Fin and Poe getting you back into the family, with fleshed out additions like Rose Taco who plays a courageous and gumption-packed Asian American on the side of the Resistance going into the battle with a plan to disable the evil Snoke’s light tracking device.

The imagery and the graphics ably justify the 3D glasses sitting pertly on your nose as do the pithy dialogues between the enigmatic and self-exiled Luke Skywalker played to the hilt by Mark Hamill. Rey, the last standing Jedi heir to the legacy, is Daisy Ridley’s best dressed role and she does wonders as the persistent student of the elusive Skywalker on a dark and remote island and her instant trans-spatial connections with Adam Driver who wholesomely depicts the slow and steady victory of evil over splashes of good in the personality of Kylo Ren.

In short, the old and the new co-exist in Johnson’s expert hands to make this powerful episode of a powerful series delightfully unpredictable, nostalgically old-world and a technically modern spatial thriller to take your breath away despite the 2-hour-33-minute prolonged journey into the universe and beyond.

Source: The Sunday Pioneer, December 17, 2017