A welcome disturbance in the Force, Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” is, by wide measure, the trippiest, scrappiest and most rule-breaking “Star Wars” adventure yet.
Not the exercise in nostalgia that was J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens,” Johnson’s Episode VIII takes George Lucas’ space opera in new, often thrilling, and sometimes erratic directions while finding the truest expression yet of the saga’s underlying ethos of camaraderie in resistance to oppression. Though there are countless familiar broad strokes — rebel escapes, Jedi soul-searching, daddy issues — “The Last Jedi” has discovered some new moves yet, in the galaxy far, far away.
As the second installment in this third “Star Wars” trilogy, “The Last Jedi” is like the inverted corollary of “The Empire Strike Back” (long the super fan’s favorite). While it is, like its part-two predecessor, often murky and weird, Johnson’s frequently comic film distinguishes itself by upending the traditional power dynamics of heroes and bit players in the Star Wars galaxy.
Here, the odds-defying daredevil flyboy (Oscar Isaac as Resistance pilot Poe Dameron) is an impetuous chauvinist, at odds with a female commander (a purple-haired Laura Dern). “Get your head out of your cockpit,” admonishes Leia (the late Carrie Fisher, to whom the film is dedicated). The master-apprentice relationship — previously Yoda instructing young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on a swampy remote planet — is now tilted more toward Rey, the young Jedi (Daisy Ridley), sent to stir a monkish Skywalker from a windswept, Porg-infested isle.